Erased from the dialogue

Oct 16th, 2015 12:00 pm | By

At Feminist Current, Susan Cox interviews Mary Lou Singleton.

Who gives birth? The answer used to be: females. Today, it’s considered politically incorrect to say that it is women, specifically, who get pregnant and become mothers. Thus, in the name of inclusivity, a number of women’s reproductive health groups are changing their terminology in order to degender the language of birth. Several organizations now refer to “pregnant people,” “pregnant individuals,” and “birthing parents” instead. Feministing writer Jos Truitt recently demanded we “Stop saying and stop thinking that abortion is a women’s issue.”

Well, okay then! Degendering women’s issues — I mean, “people’s issues” — is way progressive. But what are the costs of doing that? What are we losing in erasing women from the language of such a fundamental aspect of female bodily reality?

Mary Lou Singleton, midwife, feminist, and reproductive sovereignty activist recently addressed this question, along with many others, in an open letter to the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA). The letter asks MANA to reconsider the revision of their core competencies to remove all references to women and mothers. I recently spoke with her about these events and her upcoming actions at MANA’s annual conference.

It’s ironic, or something…The problem used to be that all women were assumed to be mommies or wannabe mommies, now the problem is that women are tactfully concealed from the whole child-bearing thing.

Susan: Is there a history of women and women’s anatomy being erased from language and the conceptualization of sexual reproduction?

Mary Lou: Absolutely. I mean we can look at the anti-abortion movement since the 70s — possibly even longer, since the women’s liberation uprising in the late 60s/early 70s that clamored for abortion rights, then with Roe v. Wade saying that abortion was legal and between a woman and her doctor — whenever women won abortion rights, the right wing began a huge campaign to erase women from language and focus on the fetus. They focused, instead, on the fertilized egg, the embryo, and the fetus, which they called the “baby,” when obviously it’s not actually scientifically a baby until it’s born. There’s a great Stop Patriarchy chant: “A baby’s not a baby till it comes out. That’s what birthdays are all about.”

But to the anti-choice crowd a fertilized egg is a baby, an embryo is a baby, a fetus is a baby. All of their literature is about these pictures of fetuses, these pictures of embryos saying, “I have a heartbeat at this many weeks.” “I have fingerprints at this many weeks.” And the woman is completely erased from the dialog. The only time the woman might be mentioned is when they use infantilizing terms like “mommy” — “Mommy don’t kill me!” Or sometimes they will call the pregnant woman a mother, when she’s not yet a mother. She’s a gestating female and she’s in the process of deciding whether or not to stay pregnant and she’s deciding whether or not to become a mother. Yet she’s put into this societal gender role of “mother” and this fetus is a “baby,” and never ever ever is the word “woman” mentioned. So there is an absolute erasure of women in the abortion debate on the right.

It was very much a calculated move on their part to erase women from the language of pregnancy and put their focus on “saving babies”… “Saving babies” by treating women like incubators, that is. “Saving babies” by forcing women to go through all the full physical and emotional risks of term pregnancies against their wills. “Saving babies” by enslaving women is the part of the conversation that’s never mentioned. And even in the liberal press, nobody calls them on that. The question isn’t: When does a fertilized egg become a human being? The question is: When does a woman stop being a human being and become a state-regulated incubator? So even on the left there isn’t a whole lot of advocacy for women as full human beings — full citizens with the right to bodily autonomy.

The whole thing is a tight unbreakable circle. Women are enslaved because they’re the ones who have the babies, and they can be enslaved this way because they are women – second class, subordinate, inferior – lesser, lower, slavish, thing-like, property. That’s why I think it’s a bad mistake to erase women from the politics of abortion and contraception rights: it’s because it’s political, and it’s political as the class of men subordinating the class of women.

Susan: This more current erasure of the role of women in reproduction reminds me of the way it’s been done throughout history, all the way back to antiquity. For example, Aristotle said that men provide the seed for reproduction and women are merely the soil. The idea being that the man’s sperm does everything to create the baby and the woman is merely the space in which it occurs — an incubator.

MaryLou: And isn’t that just what we’re still saying? By saying that life begins at fertilization, we are essentially saying that life begins at ejaculation. That a baby is something a man ejaculates into a woman.

Oh zing – so it is. I hadn’t made that connection before. I knew the Aristotle claim, and have cited it, but I didn’t connect it with the “life begins at conception” mantra.

MaryLou: Yes, they’re saying that it’s not something a woman creates with close to 10 months of physical labour — that’s what a baby is. A baby is a new human being that a woman creates over the course of 10 months of physical work. Life-begins-at-fertilization is saying that a baby is something that a man ejaculates into a woman and that woman is then obligated to bring that baby to term, because it’s a full human being at ejaculation. So… we haven’t progressed since Aristotle! [Laughs]

Susan: It’s as if men want to take credit for birth.

But Singleton goes on to say things I don’t agree with.

MaryLou: Yes, and women’s labour is made invisible all over the world. I mean, the world runs on the uncompensated labour of women. And that’s part of sex-based oppression. We have to be able to discuss that. In midwifery this is so important because midwifery is a place where women have authentic power. This is a woman’s tradition. It’s women’s work to give birth. You can’t think of a more woman-centered profession and reality than the place where we focus on gestation, birth, and early mothering.”

No, I don’t buy that. It’s too “essentialist” for my taste – too close to agreeing with the old idea I just mentioned, that all women are mommies or wannabe mommies, and that if they’re not there’s something wrong with them. It also excludes men, when the healthier approach is surely to involve fathers as much as possible. I think it makes sense to involve men in the birth process, but I think it does not make sense to delete the word “women” from the politics of abortion.

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The heart of the matter in four frames

Oct 16th, 2015 10:57 am | By

Kenan Malik wrote the introduction to a new Danish collection of Jesus and Mo cartoons and he has posted it on his blog.

One of my favourite cartoons shows Jesus and Mo explaining to the barmaid the Aristotelian idea, later picked up by both Islamic and Christian theologians, that ‘Everything that has a beginning must have a cause’ and ‘the universe has a beginning, therefore it must have a cause’. ‘Therefore?’, asks the barmaid. ‘Therefore no bacon’, replies Mo. ‘Or gay sex’, chips in Jesus. It is a typical dig at the illogicalities of religious faith. It also, in Jesus and Mo’s inimitable way, taps into one of the most difficult theological conundrums for believers, the tension between the idea of God as ‘first cause’, or as a ‘condition of being’, and the God of scriptures that does all the other things that religion requires of Him: perform miracles, answer our prayers, wrestle with the devil, set down moral law, punish sinners. And tell us to keep off the bacon sarnies and gay sex. I give an hour-long lecture on this topic. Jesus and Mo get to the heart of the matter in four frames.

I did a post about that years ago, in which I called it the theist four-step. The four get compressed into one by the interested parties: it’s just assumed that if you accept this idea that there’s a deity, then you also accept the idea that it’s good, and it gets to tell you what to do, and that you reliably know all three. That’s silly: the four are quite separate. I accept that it’s a fact that there’s a pope. The end. I don’t accept the claim that the pope is good, I don’t accept the claim that the pope gets to tell me what to do, I don’t know of any duty I have to the pope. Same for god (if I accepted that it’s a fact that god exists, which of course I don’t).

Nor is it just religion that Jesus and Mo cartoons dissect. They unpick many of the idiocies of liberal culture too. Another of my favourite cartoons shows Jesus and Mo sitting at the bar having ‘pledged not to say anything that might cause one of them to feel offended.’ They sit in silence. And still more silence. Until finally Mo says, ‘This is nice, isn’t it’. In one cartoon strip, getting to the fundamental problem with the liberal fear of giving offence.

Always relevant, alas.

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Courage

Oct 15th, 2015 5:48 pm | By

The Guardian on Saba and Gulalai Ismail of Aware Girls:

Aware Girls was founded in 2002 and operates in the face of severe violence, not just in Peshawar but also in Pakistan’s tribal areas and other troubled parts of the country. It trains young women on their rights – and, through its Youth Peace Network, makes efforts to encourage more women into politics – who then try to stop their peers being radicalised, leaving Peshawar for villages and towns where they try to dissuade others from joining extremist groups.

In Peshawar, this is highly dangerous work – not least because Aware Girls is run mainly by women. One of its attendees in 2011 was Malala Yousafzai, whose own efforts on behalf of women’s education earned her a bullet to the head from the Taliban at the age of 15. She survived and went on to win the Nobel peace prize. Gulalai says her friend is now a symbol of honour for the organisation. “Violent attacks are happening to many women in Pakistan, so I was happy Malala was able to highlight the issue.”

That’s how I first heard of Gulalai and Aware Girls – the day Malala was shot, I was glued to Twitter, and Gulalai was there.

The group believes the best way to combat terrorism is with education. Gulalai and her sister, Saba, founded it in 2002 when they were still teenagers, their initial goal to advance women’s rights in a city where many females suffer appalling discrimination. The sisters began campaigning against domestic violence, acid attacks, honour killings and exploitative labour.

Since 2010, Aware Girls has also focused on its growing peace network, which stretches out from its Peshawar base to rural Taliban strongholds. Last year, 223 activists reached almost 4,000 “at risk” young people. At the last national elections, in 2013, Aware Girls led all-female teams of polling station monitors, to ensure women were allowed to vote freely and without intimidation.

They’re so amazing.

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Labelled ‘native informant’ or ‘house arab’ by the illiberal liberals

Oct 15th, 2015 5:18 pm | By

Eiynah at Nice Mangos is feeling more than annoyed at the way ex-Muslims are ignored by nearly all political directions.

As the Canadian federal election date draws closer, I can’t get my mind off the niqab debate. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that this one issue demonstrates how voices like mine – fromwithin the Muslim community are routinely ignored, cast aside, betrayed by the illiberal ‘liberal’ West …simply for the crime of not fitting the simplistic tribalist narratives.

Zunera Ishaq – a Pakistani immigrant to Canada just like myself ….took on the government regarding the issue of niqabs during the citizenship oath and won the right to wear a mask in court when no one else is allowed to. She won the privilege to flaunt her alliance with an inflexible, misogynistic, hardline, right-wing, extremist interpretation of Islam in the face of already marginalized, threatened, liberal minorities from within the Muslim community.

Widespread liberal support for her is as distasteful as support for ‘White nationalism’ or ‘Straight Pride’. Except not many liberals can see past the ‘minority’ aspect. Well, the KKK would be a minority in Pakistan, but it wouldn’t mean that we start treating them as liberal heroes if they challenged ‘the majority’.

What if the KKK in Pakistan were prevented from wearing their hoods in court (and elsewhere)? Would that make them liberal heroes? Nope, it would not.

This issue showcases how utterly alone people in my position are. We don’t align with the position of the western ‘right’ on so many things, we are orphaned liberals – abandoned by the left which usually champions ‘equality’ and free speech, stands against the religious right….unless….’Islam’, we are thus pushed into a corner where the only people willing to listen to us are associated with the right…which is not necessarily a compromise everyone is willing to make. But if they do, you can’t fully blame them for wanting to be heard.

But not the whole of the left. I’m on the left, and I haven’t abandoned, and there are many who can say the same. Not enough, but many.

But again, regarding Islam even in the ‘human-rights championing West’, our voices are silenced, left out of the conversation, misrepresented. We continue to be marginalized, targeted with unbelievable bigotry from the left and the right. If we speak out against our own oppression, we are labelled ‘native informant’ or ‘house arab’ by the illiberal liberals.

We are seen as being from the same stock of foreign ‘savages’ by the far-right, and the conversation is hijacked by these two extremes; the xenophobes who wish to cast suspicion and doubt on all Muslims, or the ‘liberals’ who ally with our bigoted Muslim far-right, our oppressors.

I am left with an ache in my gut, and a sinking feeling when I see the hypocritical left, fight against victim blaming, slut-shaming but celebrate it in the form of niqab simply because it is not ‘their culture’, it is not their fight. Their fight is with fox news, Stephen Harper, and that’s it. Their fight for equality ends there. Misogyny is acceptable if packaged as part of a foreign culture.

Read the whole thing.

 

 

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Her nerve was her rage against the oppressor

Oct 15th, 2015 11:34 am | By

So that’s a great journalist gone – Lyse Doucet on Sue Lloyd-Roberts.

BBC journalist Sue Lloyd-Roberts, who forged a career in secret filming in secretive states, has died of leukaemia at the age of 64. Her courage, compassion and commitment to expose injustice the world over was an irritation to human rights abusers, and an inspiration to many journalists, including me. I’ll miss her as a loyal friend and colleague. And her brave journalism will be missed by many.

I always wondered : “How does Sue Lloyd-Roberts do it?”

How did she keep her nerve when she posed as a European gems importer and filmed with a hidden camera in Rangoon, under repressive military rule, in 2007?

How did she keep calm when she crossed army lines in 2011 with a fake Syrian identity card to become the first Western journalist to secretly film opposition protests at the very beginning of Syria’s uprising?

Doucet asked another journalist how Lloyd-Roberts kept her nerve.

“Her nerve was her rage against the oppressor and the unjust and her absolute determination to expose and if possible humiliate the villain,” he replied.

And that is the story of Sue Lloyd-Roberts’ bold breathtaking journalism over more than 40 years.

We need more like that, not fewer.

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She said no

Oct 15th, 2015 10:43 am | By

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us that astronomy colleagues have been trying hard to get Geoff Marcy to stop being a creep for a long time.

Ruth Murray-Clay, an assistant professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara who earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics on the system’s Berkeley campus in 2008, says it was in 2004 that she first decided to approach Mr. Marcy about what she saw as his inappropriate behavior with young women. Ms. Murray-Clay was the graduate-student representative to Berkeley’s astronomy faculty at the time and was meeting with students about putting together an annual holiday play in which they would poke fun at faculty members.

“Someone suggested putting in a joke about Geoff chasing undergraduates, and the room got really quiet and uncomfortable,” says Ms. Murray-Clay. “I knew that if this was something that couldn’t even be joked about, I needed to go have a conversation with him.”

She’d already heard several stories about him and his creepy touching (aka “inappropriate” touching, which is a nice way of saying creepy). So she talked to him – and he said the young students who told the stories had misinterpreted his creepy touching, but also that he would change and it wouldn’t happen again. (So he told himself: no more creepy touching, because they will misinterpret it.) (Or he told Murray-Clay he was telling himself that.)

But it did happen again. Repeatedly. So much misinterpreting.

Ms. Murray-Clay went back to talk to Mr. Marcy several times about his behavior before she left Berkeley, in 2008, she says, and so did other students. She also complained to the astronomy-department chairman, in 2005, and to Berkeley’s Title IX office, in 2006. But, she says, nothing happened.

It so often is nothing that happens, isn’t it.

Female faculty members and students have complained for decades of discrimination and harassment in male-dominated scientific fields. In astronomy a 2013 survey found that 29 percent of assistant professors, 21 percent of associates, and just 15 percent of full professors were female.

Gender complaints are not limited to science. Female philosophers have also cited a hostile climate for women, and universities have recently removed or forced out several male philosophers following complaints of sexual harassment and assault.

Well, if you get depressed about it, just have a chat with Christina Hoff Sommers, or watch some of her videos for the American Enterprise Institute; she’ll tell you it’s all exaggerated.

Or you could check out Michael Shermer on Twitter – he’ll tell you you’re making victimhood your identity and you should quit it.

Michael Shermer ‏@michaelshermer

“In a victimhood subculture, the only way to achieve status is to either be a victim or defend victims.” @JonHaidt https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nation-wimps/201510/where-did-colleges-go-wrong …

Take note SJWs: “When victimhood becomes your identity you will be weak for the rest of your life.” @JonHaidt https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nation-wimps/201510/where-did-colleges-go-wrong …

Back to the Chronicle:

Joan T. Schmelz, who just completed her second term as chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, characterizes Berkeley’s treatment of Mr. Marcy as a “slap on the wrist.”

In 2010, after learning of complaints about Mr. Marcy at a party following that year’s astronomical-society meeting, Ms. Schmelz quietly began working with women who felt he had harassed them. At that party, in Seattle, several people saw Mr. Marcy hanging out with one of his female undergraduates, buying her drinks, touching her, and then leaving the party with her in a taxi.

“A small group of people decided this was really important, and we contacted the people who had been harassed,” says Ms. Schmelz, a professor in the department of physics and materials science at the University of Memphis. “We got more and more names, and finally four decided to file complaints after they had left Berkeley.”

As she talked to all these people, she realized Marcy had a pattern, a “play book.”

“I heard this so many times,” she says, “that I realized it was standard practice for him.”

Mr. Marcy, she says, would isolate a female student in his lab or find a way to talk to her privately on the campus, away from others. During the talk, he would make a slightly inappropriate comment, touch or kiss the student, and then apologize, according to what women told her. Depending on the reaction he got, she says, he would either back off or take another step forward. Students, she says, complained that he had given them rides home, taken them out to coffee, and told them he and his wife had an open relationship. The four women who complained, she says, are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

He got away with it, she says, because “people don’t trust the system to protect them.”

Of course they don’t. For one thing the system is stuffed with people who approach the subject the way Sommers and Shermer do. For another thing universities love their stars, and Marcy is a star.

This summer, after Berkeley had concluded its investigation of the complaints against Mr. Marcy and found him responsible for violating its policy on sexual harassment, Ms. Murray-Clay says Mr. Marcy asked if he could meet with her. He drove five hours, she says, from Berkeley to Santa Barbara, where he asked her to contact Ms. Schmelz and other members of the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy to say that his behavior toward women in the field had changed. But Ms. Murray-Clay doesn’t find him convincing anymore. She said no.

Ten hours of driving, wasted. Of course there are also all those women who left astronomy, but oh well, they’re only women.

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In addition to her daily pimping duties

Oct 15th, 2015 9:04 am | By

At the Faber & Faber blog, Kat Banyard tells the story of a trafficker who is also VP of an organization that heavily influenced the UN and Amnesty International in their moves to decriminalize pimping.

On Thursday 12th March 2015, 64 year old Alejandra Gil was convicted in Mexico City of trafficking and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Gil reportedly controlled a pimping operation that exploited around 200 women. Known as the “Madam of Sullivan”, she was one of the most powerful pimps of Sullivan Street, an area of Mexico City notorious for prostitution. Gil and her son were connected with trafficking networks in Tlaxcala state – site of Mexico’s “epicenter for sex trafficking.”

…

In addition to her daily pimping duties, Alejandra Gil side-lined as President of Aproase, an NGO that supposedly advocated for the rights of people in prostitution, but in practice functioned as a useful cover for her pimping operation. And until Gil’s arrest last year, the “Madam of Sullivan” was Vice President of an organisation called the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP).

NSWP is no fringe group. In 2009 it was appointed Co-Chair of the UNAIDS ‘Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work’. UNAIDS is the international body responsible for leading global efforts to reverse the spread of HIV, and the advisory group was established to “review and participate in the development of UNAIDS policy, programme or advocacy documents, or statements.” Alejandra Gil is also personally acknowledged in a 2012 World Health Organisation (WHO) report about the sex trade as one of the “experts” who dedicated her “time and expertise” to developing its recommendations. NSWP’s logo is on the front cover, alongside the logos of WHO, UNAIDS and the United Nations Population Fund.

So that’s how it’s done. Just set up a right-on-looking NGO and you can lobby for the sex industry while raking in the profits from trafficking.

Amnesty International also reference NSWP and the Advisory Group it co-chaired in its draft policy calling for brothel keeping to be decriminalised – a proposal that has been condemned by prostitution survivors and equality groups around the world, including SPACE International, Women’s Aid and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Amnesty’s policy, due to be finalised this month, cites “human rights organisations” that endorse their proposal: “Most significantly,” they write, “a large number of sex worker organisations and networks, including the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, support the decriminalisation of sex work”.

Well they would, wouldn’t they. They don’t do the “sex work” themselves, and they take the profits generated by people who do.

As Esohe Aghatise, Anti-Trafficking Manager at Equality Now, says, “It is shocking that a convicted trafficker would influence policy, which is, in itself, incompatible with human rights and international law. We need to end the demand which fuels sex trafficking, rather than decriminalise those who benefit from the exploitation of others. UN agencies need to urgently clarify their position on the sex trade – particularly in light of this new damning evidence”.

Without question, those who are paid for sex should be completely decriminalised. But those who sexually exploit – pimps, brothel keepers and sex buyers – should not. They are perpetrators – not entrepreneurs or consumers. Mia de Faoite, a survivor of prostitution, told me, “I left prostitution utterly destroyed as a human being and I cannot fathom how that level of violence could ever be sanctioned and classed as ‘work’.”

That convicted trafficker Alejandra Gil and her group have been so closely involved in UN agencies’ policy making on prostitution is nothing short of a human rights scandal. Clearly, UNAIDS must urgently conduct a thorough, transparent review of all policies NSWP has advised it on and investigate how this could have happened. As for Amnesty International, it would be abhorrent to see the organisation proceed with its call for full decriminalisation of the sex trade – because it really doesn’t take a conviction for trafficking by a leading proponent to work out who benefits most when states make brothel-keeping and pimping legal.

By Kat Banyard, author of Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality, published in 2016.

Follow Kat on Twitter and Facebook. 

And maybe drop Amnesty International a note expressing concern.

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A good thirty years

Oct 14th, 2015 5:43 pm | By

Pauline Gagnon tells another, a different, horrifying story about Geoff Marcy.

I suspect that what has come out so far is only the tip of the iceberg. His inappropriate behaviour goes back a good thirty years, when he was teaching at San Francisco State University.

This is where I met him in 1985 when we both worked in the Physics and Astronomy Department while I was a Master’s student and a lecturer. It was well known that he had intimate relationships with several of his female students. But it is not the only aspect where I felt Marcy’s ethics were questionable.

In 1987, Marcy’s colleague in the search for exoplanets realized that he had handed her a revised copy of their joint grant proposal. On the copy Marcy had given her, both their names appeared, his as main investigator and hers, as co-investigator. But Marcy’s official copy, the one he had submitted to the funding agency, bore only his name.

She reported this to the department head, who fired her on the spot. Marcy was the rising star of his department. She then filed a formal complaint for professional misconduct against Marcy. But she was unable to recover her position and she left the field of astronomy.

Holy crap.

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Geoff Marcy is resigning from Berkeley

Oct 14th, 2015 4:36 pm | By

Dennis Overybye reports in the Times:

Geoffrey Marcy, the renowned astronomer who was found guilty ina campus investigation of sexually harassing students, is resigning from the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a professor for 16 years.

In an email to members of the astronomy department on Wednesday, the interim chairman of the department, Gibor Basri, wrote, “This is to inform our community that Geoff has initiated the process that will lead to his no longer being a faculty member at U.C. Berkeley.”

In a statement announcing Dr. Marcy’s resignation, the university’s chancellor, Nicholas B. Dirks, and the executive vice chancellor and provost, Claude Steele, said they had accepted Dr. Marcy’s resignation and added: “We want to state unequivocally that Professor Marcy’s conduct, as determined by the investigation, was contemptible and inexcusable. We also want to express our sympathy to the women who were victimized, and we deeply regret the pain they have suffered.”

Better late than never, I guess.

The announcement of Dr. Marcy’s resignation came two days after some two dozen colleagues — an overwhelming majority of the astronomy department — issued a vote of no confidence in a letter saying they believed that he could no longer “perform the functions of a faculty member.” In separate statements, the department’s graduate studentsand postdoctoral fellows concurred.

“This should put sexual harassers on notice: No one is too big to fail,” Joan Schmelz, a former chairwoman of the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, said Wednesday.

Azeen Ghorayshi has more at BuzzFeed:

“It’s a relief to know that Geoff Marcy will no longer have access to UC Berkeley students,” Jessica Kirkpatrick, one of the complainants in the sexual harassment investigation, told BuzzFeed News. “I hope the university is using this opportunity to re-evaluate it’s process and policies so that vulnerable students have better protections in place to guard against sexual harassment from faculty moving forward.”

Many academics are upset that Berkeley didn’t take stronger disciplinary actions against Marcy after the investigation concluded that he had violated sexual harassment policies. He was given a “strict set of behavioral standards” to follow, and was told that if another complaint was filed, he could be sanctioned or fired.

In a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, the university defended its decision not to fire Marcy, citing University of California policy.

“UC Berkeley’s reaction to the finding that Professor Geoff Marcy violated the University’s sexual harassment policies has been the subject of understandable criticism and anger,” Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Claude Steele, said in the statement.

“We want to state unequivocally that Professor Marcy’s conduct, as determined by the investigation, was contemptible and inexcusable.”

I wonder if there will be another uproar about political correctness persecuting a great scientist.

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If you’re trying to get the best out of people, why would you allow an environment of bullying?

Oct 14th, 2015 12:06 pm | By

Pamela Gay was in San Francisco on Friday for a board meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the day the BuzzFeed story about Geoff Marcy broke.

By the end of the day, I was done with reality. I was ready to go back to my hotel room and just play Carcassonne on my iPad and wish for something I thought was impossible – a world that that didn’t hurt. But as we were packing up and sorting rides, I was offered a sweet distraction. Fellow board member Chris Ford offered me a chance to take a ride with him in his Tesla Model S over to his offices at Pixar.

What I didn’t know was he was asking me if I wanted a glimpse at the way academia could be reimagined if only people were valued.

It’s beautiful there, she says, but that wasn’t what impressed her about it.

What impressed me on this tour, what shifted something inside me and forced my thinking into a new configuration, was the way Chris described the work environment at Pixar.

As we moved between color boards and characters’ test sketches, this brilliant programmer painted a verbal picture of a work environment designed to protect and cherish the creative and inventive mind. From building in a myriad of collaborative spaces and play spaces, to teaching classes for employees that make it possible for anyone with a will to rise from the mailroom to the illustrator’s table, Pixar strives to foster its employees’ personal growth.

Teaching classes for employees – so anyone who wants to can go from a scut job to a creative one.

He went on to explain that the kinds of hate speech, harassment, and constant belittling that is just part of being in academia are not tolerated. After all, if you’re trying to get the best out of people, why would you allow an environment of bullying? If you’re trying to be innovative as you advance your field of research and all related technologies, don’t you want to create as healthy a workplace as possible? He explained that by having an at-will work environment where people are nurtured, Pixar has created a place where people want to do their best and protect the secrets of the worlds they are inventing on paper and in software.

As Chris spoke, and as we walked through this campus of sports facilities, theaters, collaboration rooms, and server rooms, Chris said that they work very hard to foster an environment like academia, and I found myself correcting him, saying that what they are creating is the ideal that people often imagine must be life in the academia.

And as I corrected him, I wondered, what would life be like if universities did everything they could to support the physical, emotional, creative, and intellectual well being of their faculty, staff, and students? What if we had resources and support and what if there was an atmosphere of kindness instead of competition?

Imagine what life would be like if all workplaces were like that. I know, it’s utopian, impossible, ridiculous – but all the same, imagine it.

Today, many of the brightest minds in science go through life constantly struggling for funding as they work in environments that often have them surrounded by crumbling infrastructure, crammed into insufficient space, and dealing with colleagues who on the best of days are simply unprofessional and on the worst of days are abusive physically and verbally. It’s contagious, as the “why do I bother?” attitude sweeps you in. It is hard to be polite when it seems that all you hear is impossible demands to do more and more with less and less and less.

But what if? What if we were resource rich and hatred poor? Think of how much more we could accomplish if women never had to spend time warning one another about the men who molest? What would we discover if every man and woman of color faced no discrimination? How much more would we have already solved if only hate was put down and a desire for mutual success was lifted up?

Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?

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Family First are outraged

Oct 14th, 2015 10:57 am | By

News from New Zealand: the ban on Ted Dawes’s novel Into the River has been lifted.

The New Zealand Film and Literature Board has lifted the ban on Ted Dawe’s controversial teen novel Into the River.

That little word “controversial” is a bit of cautious well-poisoning. Surely the fact that it was banned was enough of a cue to readers that it was in some way “controversial.”

In a decision that was far from unanimous, the president of the board expressed the collective felt the actions of the censor were “illegal”.

Board president Don Mathieson delivered a dissenting minority report but the remainder of the board voted to allow the book to be sold without restriction, saying a previous ban on under-14s was no longer justified.

The conservative campaign group Family First are outraged at the decision, with national director Bob McCoskrie describing the ruling a “loss” for New Zealand families.

Whence comes this idea of the whimpering fragility of “families”? Why are “families” as such so vulnerable and in need of protection from “controversial” books along with same-sex marriage? Why aren’t families understood to be as various as the people who constitute them?

Dawe, who branded the views of Family First “wrong-headed” and “repressed” explained: “It’s not Family First’s job to parent other people’s children, that is a parent’s job. I was quite surprised this kind of thing (banning of books) is still going on, even today.”

In a statement outlining their decision to lift the initial ban, the majority decision outlined: “We respect and understand those concerns and readily accept that there are aspects of this book that many will find offensive and many will regard as entitled inappropriate for children.”

Whilst many parents may choose not to allow their children to read such material, there are no grounds to restrict the book from teenage reader”.

In stark opposition board president Don Mathieson’s minority vote voiced that “no responsible parent of a 17-year old, let alone of a 12-year old, would want this repetitive coarse language normalised.”

But the state isn’t supposed to act as the universal parent. Parents are supposed to do that. There’s also the fact that one book by itself is not likely to normalize any particular use of language, and it’s not the state’s business to worry about that in any case.

It would be safe to assume Dawe however, can still see the light and the end of a very long tunnel.

“From what I’ve read, Family First have said some dreadful things about my book. Dreadful things,” he said.

“In a way I suppose it’s all backfired on them. Now more people than ever will read it, it’s all publicity and for a New Zealand book, nonetheless.”

A “controversial” New Zealand book at that.

H/t Rob.

 

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The culture that champions the voices of predators

Oct 13th, 2015 6:37 pm | By

245 – two hundred forty five! – astronomers and physicists have written a forceful letter to the New York Times objecting to its article on Geoff Marcy.

Dear NY Times Editors,

We are writing to give feedback on a story which appeared in the October 11 edition of the NYTimes, titled “Geoffrey Marcy, Astronomer at Berkeley, Apologizes for Behavior” by Dennis Overbye. Appended at the end of this letter is a Letter to the Editor to be considered for publication.

The authors of this letter are all professional astronomers and physicists, from across the world. Women are dramatically underrepresented in our field and other sciences, in part because of the sexism and misogyny that this article reinforced.

This article epitomizes the culture that champions the voices of predators and minimizes the experiences of survivors. Mr. Overbye’s piece repeatedly sympathizes with Marcy, portraying him as a misunderstood, empathetic educator. This viewpoint is captured in the title of the article, and it is reinforced by quotes from Marcy and his wife that Marcy was “condemned without knowing all of the facts” and “the punishment Geoff is receiving here in the court of hysterical public opinion is far out of proportion to what he did”. Not only are these statements false (see the next paragraph), but they employ the damaging tactic of painting female targets and their supporters as overly sensitive trouble-makers.

And we do know the facts. Berkeley undertook a formal investigation and found Marcy guilty of repeated harassment over almost a decade. Marcy abused his position of power, betrayed his responsibilities as an educator, and sexually assaulted students. Despite these truths, Marcy was not punished.

This article downplays Marcy’s criminal behaviors and the profound damage that he has caused to countless individuals. It overlooks the continued trauma that Marcy inflicts to this day as a Berkeley professor, and it implicitly condones his predatory acts. In doing so, it discourages women from speaking out when they have been violated, and it undermines the safety and learning environment of all students.

Mr. Overbye has a serious conflict of interest in reporting this story as Overbye has a longterm collegial relationship with Marcy and has championed Marcy’s work in previous NY Times articles (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/finder-of-new-worlds.html). Overbye’s bias is evident when Overbye refers to this situation as “Dr. Marcy’s troubles” and when devoting three paragraphs at the top of the story on Marcy’s wife’s opinions of the crimes.

I’ll just quote those three paragraphs for you; they are gruesome.

Dr. Marcy’s wife, Susan Kegley, a pesticide researcher, said she supported him, pointing out that he had cooperated fully with the investigation and apologized.

She defended her husband, writing in an email, “Others may interpret Geoff’s empathy and interest as a come-on. I can’t change their perspectives, but I think it is worth all of us examining how quickly one is judged and condemned without knowing all of the facts.”

“The punishment Geoff is receiving here in the court of hysterical public opinion is far out of proportion to what he did and has taken responsibility for in his apology,” Dr. Kegley wrote.

And yet, I venture to guess, she wasn’t there when Geoff groped his students, so how does she know “the punishment Geoff is receiving” is far out of proportion to what he did? How does she know what he did? Because he told her? And had no possible reason to lie or minimize?

What a clusterfuck.

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Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment

Oct 13th, 2015 6:17 pm | By

Azeen Ghorayshi, who broke the Geoff Marcy story on BuzzFeed, now reports that faculty and students at Berkeley are steaming.

The astronomy faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, released a statementlate on Monday saying that famed astronomer Geoff Marcy should no longer be a professor at the university.

…

“We urge the UC Berkeley administration to re-evaluate its response to Marcy, who has been found in violation of UC sexual harassment policy,” the 23 faculty members said in the statement. “We believe that Geoff Marcy cannot perform the functions of a faculty member.”

They’re pissed off that the university has done nothing about Marcy.

Grad students and postdocs want him to be put under restrictions.

“The University’s failure to impose meaningful consequences on Geoff Marcy — offering instead vague threats of future sanctions should the behavior continue — suggests that Berkeley’s administration values prestige and grant money over the well-­being of the young scientists it is charged with training,” they continued.

Doesn’t it sound just exactly like Randi talking about Shermer? “If he does it again, I might have to speak sharply to him” sort of thing. But he already has done it again; why is it always jam tomorrow?

The graduate students were particularly upset over the leadership of the department’s interim chair, Gibor Basri. On Saturday, Basri sent out an email to the department.

“This has been a day of drama and difficulty for many of us, each in our own way and with our own context,” Basri wrote. “It is hard to process for those who know Geoff well.”

“Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment,” he continued. “I ask that those who have the room for it (now or later), hear him out and judge whether there is room for redemption in all that will transpire.”

Ohhh…wow. Hardest for Geoff. You incredible fucking asshole.

They include a pointed tweet by Katie Mack at that point:

Katie Mack @AstroKatie
In case you’re wondering if the rest of the e-mail somehow makes things better, no. No compassion for victims.
12:00 AM – 10 Oct 2015

Wow.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


So light you’ll hardly notice it, unless you look

Oct 13th, 2015 5:08 pm | By

Maryam has a piece replying to David Shariatmadari in the Guardian today…eleven days after she asked them for a right of reply. They heavily edited her piece, so she published the unedited version in a post. She introduces it:

On 8 October, the Acting Editor for Comment is Free wrote to say a “very light edit” had been done on my article including “a few tweaks for flow, house style, and to make the piece as accessible as possible for non-expert readers.”

Shockingly, the “light edits” included substantial changes, including the removal of references to Ali Shariatmadari and CAGE prisoners as well as all the relevant links, which would have helped “non-expert readers.”

Moreover, where I mentioned Islamism as a killing machine with an example of Bangladesh, Islamism was changed to “violent jihadis”. After asking that it be kept as is (since even those not deemed violent jihadis by the Guardian are killing people via “Sharia” laws for example), it was changed to “violent Islamists”, which I again challenged. The sentence was then tweaked to what it is now.

Despite my insistence, however, references to Ali Shariatmadari and CAGE were not included (which meant I had to remove the Emwazi reference as it was linked to the CAGE example). I was told: “The line about CAGE and defensive jihad was removed on the advice of our lawyers” and that “the description of the Islamic cultural revolution as “Ali Shariatmadari’s ‘Islamic cultural revolution’” would be confusing to readers.”

Clearly, the problem is not just David Shariatmadari’s but the Guardian’s editorial line in favour of the Islamists.

You can see a side by side comparison of the two here.

 

 

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Social consciousness is part of his identity

Oct 13th, 2015 11:31 am | By

From a long piece on Geoff Marcy in the New York Times in May 2014:

Dr. Marcy lives high in the Berkeley hills with Dr. Kegley, “wife, chemist, goddess,” as he puts it on his website — an environmental chemist and chief executive of the consulting firm Pesticide Research Institute. Their backyard is home to beehives decorated with astronomical symbols, and a flock of chickens, leading the son of one of his graduate students to call him “Chicken Geoff.”

Social consciousness is part of his identity. At Santa Cruz he ran around plastering “Men Against Rape” stickers over nude pinups in the engineering and optics shops.

Hmmm.

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A consequence-free bubble

Oct 13th, 2015 11:14 am | By

Ross Andersen at the Atlantic is also underwhelmed by Geoff Marcy’s notpology.

In Marcy’s account, he was just moving through the world, giving unsolicited massages to undergraduates, according to the complaints, without the slightest inkling that his actions were causing pain and distress. But in practice, Marcy had leveraged his considerable fame and power in the world of astronomy to build a nearly consequence-free bubble around himself, so that he could avail himself of pleasures that rightfully require the consent of others.

That’s one reason this story is so familiar – the way that fame and power can create that bubble.

Given that reality, Marcy’s intentions aren’t that important. The important intentions here belong to the women he victimized, and by all accounts those women intended to go about the demanding work of astronomy without being touched inappropriately by someone who was supposed to be mentoring them.

But he wanted to grope them, so he did. That’s science.

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Homemade wine

Oct 13th, 2015 11:04 am | By

From the Guardian:

The children of a British man have called on David Cameron to intervene to save their father from being subjected to 350 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Karl Andree, 74, faces being publicly flogged as part of a punishment imposed after bottles of homemade wine were reportedly found last year in his car by Saudi police enforcing strict laws prohibiting alcohol.

The family of the oil executive, who is being held at Jeddah’s Briman prison, say he is already weak as a result of cancer and fear that the flogging will kill him.

Once again, words fail me. The guy is 74 years old and has cancer. He had some wine – and for that they want to hit him with a whip 350 times. What can possibly be the point? The motivation? The justification? Why does someone else’s consumption of wine matter so much that it’s worth whipping him to death?

“He is 74 years of age, has had cancer three times and his wife is dying in a home in the UK. He now needs medical care for his cancer and asthma, and there is no doubt in our mind that 350 lashes will kill him. We implore David Cameron to personally intervene and help get our father home. The Saudi government will only listen to him.”

The Foreign Office said: “Our embassy staff are continuing to assist Mr Andree, including regular visits to check on his welfare, and frequent contact with his lawyer and family. Ministers and senior officials have raised Mr Andree’s case with the Saudi government and we are actively seeking his release as soon as possible.”

And yet Jack Straw said a few years ago that the UK and the KSA rejoiced in “shared values.”

 

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The Serial Harasser’s Playbook

Oct 13th, 2015 10:21 am | By

A former graduate student of Geoff Marcy’s has more details.

Based on the stories I’ve heard from women who don’t know each other, but share eerily similar experiences, I put together a Serial Harasser’s Playbook. Most of the stories I heard before writing that post were related to one specific colleague: my former adviser Geoff Marcy. Thus, the Serial Harasser’s Playbook I posted is seemingly Geoff’s playbook. To be clear, many harassers employ such a strategy. But Geoff is the person most commonly named by targets with whom I’ve spoken.

After [I published] the Playbook post, most of the people who contacted me with additional stories named a single person. That person was the target of a six-month Title IX investigation at UC Berkeley. That investigation report, which I have seen, concluded that, “The evidence gathered supports the conclusion that the totality of [Marcy]’s behavior violated the relevant UC sexual harassment policies.” Violations of that university policy de facto are violations of the federal law on which the policy is based, as articulated by Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Berkeley Astronomy faculty were unaware of the conclusions of the report because their former and current chair declined to inform them.

…

 

After multiple complainants testified about Geoff’s behavior, he was given a warning. Until he was recently asked to step down, he was on the scientific organizing committee of the upcoming Extreme Solar Systems III meeting. He was recently the featured lecturer at UC Santa Cruz’s “Evening with the Stars” program. Following the findings of UC Berkeley’s Title IX investigation, he was free to continue to exert his considerable power within the community.

Geoff recently posted an open letter that is, in my view, as vague as it is calculated. But what it does do is remove any doubt about his actions and guilt. This should be surprising to very few researchers in the exoplanets community, particularly those of my generation or younger. Geoff’s inappropriate actions toward and around women in astronomy is one of the biggest “open secrets” at any exoplanets or AAS meeting. “Underground” networks of women pass information about Geoff to junior scientists in an attempt to keep them safe. Sometimes it works. Other times it hasn’t, and cognizant members of the community receive additional emails, phone calls and Facebook messages from new victims.

It’s all so horribly familiar, isn’t it? The famous guy, the open secret, the networks of women warning each other. The long history of people in charge doing absolutely nothing about it.

In 2013 I received tenure. Leading up to my tenure decision, I decided that I would use my position, voice and male privilege to finally do something about the open secret—Geoff’s long con of holding the community in fear to provide himself cover to continue harassing our junior female colleagues. Yes, I have greatly benefited from Geoff’s letters over the years. But his publication record shows that he has benefitted from my scientific productivity. In 2013 I figured we were square, and I effectively ended our 13-year collaboration.

I’m ashamed that I didn’t speak out sooner. I hate that academia’s power structure, which allows a single phone call from a senior member to sink a person’s career, so often forces junior people into silence for fear of losing their jobs. For this reason I am in awe of the bravery of the women who spoke out all the more; they were far braver than I and other male astronomers have been over the years.

With today’s news story, I hope Geoff’s long con of the astronomy community has finally come to an end.

It certainly seems unlikely that it can continue as before, given all the discussion I’m seeing.

That said, and if Geoff is finally brought to justice, it will only be a partial victory for our community. I sincerely hope that we recognize that Geoff wielded a highly effective weapon in his use of sexual harassment. His expertise in harassment, honed over the decades, ruined many promising careers; pushed women away from exoplanets in particular, and astronomy generally; and in so doing set progress in our subfield back in ways that we’ll still be grappling with in a decade hence. But it will be important to recognize that Geoff is just one of many serial harassers in our field of science, and that other fields are also widely infected (cf Clancy, Nelson, Rutherford & Hinde 2014). Plus, it’s not just the serial harassers. It’s also the “everyday” harassment that women face in their departmental hallways, astro-ph discussions, scientific conferences, and committee meetings. All of this is aided and abetted by a vacuum of leadership at universities like UC Berkeley, which is dealing with a class-action lawsuit as well as a civil lawsuit by many former students for mishandling their complaints.

Sexual harassment is just one very powerful aspect of the systemic sexism that pervades our daily lives.

It seems astonishing that any women at all go into the field.

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Wondering about the criteria

Oct 13th, 2015 9:06 am | By

Reginald Harper wonders why the Manchester Students’ Union banned Julie Bindel and (later, after protest) Milo Yiannopoulos from a debate proposed by the Free Speech society, while allowing, indeed welcoming and promoting, Muslim Engagement and Development’s (MEND) exhibition on Islamophobia.

Abu Eesa Niamatullah, MEND’s CEO, has come under fire for comments he made on Facebook regarding women, such as, “Don’t try to understand women. Women understand women and they hate each other.” When feminists responded with outrage, Niamatullah responded that feminism was antithetical to Islam, and that he relished women’s anger over his comments:

For you, carry on burning in your rage. There is nothing that delights me more by God than making you mad. I hope you spend the rest of this entire week spending every second thinking about these comments and it freaking you out.

He says a lot more than that, and it’s ugly stuff. Let’s read some more.

I absolutely believe that feminists – with all the nuances of that title that I stated on my earlier comments today – are the enemies of Islamic orthodoxy and to refute them is a rewarded act. The reason for this can be seen in their corrupt and insincere approach with other people. My refutations and responses are done according to the level of their intellect. Thus, when you have an interlocutor who derives from the statement, “Don’t try to understand women. Women understand women and they hate each other”, that one is therefore legitimising or supporting or promoting the beating of women, or the rape of women, or the abuse of children, or FGM etc – as was stated by such a feminist – then one finds little other option but to descend into such stupidity and intellectual failure, and entertain them at their chosen level. To humiliate them. To expose their stupidity. To show how insincere and how irrelevant such feminists are when it comes to defending the rights of individuals who are oppressed and abused.

Also:

As for the feminists who were offended then I hope that your offence burns in your heart and causes you to wither and wiggle in rage. *Your* contention is not about personal opinion or taste. Or not liking a joke or not or thinking it went over the top or not. Your problem is far deeper. Look at the people who are picking up these comments: Islamophobes and journalists and all and sundry. Why? Ask yourself that question. Who are allies to who? You promoters of feminism and complainants thereafter are nearly always associated with secular humanist thought and tendencies. A brief perusal of your work will expose who makes Allah’s law their standard, and who makes their own intellect their standard. You are the people who are desperate to remove from our tradition any statement or mention of that which your ideological masters disagree with whether that be female circumcision, or the defining of the age of puberty for girls for marriage, or the institution of polygamy, or the parameters of hijab and jilbab, and so on from a thousand issues concerning female fiqh and indeed anything else you don’t like.

That’s what led up to the “burn in your rage” remark. That theocratic anti-humanist authoritarian garbage is what Abu Eesa Niamatullah stands for and promotes, yet the Manchester SU promotes him while banning Julie Bindel.

Wtf is wrong with everyone?

Reginald Harper continues:

MEND continues to promote views that are unequivocally antisemitic and anti-women. Azad Ali, Mend’s director of engagement, is an extremist who has given support to the killing of British troops. Yasir Qadhi, MEND’s speaker for their “Islam in Britain” events this year, is already controversial for claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax. In addition, he has also gone on record as saying that women should be entirely barred from the workplace:

Women should not be in the workplace whatsoever. Full stop. I simply can’t imagine how we will safeguard our Islamic identity in the future and build strong Muslim communities in the West with women wanting to go out and becoming employed in the hell that it is out there.

Qadhi thinks half of humanity should be denied fundamental human rights, yet he is welcome while Julie Bindel is called names and banned.

Why?

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The numbers rise

Oct 12th, 2015 5:49 pm | By

Middle East Eye says it has evidence that the death toll from the Hajj disaster is much higher than the Saudis have said.

We have seen evidence suggesting that at least 2,432 people were killed on 24 September when pilgrims were crushed to death at a crossroads in Mina, inside Mecca and not far from the holy city.

Photos displayed at the Muaism Medical Emergency Centre in Mina, where people are being permitted to search for missing relatives until 30 October, appear to reveal a numbering system of those killed.

A Saudi source travelled to Mina on 30 September and spent four days visiting the centre, where he covertly took photos of what he found and sent them to Middle East Eye, requesting anonymity for fear of being arrested.

The bodies are numbered.

Photographs seen by Middle East Eye show a row of bodies laid out in the morgue, each of which has been attributed an ascending serial number.

The source sent Middle East Eye more than 50 photos of the dead, demonstrating the sequential numbers rising.

And there are more from hospitals who haven’t been counted yet.

This would bring the death toll to at least a potential 2,432 people, which would make it easily the worst disaster ever to hit the annual pilgrimage, surpassing a stampede in 1990 that saw 1,426 pilgrims killed.

The source said that they believed the toll to be significantly more than the potential 2,534, claiming that a large number of people had been transferred to hospitals in the city of Taif, where a list of the dead has not yet been released.

 

It’s horrific.

And it’s the usual problem with “revealed” religions. The hajj was workable at the time it was started, when people couldn’t travel far and there weren’t huge numbers of people anyway. Now we live in a world of 7.5 billion people, perhaps a billion or more of them Muslims, and the technological ability to go to Mecca. The hajj is a “requirement” for people able to go. Result? Far too many people in one place, and they crush one another. Not very merciful.

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