Wired for Compassion

We all know how much I adore pop-science articles that brainwash our anti-science population with talk of brain wiring. (I even blogged about it on my very first day as a blogger.) Volumes of actual science have been published disproving the sexist claims of these brainless brain wirers. Still, they keep publishing their rubbish and ignoramuses keep eating it right up because it fits in so neatly with their expectations of clear-cut gender differences.

Here is one of the most recent examples of such a piece. It tries to convince us that vaginas are more compassionate than penises, even though the bearers of said vaginas and penises disagree:

Mercadillo and his colleagues describe an experiment featuring 12 women and 12 men. As the participants viewed a series of 100 photographs, their brains were scanned using fMRI technology. Every second image was one that evoked compassion (according to previous research). Examples included sad human faces, war scenes and depictions of famine. “No gender differences were observed in the frequency of reported compassionate experiences,” the researchers report. However, what was happening in the participants’ brain told a different story. As the compassion-evoking photos were viewed, activity was observed in two areas of the brain — the thalamus and the putamen, part of the basal ganglia — in women but not in men.

 I'm not going to provide a detailed analysis of why this so-called study conducted on an extremely representative sample of 24 people in a scientifically backwards and profoundly sexist country is idiotic. Echidne's Blog has done this beautifully already. I just want to call your attention to how both genders are degraded in the concluding lines of this fascinating piece of journalistic stupidity:

So ladies: When the men in your life seem insensitive to suffering, try not to respond with scorn. The problem, it seems, is one of brain circuitry. It shouldn’t be hard to take pity on them; after all, you have an enormous capacity for compassion.

Men are presented as not entirely human here. They have to be pitied and condescended to by women who do have the capacity of experiencing the full range of human emotions. At the same time, just like centuries ago, women are still being exhorted to be understanding and forgiving with men. Five hundred years ago, we were supposed to do that because it was our God-given duty. Today, we are still expected to condescend to men because we are told that this is how our brains work. Some things don't ever seem to change.

Favorite Female Characters, Anybody?

It is a commonplace in literary criticism that female readers tend to identify with male characters because female characters are so unattractive as to make any identification with them impossible. Finding a female character who is not one-dimensional, pathetic, silly, weepy, boring, and/or sexless is next to impossible even for a very well-read person. Honestly, I can't think of any such female characters.

Except, of course, Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte's fiercely feminist novel has a protagonist who is complex, conflicted, and strong. She is neither a perfect little Madonna who never speaks above a whisper and sacrifices herself with a beatific smile for everybody else, nor a sinner always ready to repent and debase herself in payment for her sins in the last pages of the novel. Jane Eyre feels insulted by the suggestion that her husband should keep her. She relies only on money that is her own. She doesn't marry her love interest until his is completely broken down and dependent on her for even the most basic things.

So this is pretty much the only attractive female character I can think of at this moment. Am I forgetting anybody? Any suggestions?

Gender Stereotypes and the Mystery Genre: From Christie to Rendell

In the mystery genre, no one can compare with the amazing British authors Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell. The first of these authors created the genre* while the second one took it to incredible heights in a number of extremely well-crafted novels. Compared with the psychological and literary sophistication of Rendell's work, Christie's novels seem primitive. The language is simple, the characters are one-dimensional, and the plots are quite similar.

One thing, however, is shared by the two queens of the detective genre. Both Christie and Rendell know extremely well how to manipulate the gender stereotypes of their times to create a mystery their readers will not be able to solve. Take, for example, Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger and Ruth Rendell's A Fatal Inversion**. In The Moving Finger, Christie attempts to prevent the readers from guessing the identity of the criminal by relying on their misogynistic vision of what constitutes "male" and "female" kinds of crime. This particular gender stereotype has lost its currency completely in the decades that elapsed since the novel was published. As a result, The Moving Finger is one of the lesser known of Christie's novels. A modern-day reader will have no trouble guessing what really happened since the gender stereotype is the only thing standing between the reader and the realization of the criminal's identity.

Ruth Rendell's A Fatal Inversion is one of this prolific author's best mysteries***. Vulnerability is the topic she explores in this novel in a stunningly successful way. Her characters are vulnerable to all kinds of things: sexual obsession, insanity, the desire to fit in at all costs, fear of rejection, the desire to fit in, alcoholism. The question of which one of them will prove to be the only truly resilient one remains unanswered until the stunning ending of the book. However, if it were not for our deeply-ingrained gender stereotypes, that ending would not surprise us in the least.

Hopefully, the gender stereotypes that Rendell based her novel on will pass into oblivion one day, just like the ones that informed Christie's outdated mystery I have discussed here****.

* Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle created the genre of the police procedural, not the mystery novel as such. Christie's Hercule Poirot makes vicious fun of Sherlock Holmsian type of characters. Rendell has written quite a few police procedurals (her Inspector Wexford series), which I consider to be vastly inferior to her mystery novels.

** The novel was published under Rendell's nom de plume Barbara Vine.

*** A Fatal Inversion, The Bridesmaid and Thirteen Steps Down are Rendell's best novels, in my opinion. If I weren't wary of making this list too long, I would add The Chimney Sweeper's Boy and No Night Is Too Long to the list of her best work. If you like the mystery genre but still have not read anything by Rendell, what are you waiting for? She is absolutely the best. 

**** I have tried to discuss the plots of these novels as little as possible here to avoid spoiling the pleasure of their future readers.

Another Annoying Gender Stereotype

I don't even know who should be more offended by this, men or women:

“Professor” Sheridan Simove has produced a 200 page book entitled “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex”. The work has sold out online on Amazon following heavy promotion in student unions across Britain. The £4.69 item, which was intended as a novelty gift, is being used by students as a notebook.

Of course, gender stereotypes make the world seem more comprehensible, so people don't mind being insulted as long as the hope of reducing humanity to a facile set of stereotypes is offered to them. 

Gender and Food

I seem to be stuck on writing about gender these days, so I will write about a topic that has bothered me for a long time: gender and food. Why is it that everybody so loves making comments that connect (against all reason) gender and food?

Once, I went to lunch with colleagues. I wasn't hungry, so I got a fruit salad. "Oh, look at your food!" my colleagues said. "It's so feminine! And look at Anna! She got herself a hamburger, she is such a guy!" I don't know who looked more uncomfortable, Anna or I.

I understand that this stereotype of men eating more than women comes from the times when in certain social classes men were expected to be more physically active. Nowadays, however, it makes very little sense. A male college professor is engaged in the same amount of physical activity as his female colleague. We teach the same number of classes and are forced to jump over the same huge student backpacks while trying to navigate around the classrooms. So it makes very little sense to associate hamburgers or fruit salads with a specific gender.

People, however, are not guided by reason when it comes to gender stereotypes. It is so comforting to wallow in the gender binaries that people seem to experience an almost erotic pleasure in this activity.

There have been some positive changes in what concerns gender and food, though. Many waiters today don't put the bill for a restaurant meal in front of a man. They either place it in the middle of the table, facing the aisle, or hand it to the person who was the most active in ordering. 

Not A Real Woman

I finally figured out why this whole discussion about "gendered research" bothers me so much. My entire life other women have been telling me that I'm "not really a woman" or that I "think, act, speak just like a man." Things that disqualify me as a "real woman" range from tiny and insignificant (e.g. my indifference to chocolate) to more important ones (my bookishness, my directness in interpersonal communications, etc.). I might move from one continent to another, from one country to another but there will always be some women somewhere who will explain to me that I don't fit into the "correct" version of womanhood. Women, mind you. Never men. (I realize that men do that to other men, of course. But I'm not a man, so I only get this from women.) Of course, discovering that my passion for research now also characterizes me as not really female couldn't fail but annoy me. 

Gender relations are a lot more complex than "bad horrible men oppress nice kind women" (or vice versa). Both men and women are actively engaged in keeping existing gender stereotypes in place. Both men and women are victimized by these stereotypes in certain ways, while being favored by them in a variety of other ways. 

Often, people who pretend to denounce a gender stereotype end up perpetuating it. In the discussion of "gendered research" I was told several times that "women are expected to be nurturing as teachers." The curious thing, though, is that I have never in my life heard, read, or saw on TV any man use the words "nurturing" and "teaching" in the same sentence. So who hides behind the seemingly innocuous passive construction of "women are expected"? Who really expects us to be trivial, giggly, chocolate- and boyfriend-obsessed, nurturing, self-sacrificing, cookie-baking, wasting our lives on household chores, and incapable of producing valuable research? 

Looking for Beauty

So I'm watching this show called Millionaire Matchmaker (yes, I'm that sick. After reading this statement, people who know me in person will be grabbing their phones to call me in panic, "Oh my God, you never said you were on the death's door! What's happening?"). I know it's a stupid show, and it would have never occurred to me to watch it had it not been for my getting as sick as this.

The funny tendency I'm observing in this show is that men who are looking for women constantly talk about how all they want is somebody beautiful, and nobody seems to mind much. When a millionaire woman, however, says that all she wants in a guy is stunning good looks, this causes general consternation. The millionaire woman, nevertheless, is oblivious to anybody's criticism. As she well should be. After making $8,000,000, I think she finally deserves the right to be honest about what she wants without catering to the silly gender stereotypes of women not being interested in how men look.

It's always nice to see a powerful, financially independent woman who can finally just do whatever she wants and not care about what the patriarchal society expects from her.

P.S. And the millionaire woman tells the guy she wants to have sex with him on the first date without any silly concerns over what he's going to think about her or anything like that. So this is what women require not to be afraid of their own needs: eight million dollars. I think I should now go and revise my list of long-term goals.

Boys Don't Cry but Girls Should?

OK, what's the big deal with Boehner crying? Why am I getting all these tweets with nasty quips about him crying like it's the most important political event of the month? I remember when Hillary Clinton teared up during her campaign because of a bout of self-pity, her ratings shot up. So what's up with making fun of Boehner? I like dumping on his politics as much as the next person, but his crying has nothing to do with it. Some people cry more easily than others. It's a physiological thing, which has nothing to do with gender. It is kind of nasty to use it to reinforce silly and offensive gender stereotypes.

Gender Roles: Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men?

U.S. men die on average almost five years before women, far sooner if they're minorities, and a medical journal is calling the disparity a "silent health crisis." The American Journal of Public Health reports: Men have higher death rates than women for each of the 15 leading causes of death except Alzheimer's disease. Men's death rates are at least twice as high for accidents, murder, suicide and hardening of the liver. Women have lived longer for the past century, and although the gap is narrowing, men's life expectancy remains almost five years shorter than for women, with black men dying almost 12 years sooner on average than white women. Men are slightly more likely to get chronic diseases like high blood pressure or cancer, and twice as likely to consume more than five alcoholic drinks a day.

This trend is present in all developed countries. Obviously, I don't do research in this area, but a couple of things come to mind whenever I think of this disparity in life expectancy. Every time I see yet another study on this subject I immediately remember one of my freshmen intoning in a dejected voice: "I have to graduate, find a good job, start a family, and support my family. I can't think of travelling or doing things I like because supporting my family should come first." Would you care to guess the gender of this student?

I conducted a little experiment once and asked my students whether being unemployed and unable to support a family would be detrimental to their gender identity. "Would you feel less of a woman / less of a man in this case?" I asked. Would you like to venture a guess as to how the answers varied according to the students' gender?

Men are schooled to think that they are not really men if they don't spend their entire lives dragging around the burden of being financially responsible not only for themselves but for a bunch of other people as well. And as central as her career might be for a woman, job loss, while undeniably traumatic, does not endanger her gender identity. When my Visiting Professor contract was about to run out and no new job offers were forthcoming, I felt like a professional and academic failure. I did not, however, feel any less of a woman. If my inability to find a job at that point had hurt not only my professional sense of self but also my gender identity, the resulting stress would have obviously been even more difficult to deal with.

Since we are talking about trauma, patriarchal societies offer women more ways of dealing with traumatic events productively. Whenever anything bad happens, I can turn to my group of firends and verbalize every single little thing that happened and that I feel as a result or might feel in the future. Then, I can repeat my sad story as many times as I need in order to heal, without any fear of being considered deficient in terms of my gender identity. And men? How can they deal with trauma without being accused of being wimpy, girly, or anything similar? Well, as we have seen in the quote that opened this post, they always have alcohol. Or violence. Do I need to point out that neither of these outlets is very conducive to improving one's life expectancy?

This is not a let's-pity-poor-miserable-men post. This patriarchal system was put - and kept - in place by both men and women and it benefits both men and women, albeit in different ways. I believe, however, that, ultimately, we all end up losing a lot more than we gain as a result of patriarchal gender roles. So maybe we should just stop, you know? Scrap this ridiculous, unwieldy system that cannibalizes our lives and stop organizing our lives in terms of something as inherently meaningless as gender.

Giving Advice to Women

I'm preparing this completely new course for the Fall semester. It's the kind of a course that has never been taught not only at my university but also at any other university where I worked. It's going to be completely innovative and contain a number of very original activites that I worked on all summer. In short, I am very proud of this course and can't wait to start teaching it. When some of my male colleagues heard about it, they immediately started offering me detailed advice on how to teach this course. The funny thing is that only one of them is even remotely related to language teaching. The others have never taught anything resembling this course in their entire lives. The unwanted advice I received was copious and delivered in very sanctimonious tones.

Women regularly receive tons of unsolicited advice from people we barely know or from complete strangers. How many times, while walking down the street or waiting at a bus-stop, was I admonished to smile, lose weight, quit smoking, stop drinking so much coffee, stop reading while I walk, and avoid fast food? When my sister was pregnant, scores of strangers would stop her everywhere she went and bombard her with advice on what she needs to eat and do and how she should prepare to give birth. When I would mention my sister's pregnancy to people I know, they also asked me to give her lists of advice from them.

I've asked many of my male friends whether they receive unsolicited advice regularly. From their confused reaction to the question I gathered that this advice-giving frenzy is mostly reserved for women. Patriarchal societies infantilize women through a multitude of strategies. Women, of course, often consent to this infantilization and even welcome it because it liberates us from many unwelcome responsibilities. As a result, we end up with the societally accepted image of a woman as a perennially childish, helpless creature who needs to be offered aid with every aspect of her life.

Gendered Science

It's funny to observe how some so-called scientists begin their research from ridiculous gender stereotypes that have been interiorized to the extent where they start looking real. Here is the result of such profoundly unscientific approach:

A nasal spray can make men more in tune with other people's feelings, say a team of German and UK researchers. They found that inhaling the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin made men just as empathetic as women.

I guess we are supposed to gather from such statements that wihout this nasal spray (a nasal spray, of all things? Seriously?) men are not in tune with people's feelings and have no empathy. These are, of course, not the most outlandish suggestions this article makes about men. Almost immediately, it makes a connection between this non-empathetic condition and schizophrenia:

Professor Kendrick said the oxytocin spray may prove to be useful in people with conditions associated with reduced social approachability and social withdrawal, such as schizophrenia.

Basically, the idea that is promoted here seems to be that schizophrenia is just a small step away from being male. If men go long enough without this miraculous nasal spray, their biological tendency towards being non-feeling might take them all the way to schizophrenia. Female schizophrenics are, of course, left out of the picture. So are non-cuddly and non-empathetic women. Any kind of reality that does not fold itself neatly into the strictly gendered worldview of these pseudo-scientists is simply discarded. Their gall is such that they do not think twice before presenting schizophrenia as a "male" disease.

These sexist studies based on assuming that learned social skills are predicated on gender marginalize significant groups of people of both genders. Sociable, sensitive, empathetic men are branded as somehow less male. Non-cuddly, unsociable women are seen as less female. All this, of course, ends up placing an additional burden an autistic women. As it is, the patriarchal gender roles mandating that all women be weepy, sentimental, overly attached creatures deny female autistics any inclusion into this socially constructed kind of womanhood.

Autism, the favorite bugbear of mass culture today, is also addressed in this strange study. It was always completely obvious to me that all the stupid "Autism Speaks" campaigns and all the mass hysteria surrounding autism were paid for by pharmaceutical companies. These companies are interested in presenting autism not as a way of being that has a right to exist but as something that can be if not cured, then "managed." In this particular case, the suggestion is that we should spray this junk up our noses in other to "learn" to relate  better to other people. Whether most autistics are actually interested in learning how to be more "cuddly" is never addressed.

For such a short article, it packs a very powerful ideological punch. First, men in general are presented as biologically insensitive, non-empathetic beings who are physiologically one step away from schizophrenia. This serves the purpose of marginalizing men who have no problem with empathy, while presenting insensitive men as truly masculine. Then, the myth of general female cuddliness is reinforced. And to top it all off, autistics are used once again to fulfill the goals of pharmaceutical companies.

It's truly sad to see what passes for science these days.

Infantilizing Men, Cont'd

I have written before about the current trend in mass culture that legitimizes and celebrates male immaturity. Two recent commercials by At&T (I think) fall squarely within this trend and don't cease to amaze me by the incredible double standard they promote.

Commercial I: A man, a woman, and their toddler come to a restaurant. The woman gets up to go to the bathroom. The man looks terrified and bereft. Of course, the idea of being left alone with HIS own child for 5 minutes must be intolerable. The little boy starts whimpering, and the father feels completely lost. Then, he gets a brilliant idea. He whips out his phone, downloads a video and sticks it under the toddler's nose. The child immediately acquires a suitably zombified look and starts staring onto the screen. Problem solved! Can you imagine a commercial where a woman is similarly traumatized by the necessity to spend five minutes alone with her small child? Something tells me that this kind of commercial is not likely to appear any time soon.

Commercial II: A woman, a man and their two children come to an amusement park. The woman stops to check her phone. She needs it to work in case the kids disperse and she needs to find them. The kids are waiting patiently for their mother to figure things out with the phone. The middle-aged father, however, has disappeared. He has run off to take a ride on the merry-go-round, leaving his wife to deal with THEIR children alone. Once again, can you imagine a similar commercial where the gender roles are swapped?

Male immaturity and irresponsibility are often presented as cute and adorable. Remember this horrible Everybody Loves Raymond sitcom? For nine years we sat there enjoying a show about a middle-aged man being more immature than any teenager, who was babysat by his competent and domineering wife. Unsurprisingly, this couple's sex life was too pathetic even for American television.

As I stated in my first post on this subject, creating this image of men as inherently inept in the realm of interpersonal communications, romantic relationships, and child-rearing is a way for society to compensate women for infantilizing them in everything that pertains to the public sphere. Women are not supposed to be competent and powerful at work, in politics, or anywhere in the public sphere. Men, in turn, are not expected to be mature, competent, and responsible in the private sphere.

What we get as a result is the perennial division of the public and the private along gender lines.

Yes Means Yes: A Review, Part I

I have finally had a chance to read Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape , a collection of essays analyzing every aspect of rape culture. The essays are compiled and analyzed by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti and the book's structure reflects the authors' blogging experience, which makes for an incredibly helpful and original format. This is a great book, my friends. It's beautifully constructed, extremely well-argued, and offers a lot of material to think about.

 

The authors of these essays look at the different ways in which the traditionalist approach supports and enables rape and sexual assault. The conservative gender roles that present a woman as a secondary being actually promote the culture of rape: "While right-wing groups certainly don't come out in support of rape, they do promote an extremist ideology that enables rape and promotes a culture where sexual assault is tacitly accepted. The supposedly 'pro-family' marital structure, in which sex is exchanged for support and the woman's identity is absorbed into her husband's, reinforces the idea of women as property and as simple accoutrements to a man's more fully realized existence." So when we rush to declare ourself as male property by giving up our names, careers, interests and preferences for the huge honor of belonging to a man, let us remember where this ideology comes from and where it often leads us.

 

The very structure of our patriarchal vision of sexuality is informed by gender stereotypes: "Men are expected to be aggressive sexual actors attempting to 'get' sex from passive women. . . We are told that the rules of sexual engagement involve men pushing and women putting on the brakes." Every woman knows how annoying the rhetoric of female affections that have to be 'conquered' through male effort is. From early childhood, men are taught that female 'no' doesn't really mean a final and unquestionable rejection. They are told that 'no' means maybe and that effort and perseverance can eventually turn a 'no' into a 'yes.' And  this myth is precisely what leads to so many stalkings, sexuall assaults, and rapes.

 

I have had the misfortune of experiencing the attitude inspired by the women-need-to-be-conquered myth more times that I care to remember. It's annoying and humiliating to be the object of male attempts at winning your affections once you have indicated that you are not interested. This state of things will not change unless we revise our understanding of gender roles. Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape also points out how this vision of gender roles victimizes men: "When society equates maleness with a constant desire for sex, men are socialized out of genuine sexual decision making, and are less likely to be able to know how to say no or  be comfortable refusing sex when they don't want it."

The authors of the book analyze brilliantly how rape is used as a tool of social control: "The natural desire for freedom and autonomy exists in women, and has always been nearly impossible to smother with bribery (the carrot of the wedding and the family and the home) alone. The stick also has to come out, and that's where the pervasive threat of rape comes into play." Women have to feel constantly fearful of placing themselves in the public realm and abandoning the mythical safety of their home, even though that home turns into the scene of violence, assault, and rape a lot more often than the streets.

Infantilizing Men

Recently, I read a very interesting post by Hugo Schwyzer that made me think about how often men are expected to pay a role of infantilized, immature and helpless little creatures in a relationship. Hugo's description of how he used to feel in his relationships is very telling in this respect:
"In my past marriages and relationships, I found myself– like so many men — taking on the part of the "naughty boy" and the "helpless child." Time and again, I turned wives and girlfriends into mother-figures, and the result was inevitably disastrous. I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers as to why we do what we do, or even why I did what I did. I do know that I’m not the only man who found "courtship" easier than "relationship." Over and over again, I devoted time and energy to "getting the girl", and when I succeeded, soon felt vaguely let down and confused about my role. It was all too easy for me to become increasingly childlike. I figured out that most of partners were students of my emotions, and most of them were eager to make the relationship work. So they were the ones who took over the "feeling work" of the relationship. They were the ones who brought up when something wasn’t working, they were the ones who took on the primary role of keeping what we had "oiled and running", as it were." (The rest of Hugo's interesting post can be found here.)

This is precisely the balance of power within a romantic relationship that the media always portray for us. Women are bustling around men, trying to figure out "how to make a relationship work", "what is wrong with the relationship", and "where the relationship should go". Think about the endless discussions on these topics on Sex and the City, where women seem to do little else other than engage in endless attempts to figure out men and relationships with men. Think about such shows as Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, According to Jim, and the like, where the relationship inside a middle-aged couple looks more like a relationship between a.mother and a teenage son.
Many women automatically think that being in a relationship means that they have to take upon themselves the greater share of work needed to maintain the relationship. This goes both for housework and for any practical and emotional issues attendant upon being part of a couple. This sad reality robs women of time and energy that they invest into all that housework combined with having to work as a psychologist and couples' therapist within their own relationships. As a result, being with somebody becomes for many women one more full-time job rather than an opportunity to relax and enjoy themselves.

Hugo Schwyzer tells us honestly why men agree to play the part of a helpless child within a relationship: it seems easier. Of course, as he also recognizes, this stunts your emotional growh and robs you of power to decide what actually goes on both inside the relationship and inside your own house. For my part, I'm more interested in why women agree to take on this model of behavior.
The answer, I believe, is manifold. On the one hand, there is that feeling of being indispensable that I discussed in my post on gender and housework. There is also a need to conform to the patriarchal standard that presents all women as more emotional as men, better at communication than men, and more capable of resolving emotional issues than men.

And then, of course, there is this whole issue of empowerment and control. As women, we often feel disempowered in view of continued gender inequality within society. We still don't get equal pay for equal work, we are still often prevented from career advancement, our right to control our own bodies is still in grave danger, we still have to fight extremely hard to get taken seriously, we still get the least prestigious, badly paid, menial and monotonous jobs, we are still severely underrepresented in the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court, etc. Our society offers us the romantic and emotional sphere as pretty much the only space where we can be completely in control. If you are infantilized by men at work, in a classroom, in the public sphere, it often seems like the only solution is to infantilize them in return in the personal sphere.

What we get as a result, is an unhealthy and unequal balance of power both in the public and in the private sphere.

False Rape Allegations at Hofstra: Who's to Blame?

It's frustrating to see the media responses to what is now considered to be false accusations of gang rape at Hofstra University. Of course, we still have no idea of what actually happened and whether the female student was raped but the media have already condemned this woman as a liar who "almost destroyed the lives of five innocent men". If these were, indeed, false accusations (which yet again, nobody knows for sure at this point and might never know), what made this situation possible? Who is to blame for false allegations in rape cases?

Take any article on the events at Hofstra, and the answer becomes obvious. It's the disgusting, puritanical attitude to sex that crucifies a woman for engaging in sexual activity that the dominant patriarchal worldview does not approve. How can a woman be expected to be honest about her sex life if female sexuality is not allowed any kind of freedom? If articles, TV shows, school classes, books, and news reports continue discussing ways of keeping female sexuality under control? If the punishment for escaping that control, albeit momentarily, is social ostracism and public derision?

I decided to conduct an experiment and entered the words "Hofstra" and "rape" into a search engine. The very first article that appeared as a result of this search was a piece titled "Hofstra rape case: Five questions stand out" by Joye Brown. This article goes out of its way to stigmatize women (not men, of course, just women) for engaging in any kind of sexual activity that is not sanctioned by the patriarchal discourse. The entire article can be summarized as the following perennial exhortation to women: "Good girls don't do such vile things!"

From the very beginning of the article, the author insists very strongly on how "ugly" and "despicable" the idea of group sex is: "They were involved in an ugly incident - sex acts being performed by multiple young men and an 18-year-old freshman in a college dorm men's bathroom... The men did nothing illegal but that doesn't make the behavior any less despicable." Brown doesn't explain what exactly is so despicable about this story. Group sex? Its location? That this happened on a college campus? Or just the facts that some people engaged in sex acts?

Later in the article, Brown talks of the woman's "incredibly poor decision to have sex with five men." Why is it such a bad decision for her but apparently a good decision for the men? Patriarchy can never accept the idea that women can want to have sex. This is why after engaging in any kind of sexual activity a woman might feel apologetic for what she has done. "I had sex because I wanted to" is not an explanation that our society is ready to accept from a woman. So we need  to look for ways to justify our sex lives. Is it any surprise that some women might seek such a justification in rape allegations?

The collective hue and cry about the poor innocent men falsely accused of rape fails to acknowledge that these false allegations are the price we pay for controlling, marginalizing and condemning female sexuality.

Why Women Should Settle for Less

The tendency to try and scare women with possible future loneliness in order to force them to settle for less is nothing new. Take newspapers and magazines from 1, 5, 10, 25 years ago and you will find the same tired exhortations for women to lower their expectations, or (the horror! the horror!) they might remain single. Women are told that they have an exaggerated sense of self-worth, so they should be more "realistic" and understand that they are not all that fabulous. Somehow, I am yet to find an article inviting men to think less of themselves and settle for whatever is available instead of looking for what's best for them.

The profoundly chauvinistic UK's Daily Mail just came out with this kind of article directed at uppity women. The article is titled "The ego epidemic: How more and more of us women have an inflated sense of our own fabulousness." The most upsetting thing about this article is that it is written... by a woman.

"Us women are more egocentric and narcissistic than we ever used to be, according to extensive research by two leading psychologists. More of us have huge expectations of ourselves, our lives and everyone in them", says Lucy Taylor at the beginning of the article. She concentrates, however, on one area of female lives: dating: "In a recent magazine article, four women in their late 20s and 30s shared their thoughts about why they were still single. A 39-year-old beauty director claimed to be too independent for a relationship. A 38-year-old music agent attributed her single status to the fact she was an alpha female - independent, feisty, strong-minded, high-achieving and intimidating... The third woman, a 30-year- old arts writer and curator, has been having too much fun to settle down." Even though there is no indication whatsoever that these women are unhappy with their lives, Taylor tries to find out why these women are "still" single. Their independence is one of the characteristic that scares her the most.

Of course, the existence (and the growing number) of women who are having too much fun and love their lives too much to be tied down in the role of a cooking and cleaning robot for some loser represents a huge threat to patriarchy. Lucy Taylor is happy to participate in the efforts to convince these women that they have some sort of a mental disorder. She proceeds to diagnose women she only read about "in a recent magazine article" with surprising aplomb.

The efforts to present independent, strong-willed women who dare to make their own choices in life as mentally ill have been made for as long as patriarchy exists. It's shocking, however, that today we still allow for this to happen.

More on Brain Hardwiring Mystique

My reader Quisp kindly suggested a link to an article by Janet Shibley Hyde titled "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis." This is a truly great piece of research that is aimed at dispelling the "Men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus" myth through meticulous scientific research. It is so refreshing to read such a well-constructed and well-reserached piece after all the junk science dedicated to promoting this fallacy that bobmards us on a dily basis.

Not only does Shibley Hide present a lot of data to counteract the gender difference myth, she also talks about its social consequences: "Gilligan’s (1982) argument that women speak in a different moral “voice” than men is a well-known exampleof the differences model. Women, according to Gilligan, speak in a moral voice of caring, whereas men speak in a voice of justice. Despite the fact that meta-analyses disconfirmher arguments for large gender differences (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000; Thoma, 1986; Walker, 1984), Gilligan’s ideas have permeated American culture. One consequence of thisoverinflated claim of gender differences is that it reifies the stereotype of women as caring and nurturant and men as lacking in nurturance. One cost to men is that they may believe that they cannot be nurturant, even in their role as father. For women, the cost in the workplace can be enormous. Women who violate the stereotype of being nurturant and nice can be penalized in hiring and evaluations."

In conclusion to her great article, Shibley Hide says the following: "It is time to consider the costs of overinflated claims of gender differences. Arguably, they cause harm in numerous realms, including women’s opportunities in the workplace,couple conflict and communication, and analyses of selfesteem problems among adolescents. Most important, these claims are not consistent with the scientific data." The essentialized view of gender offers us an illusion of simplifying the world's complexities. But the price we pay for this fallacy on a daily basis is too higgh.

Flowers for a Man

It's always great to see how the feminist worldview becomes more and more acceptable and accepted in daily life. Last night, my boyfriend and went to a restaurant. There was a man there selling roses to the patrons. So I decided to show my affection for my boyfriend by buying him roses. He had given me flowers many times, so it made a lot of sense for me to do the same for him.

A great thing about the whole experience was that everybody reacted completely normally. My boyfriend reacted exactly the way I do when he gives me flowers: happy but as if it were a very natural thing to happen. The man who sold me the flowers, the waitress, the hostess, and the other patrons who observed this scene took it completely in their stride.

I hope that gendered understanding of the appropriate ways of showing affection for the person you love will soon disappear. It makes no sense that our gender should dictate the way we express ourselves in any setting, especially in a romantic one.

The Standards of Beauty

The following statement just appeared at the Womanist Musings blog:

"No matter what it is that we endeavour to achieve it is always questioned. We are either too sexy or not sexy enough. Our bodies are continually deemed for male consumption and can be considered either a detractment or an enhancement to the task at hand in a way that males are never positioned. Men get to exist simply as they are. No matter the privilege for women it all comes down to the same thing…negotiating a patriarchal sexist world while attempting to maintain our dignity. "

In my opinion, this attitude stems from a deeply flawed belief that patriarchy is a 100% detrimental to all women and a 100% beneficial to all men. In what concerns physical appearance, it is true that every time we open a magazine or see a commercial we see women who look the way a normal woman wouldn't be able to achieve even if she dedicated her entire existence to it. But these women are always accompanied by equally impossibly looking men. They are all tall, wide-shouldered, muscled, have no or little body hair, no skin problems, and chiseled chins and noses. Pick up a male underwear catalogue and tell me if you actuually know any men who look this way.

We have finally arrived at a stage of our society's development, where women can at least talk about their body image issues, get diagnosed with bulimia and anorexia, and get help. Now we have to accept that men suffer from these problems just as much. There is no emotionally and psychologically comfortable public (and often also private) space today for men to acknowledge that they have body image issues, that what they experience might be anorexia or bulimia, and that it's ok to discuss it and get help for it.

Patriarchy is a Procrustean bed that gives us a set of rules that we have to adhere to because we are of a certain gender. In order to fit into this mold, we - men and women alike - have to chop off pieces of ourselves, of our bodies, of our personalities. And this is bad for everyone.

Monday Press Overview: Cosmo Advice

Since Ross Douthat failed to entertain me as much as he normally does, I turned to the magazine that some people hail as a new feminist vision of a woman: the Cosmopolitan magazine. I expected something bad, of course, but I had no idea just how idiotic it would be. The article that attracted my attention was called "What Makes Men Fall in Love." The advice dished out by some purported "specialists" (MDs, PhDs, and what not) in the field of human relationships is beyond hilarious. Here are the things women need to do to get men to fall in love with them:

1. "The Desire: To Protect. Believe it or not, the so-called stoic sex is hardwired to nurture. Sheltering you from harm makes him feel studly, which makes him feel good. . . So give him chances to take charge, and thank him after he does. " Of course, the second I hear this old rubbish about people being "hardwired", I know that some patriarchal crap is being offered to me under the guise of science. Still, I tried to imagine how I would go about getting a man to shelter me from harm: "Oooh, honey, see this big guy walking on the other side of the street," I would say gaspingly. "I feel so threatened by him, please, make him go away."

2. "Give him a job. Ask him to fix or build you something. Performing concrete tasks is a way of bonding that enhances his sense of success." That is, of course, if he is into building or fixing things. The expectation here is obviously that any "real" man whould be super psyched to start building stuff as soon as the little lady needs it. I suggest taking this advice even further. Why not trash your apartment completely, break furniture, tear out the light fixtures, etc.? This will give him a chance to build and fix for months and will bring you the added bonus of letting out the pent-up energy you'll accumulate by pretending to be a helpless little flower.

3. "Ask his opinion. Whether it’s about your 401(k) options or the best travel sites, it telegraphs that you value his brain as much as you do his brawn." So after the poor man beats up the menacing guy in the street, builds and fixes your stuff, the moment comes to make him solve your financial problems and make your travel arrangements. That is, if he still has energy to do that.

4. "Wear soft materials. Delicate textures like rayon, silk, and fur trigger an intense response in men. These fabrics accentuate your softer, feminine nature, which heightens his amorous instincts." Something leads me to believe, however, that after all the efforts he expends in beating up menacing men, sheltering me from danger, building, fixing, and looking for travel sites, I'll need much more (or much less) than fur to heighten his amorous instincts.

5. "Don his clothes. It shows that you’ve chosen him over other guys — sexy." The question here is, of course, whether he will do something like that for me. I imagine coming home from work one day and finding my boyfriend wearing my summer dress and murmuring "Sweetheart, I just wanted to show that I chose you over all other women. Now you build something and I'll go put on some furs."

The rest of advice includes such gems as turning him down every once in a while to make yourself look more interesting, do "goddesslike" things like apply lipstick in front of him, cook food in his presence to raise his oxytocin levels (I kid you not), and get him to stand between you and a menacing guy in a bar.

Now, after all this effort, he still might want to pull back if he "finds himself on the brink of falling in love" (whatever that means). One of the things that can cause this is the lack of fighting because: "A guy will worry that (a) you’re going to lash out later, (b) you’re a doormat, or (c) you’re not into him enough to care. Any of these will make him rethink your budding relationship."

I like (b) the most. Imagine, after all of this effort the ingrate might think you are a doormat. I wonder what could give him that idea.