I won’t pretend to understand the issue completely (I got bored and stopped following it closely a long time ago). But if the summaries are correct, (and the CBO is accurate, which seems reasonable), we’ll get a moderate reduction in the deficit, some new taxes for the rich and people who use tanning salons, some decent subsidy expansions for low-income people, and some mild tweaks to medicaid and medicare. All quite undramatic, really.

All of which makes the protests quite bewildering.

However you look at it, this is not a new health care system. It’s certainly not a single-payer universal coverage system. It’s not going to allow the government to regulate the industry tightly, and it’s not abolishing medicare/caid.

For that matter, the bill barely even falls under the reform category. I daresay what most feminists wanted (behind expanded reproductive coverage, which we couldn’t possibly have gotten) was to ensure that single mothers, children, etc. were guaranteed health care – we didn’t really even get that. The improvements we did get still filtersthrough the current (read, insanely complicated) system, which is doing a mediocre job at best. Hardly a dramatic victory.

Is it better? Probably. Will it hurt anybody? Probably not. And yet, the protests continue – “the worst piece of legislation ever presented to Congress!” as one radio program I overheard recently trumpeted.

I know a young man – twenty-something years old – who is the stereotype of the teabagger. He’s white, decently educated, from a middle class background, rather (if unconsciously) racist, slightly sexist (openly), and republican as they come. He hates health care reform. Thinks it’s going to give medicine to all the damn illegals (what a tragedy….) And everyone else needs to earn their own health care, dammit!

Except – he doesn’t have insurance worth speaking of. He doesn’t make much, his employer doesn’t provide a decent plan. And if his girlfriend gets pregnant, she be in the system with the rest of them. All of which seems entirely lost on the man in question.

This doesn’t prove anything, of course, but I suspect that there are thousands more just like that. They’re protesting, not because the health care reform will actually hurt them, or the economy, or anything else, but just to be protesting – their lack of continued dominance over society, perhaps. Or simple racism, sexism, obsession with traditional family values. Something.

I’m not sure what, exactly (general fear – probably). But it’s very strange, and rather frightening.

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave Feminism)

Echildne wrote a good (if very angry) bit about treating the pro-choice movement as if it was some sort of for-profit corporation, and loosing sight of well, a woman’s right to choose.

I’m going to suggest a slightly different take; the problem is all in the framing.

Isn’t it ironic that this is all about a Super Bowl ad? Think about it: the Super Bowl is, well, football. The game that consists of large, muscular men crashing into each other. The Super Bowl is perhaps the archetypal symbol of hyper-masculinity. And that’s the context in which we’re discussing women’s rights.

This is a problem.

Now, I don’t have and thing against men – or women – playing football. At the end of the day it’s just another sport. But the sport has a long history of sheer hatred toward women, from the beer ads all the way down to the attitudes of the players and coaches (remember all those instances of college coaches hiring strippers with public money). That the Super Bowl is far and away the most watched sporting event – no, televised event period – in the United States says something very significant about our culture (for the record – the most watched event worldwide is the World Cup – that’s no better. But I digress).

And here we are, arguing about an anti-abortion commercial which will be played during an overwhelmingly masculine, patriarchal event. So I’d like to suggest this: The commercial doesn’t matter. While Kissling and Michelman suggestion for a counter-commercial is certainly apt, and would no doubt have a positive effect, so long as women’s issues have to hitch a ride on bigger, more expensive, and more (in the public’s mind) important essentially masculine events, there something very, very wrong with the picture.

That’s what we need to fix. As long as we look at this as some sort of big commercialized game (Oh dear – support for abortion rights is down slightly, but hey! Support for gay marriage is up! High fives all around!) we’re simply doing it wrong. We need to be about cultural change and ideology, not politics, ads, and entertainment money.

(Crossposted @ Fourth Wave Feminism)

If you’ve been anywhere near a computer in the last 10 years, you’ve probably heard of something called Java. It’s a programming language and run-time environment, which, over the last 14 years, has gone from being non-existent to being the most popular programming language in the world. Much of Java’s popularity can be attributed to a woman named Kim Polese. Often described as a ‘one woman marketing team’, she insisted that Sun release Java technology without charging royalties: according to this interview, she said, “…it became pretty obvious to me that’s[royalties] a good way to kill a new language. People just won’t pay royalties. I was very insistent about that, and also about getting the source code out there.”

It’s no understatement to say that releasing Java in this way has revolutionized the software industry.

If you’d like to read more about Kim Polese, some other good interviews are here, here, and here. She is currently CEO of SpikeSource, an open source software company.

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave)

According to the latest statistics, due to men being laid off at higher rates women now make up almost 50% of the workforce. (Thanks to Girl w/ Pen ) Now, as the Gw/P post pointed out, this is not necessarily a good thing, either for women or society as a whole.

But I do think that something very interesting could happen here. While much of the reason for this gender-unequal decrease is due to an overall decrease in male-dominated sectors (construction, etc.), there are many, many jobs being lost in other areas. Now, we know that women are paid much less on average than men. Furthermore, this pay inequality is not only caused by a larger percentage of men having jobs in higher paying fields, rather, the inequality holds true in almost every field (PDF).

If an employer is forced to lay someone off out of several who hold similar jobs, who are they going to choose – the higher paid person or the lower? Given similar work output (which is reasonable, I believe), most employers should choose the higher paid worker, who is statistically more likely to be male. This, will lead to a decrease in the gendered pay gap, at least temporarily.

The real test will come when the economy improves, pay rises, and unemployment drops. Will the men who were let go for having higher salaries be hired back at similar salaries to the women who remained? Will women’s salaries be raised? (increased relative seniority, etc.) In other words, whereas historically women have been entering, at a lower wage, into a male-dominated workforce, at some future point significant numbers of men might be entering into a (slightly) female-dominated workforce. I’m certain pay won’t become equal overnight, but hopefully things will improve.

On the other hand, non-whites are being disproportionately affected by rising unemployment. I’m not sure what the causes are, but I imagine it’s related to social inequalities. So, it comes down to: a (potential) step forward, and an (immediate) step back.

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave Feminism)

So – common courtesy, or sexist holdover? I know almost nothing about etiquette, but the scientist part of me has come up with a rather different solution…

Calculations

It seems to me, that the entire purpose of social courtesy is to work for the common good – to improve society a bit at your own expense, with the idea that the favor will be returned. So, correct door holding behavior must satisfy these criteria:

1. It must contribute to the overall good of society – in this instance, it must decrease the collective walking time.
2. It must not be biased or unfair toward any group.

Thus, that surprisingly large minority of men who still insist on holding doors for women immediately fail the second criteria – they can be dismissed offhand.

Some quick numbers: The distance in question is defined as the distance from the swing of the door, plus an equal area on the other side. It took me, walking at an average speed, around 2 seconds to traverse that difference on a typical door. It took twice as long (4 seconds) if I had to open the door toward me. It took almost no time longer if I had to open the door away from me – several trials averaged out to about .25 seconds.

Now, there are two different ways of holding a door:

• Simply holding it after you, so that the other person does not have to open it, and
• Holding the door while letting the other person pass through in front of you.

The latter option we can dismiss immediately. Even in the ideal case (the other person is exactly two seconds behind you), it takes 2 seconds to open the door, 2 seconds for the follower to pass through, and 2 seconds for you to pass through. 2+2+2=6. In the worst case, the other person might have to wait up to two seconds for you to get the door open and get out of their way, for a total of eight seconds. Of course, holding the door for someone farther away might take even more time. Thus, even those super-polite types who hold doors for everyone, are still not really helping society as a whole!

The former option, at best, only takes the same four seconds that one person would take. How long to hold the door open behind you? Maximum 2 seconds. Your total time comes to 4+2=6 seconds, and the other persons time is 2 seconds, bringing the total time to eight – the same time as two separate operations would take, with only half the effort.

Holding a door opening away from you is almost pointless – you could only hold it for 1/4 of a second!

Conclusions

The maximum benefit to walking time will come from holding a door open behind you for approximately two seconds. Just don’t open a door, count “one, two”, and let it shut in someone’s face – people might not like that! Certainly, don’t hold the door and let someone walk through unless they are disabled or carrying something – there is no overall benefit otherwise.

Following these guidelines, you can still be polite and help people, without feeling like your actions are derived from a sexist tradition.

(If you have actually managed to read this far, congratulations – you are almost as weird as I am! I do have an excuse – CS class was really, really boring, and I couldn’t exactly leave, so I wrote this instead! Crossposted at Fourth Wave Feminism)

I can’t seem to come up with any links to this kind of thing right now, but I keep hearing this kind of talk, over and over again – especially when I’m discussing something like Buffy with male friends. I just have one question: When has this ever been done? When have we seen a ‘male character in a female body’, and where can I find it?

Alien? Terminator? Ripley/Sarah Conner are cast in a mother role.

Alice or Jill in the Resident Evil series? Maybe. Some of Elizabeth Moon’s characters? I suppose.

I’m sure that there are more examples, but I think that we can agree – such characters are very, very rare.

Now, I love the complex, wonderful characters that are created when strong female characters are ‘done right’ i.e., not stereotypes. I wouldn’t have Buffy, or Ripley, or Xena, or Elizabeth Bennett, or whomever written any other way. Writers should strive to create complex, well-rounded characters of all genders. Sometimes, however, it just doesn’t happen. And sometimes, I’m just not up to digesting a complex, realistic character – I just want something simple. And stereotypes, ideals, are important to out cultural mythmaking…

But, where are these stereotypes? It seems like even the toughest female action-oriented characters resort to seduction on a regular basis. (c.f. Max from Dark Angel, Xena) And those that don’t are still supposed to be sympathetic to family members, spouses/boyfriends, starving orphans, etc, to a degree unheard of by their male counterparts. We wouldn’t want them seeming any less female, now would we? And if they are less female, they’re invarabily evil.

So here’s what I want:

I want a female western hero, Lone Ranger style. The kind that comes into town on a big white horse, defeats the bad guys, and rides of into the sunset. No weird former relationships, no serious love intrest, no noticeable weaknesses.

I want a female James Bond clone. Not an Alias-type female spy, but the whole masculine-fantasy Bond. Suave, perfect gentleperson, yet an amazing detective and fighter, who has an astonishing sense of luck, inept sidekicks, and who gets all the girls without trying, but who remains cooly detached throughout. For even more bonus points, make her straight and give her feminine, ‘woman in a man’s body’, male love interests.

(Side note: why is it that male characters often have love interests that are weak and girly, but female characters always dispise and reject weak male love interests, only accepting those that are close to their quality?)

I want a female buddy comedy. Baby Mama doesn’t count. It couldn’t have been made with male characters.

I want a romance movie with the roles reversed. Completely. Enough said.

I could go on and on.

We probably won’t ever get any of these things. There’s been such a rejection of cliched characters of any gender, that nobody’s going to try anything this different, but I can wish! Still…

The male ideal stereotype, the ‘White Knight’ if you will, is still pervasive in the culture. Even if modern fictional characters tend to be less idealistic, less heroic, the ideal is still there, and the modern characters still approximate it, even if they remain human. By refusing to create female characters who embody the masculine stereotype, even the strongest women will invarabily be compared, not to that stereotype, but to the existing feminine stereotype. This tendancy leads to a rejection of certain roles for women and men in real life. By denying this stereotype, we essentially deny half of human expression for half the human race.

And let’s not even start on feminine male characters…

(Crossposted from Fourth Wave)

With inspiration from The Hathor Legacy.

First of all, I must admit that I’m a huge Buffy/Angel/Firefly fan. Note, thought, that I only think Whedon is okay. Honestly, I’m not really sure what exactly he thinks, except that he says he’s a feminist, and that he creates TV shows with strong female characters.

Here’s the thing, and this is important: A TV show is not a novel.

When you read a novel, you are reading the work of one, or maybe two, authors and an editor. When you watch a TV show, you are watching the work of dozens of people. The exec. producer (Joss’s job), may be in charge, but ultimately they can only influence the show so much. Every episode has a couple of writers, a director, and an editor. The exec. producer only writes or directs a tiny number of the episodes. The actors interpret the characters in every episode – they are responsible for the long-term portrayal of the characters. And etc., etc., etc., through the DP and wardrobe and makeup and lighting and music and casting, and last but not least, the studio executives.

In other words, no matter how good the producer’s intentions are, the sheer enormity of a TV production can cause almost anything to happen without the producer noticing until it’s too late. As long at the culture is sexist, racist, etc., you are going to hire many, many sexist and racist people, who will influence the show both intentionally and not.

For example, much has been made about the clothes that Buffy and friends wear. Buffy’s clothes, especially, seem to undercut the image of a strong character. There is a simple explanation for this: Marketing. The clothes Buffy wore were (are?) being sold – and this, I’m sure, is out of the control of Joss, and the writers too.

Casting is a similar situation. While the producer has a hand in the main actors’ casting, other actors will almost certainly be cast by someone else – thus revealing bias in the industry at large.

One last general observation, and I’ll move on to specific buffyverse-related comments: With regard to fantasy shows, you must keep in mind that they are not meant to be realistic! While they may apply to real life in many ways, the absence of traditional power structures, conditioned cultural responses, and so on, are not valid grounds for criticism.

So, with regard to Buffy, there are some critics who disagree the Spike attempted rape scene – they say that Buffy did not respond correctly, that it made light of the rape issue by having her shrug it off so easily, and later, nearly blame it on herself. If Buffy had been a realistic person, I would agree. But Buffy is not. She is, apparently, quite immune to the common female fear of rape. This was made clear in Helpless, where Buffy loses her power temporarily. She is whistled at by some men hanging out by a car, and it is obvious that Buffy is never even the least bit concerned about that kind of situation. So, Buffy’s reaction to Spike was different than any other woman would have had. Essentially, she had the same reaction that most men would have had – it was just scary – not the fulfillment of deep-seated cultural fear.

Another example: Inara in Firefly. Her character is a prostitute. Now some people have a serious problem with that. From the quoted article:

The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy?

Now if this had been a realistic show, this criticism would be valid. Not irrefutable, but valid. The trouble is, the show takes place hundreds of years into the future. It is fantasy. Joss could posit flying kittens that emit purple rainbows if he wanted to. Saying that women who sleep with men for money are powerful and respected is not much of a stretch of the imagination. In fact, the above critic answers her own question:

In Joss Whedon’s future world prostituted women are powerful and respectable.

So, if they are powerful and respected, they are not really prostituted, are they.

Unless, that is, you believe that women are always ‘fuck toys’ when they sleep with men, not by culture, but by biology!

Kaylee’s introduction – having sex with a guy in the engine room is part of the same concept. Firefly is obviously a world where women are sexually as free as men. And that brings me to the worst episode in Firefly – Heart of Gold. If these this episode was in a series that had a more modern sex culture, it would have been wonderful. The trouble is, that the presence of a ‘normal’ brothel, supported by a misogynistic local culture. This undermines the normalized female sexuality of the rest of the series. (There are a few other instances, mostly directed at Kaylee, but most of these can be put down to writer oversight.)

At the risk of arguing with an immovable force, I’d like to address some other criticisms given in the above linked article. First, when Mal says ’shut up’ in the first episode, it is NOT directed at Zoe, but rather at both Jayne and Zoe, and Jayne was the one who spoke last. Zoe also tells Mal off several time throughout the series.

The primary criticism of Whedon’s work is that it is racist. I think that this is an overstatement. I am curious that people are so concerned about this; it is not as if there are no people of color at all. Certainly, it would be nice if there were more, but they do exist, and often as main characters. (In other words, Whedon is not anti-racist, but is not racist, either) Now, if someone would only make a show that focuses on not being racist, as Buffy does on being feminist. (Any year, now!)

There is one serious exception in this regard. In last episode of Firefly, Objects in Space, the main villain is an incredibly sociopathic black man. I really don’t understand why they would do this – it reinforces all kinds of stereotypes, and is generally terrible.

Back to Buffy – I think that having Buffy and Willow portrayed as more emotionally weak than Giles or Xander is caused primarily by their having a more important role in the show. In addition, by the end of the series, Buffy is shown to be more emotionally mature than Giles – in fact, he is ridiculed rather often. (especially in the gotta-kill-the-ensouled-Spike storyline.) Angel also has more emotional problems than all of the women in the show put together.

In conclusion, I think one of the most interesting aspects of analyzing the Whedonverse, is to see where the problems are caused by real bias or oversight, and where they are only products of the viewers’ bias, due to the fantasy setting.

Side note:

I think that it is interesting that people claim Xena as being more race-inclusive than Buffy. This is simply NOT the case. Buffy had a few main characters, many reoccurring characters, and many one-shot characters. Xena had two main characters, only a handful of reoccurring characters, and tons of one-shot characters. A few POC in one-shot roles on Xena have caused a biased perception. A quick look at IMDB:

Buffy, POC characters reoccurring in 3 or more were in: 14,13,12,8,7,5,3 episodes each.

Xena, POC characters reoccurring in 3 or more were in: just one character, who was in 4 episodes. (Even Marcus was only in 2 episodes!)

Counting characters or any race, Xena has only a total of 9 characters who occur in 10 or more episodes each. Buffy has 27 in 10 or more.

You notice the random one-shot POC more when there is no competition from reoccurring characters.

The criticism seems to fall along the lines of: “Individualists think that people are responsible for their own actions, that each person is in charge of their own life, such that if a person’s life is bad, it’s their own fault. Since we know that people can rarely help their circumstances, and that most of the time a person’s suffering is NOT their own fault at all, individualists are selfish, privileged people who don’t understand how the world works.”

I don’t know what other people mean by individualism, but I can’t help but think that only a fool – or worse – would believe that brand of individualism. When I say that i am an individualist, I’m not saying that people are responsible for their own fates, but that they should be. It is obvious that most people are not.

For me, this is what feminism is about, to a large extent. Women should be able to control their own lives, their own bodies, be able to choose their own relationships. Women deserve the be treated as individuals in their own right – not as property, or as a homogeneous group, or as the embodiment of all evil*. I cannot imagine feminism without this concept.

That is what I mean by individualism. Others are welcome disagree.

*I’ve been reading Women Hating by Andrea Dworkin, thus the evil – highly recommended, by the way, if you haven’t already.

(Jump back to the first part of this series)

Now, I don’t think that anybody is denying that capital can cause oppression, or that our current capitalist system perpetuates oppression, or that people use capitalism to exploit others. This is undeniable. These facts, however, do not mean that capitalism must cause oppression, that it always leads to oppression. More importantly, they in no way show that there exists another system which by nature causes less oppression than capitalism. I will attempt
to argue not only that capitalism does not always cause oppression, but that capitalism is in fact neutral – it can be easily used by an oppressor, but it also places no barrier to those who would stop oppression.

In order to discuss this subject at all, we must first determine what oppression and exploitation actually are. How do we tell if someone is being oppressed?

At first, this seems like a simple question. Oppression is the use of power to give one group or individual power or privilege at the expense of another. From an economic point of view, oppression is unfairly taking value at the expense of someone else. But what does this really mean? Most people don’t oppress anybody directly – they are not personally responsible for taking value from someone else – although perhaps more do so than one would like to admit. Still, most of us who oppress do so indirectly, through our privileged lifestyles. How do we know this? The affluent part of the world oppresses the rest, therefore those of us who benefit from living in the affluent part participate in oppression.

There is a difficulty, however. Not every person in a privileged country or area is an oppressor. Some, in fact, are oppressed themselves. Some oppress and are oppressed simultaneously. So at what point does one start oppressing? At what point is one oppressed? And to return to the subject, what is the real cause of oppression?

To return to the simple economic systems outlined in the first part:

Given simple capitalistic exchange, no exploitation or oppression will occur, assuming that person receives equal value in exchange for their value. Now, if one person gains an unfair advantage by force or deceit, this could be called the start of oppression. One unfair advantage, however, does not cause systemic oppression. For that to happen, one group must consistently gain such advantage over others. To do so must surely require an effort to do so on the part of those gaining the advantage.

Now, consider the other possible economic systems. The leader-based system is essentially exploitive by default. The communal system is not oppressive at the beginning, but surely a properly motivated person could still obtain advantage over others. The person in charge of distributing items, for example, would be in an obvious position to oppress others. Also, anybody could attain power by making alliances with other individuals or groups, etc.

So, what really causes oppression? The desire for power and the desire to gain advantage over others. Now it could be argued that one system tends to produce more oppression than another, but unless a system could be devised which makes oppression completely impossible, insisting that one system is better than another is problematic, and insisting that an entire kind of economic system is wrong, downright silly. The real problem behind oppression is with the oppressors themselves. They will exploit others regardless of the economic situation, and the only solution is to convince people that oppression is wrong, and show them the effect that their actions have on others.
(Read the next part in this series, or jump back to the first part)

The two that I was able to find easily – outside of some ecofeminists whose beliefs are tantamount to religion – were:

1. Capitalism encourages racial discrimination, and
2. Capitalism is inherently exploitive, leading to oppression.

These objections depend, of course, on the assumption that feminists should be anti-racist and anti-oppression. An excellent explanation of this concept, called intersectionality, can be found in the Feministe post linked in the first part of this series.

The first objection is utterly groundless. Given a world in which people of different races are treated equally, I am utterly at a loss as to a mechanism by which the existence of capitalism could cause an imbalance in racial treatment. Now, of course, if there is existing racial oppression, people can always attempt to use their power within capitalism to further their dislike of another race, but that is true in any system. If fact, I would like to posit that capitalism, which encourages individualism and self-dependence, is actually less racist than any other system. The other two economic systems given in the first part encourage dependence of the group. This in turn leads to seeing oneself as part of the group, and to seeing those in other group as outsiders, and therefore as inferior to the group. This feeling – dislike of those who are different – is the root of racism.

The second objection is more serious. I have seen no specifically feminist explanation equating capitalism with exploitation. (I am sure they exist – I simply do not have time to do the needed library research, and such information seems rare on the internet.) The basic argument, given by Marx and many others, is well known.

Essentially, in the course of capitalistic exchange, some people obtain an advantage over others, either by luck or skill. They use this advantage to obtain possession of a greater share of capital, allowing them to attain even more wealth. They then force (by economic means) others to work for them, using their capital, and are able to increase their wealth completely out of proportion to their labor. In the end, a few people own nearly all the capital, while the rest are exploited into working for a small portion of their labor’s true worth.

I shall attempt to discuss this objection in the next part.

(Read the next part in this series, or jump back to the first part)