Sometimes I forget that not everyone is a nerd

Mom: What do you imagine your wedding being like?
Me: …I kind of need someone to get married to first.
Mom: No, I mean, what would your dream wedding be like?
Me: I don’t really fantasize about my wedding. I don’t know, cheap.
Dad: Good, I raised you right. Now you won’t be the type who gets married too early just because you’re in love with the idea of getting married.
Mom: *disappointed look*
Me: I guess if I had an infinite amount of money, I would chose a really cool place to have it in. Like in a Natural History Museum.
Mom: …With dinosaurs and mummies and stuff?
Me: Yeah! I mean, how cool would that be, to get married under a giant fossilized skeleton of an ancient whale or something?
Mom: *look of horror and disgust*
Me: …Well I think it would be cool *pout*

“You’re a biologist…”

I’ve learned to dread questions starting with that statement, especially from my mother. Apparently getting my bachelor’s degree in genetics and evolution makes me the Leading Expert on anything having to do with biology. For example, over the last couple of days I have fielded questions on:

  • The best way to keep plants from drying up after they’ve been cut
  • If deer sleep standing up
  • The differences between various types of kidney surgery

I’m not sure which type of questions exasperate me more: Medical Questions or Extraordinarily Specific Questions About One Particular Species that Only a Researcher Who Has Studied That Species Would Know. I think it’s partly annoying because I’d love to answer questions about things I actually know. Whenever my parents do ask me questions about genetics, I get all giddy and love explaining it to them. But biologist does not equal doctor. And once I actually am Dr. McCreight, I think this will get even worse.

I just need to train my mom to say “You’re a geneticist” before her questions. That way she’ll be able to see how silly it is asking me about mating habits in ducks.

To all my engineering and computer science friends – I apologize every time I’ve come to you asking you stupid questions about Microsoft Word or my phone. …Though I’ll probably keep doing it. Consider this a preemptive apology.

Oh no! Fellow nerds, they’re on to us

They’ve discovered our secret hobbies:

And Jenny, darlin‘, YOU are going to attract people just like me when you are derogatory and ignorant about my favourite Church. M’kay? So if you don’t want a MY reaction… go back to whatever nerds do… endlessly poking each other in the belly-button, or playing with aborted fetuses, or, whatever.

Damn. What are nerds supposed to do for fun now?

I know I always say not to feed the trolls, but when they’re so amusingly ridiculous I feel selfish not sharing it with the rest of you. Especially when I think belly-button poking can be the new euphemism for godless, nerdy activities.

Though, read the rest of that comment at your own risk. If you tend to become enraged after reading nonsensical transphobic screeds… you’ve been warned.

Colbert calls out Laura Ingraham for terrible writing and racist remarks

I think I ovulated while watching this last night:

<td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’ colspan=’2’Laura Ingraham

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Seriously, does this man not have the best job in the world? He gets to call out people for being racist and for being terrible writers to their face because they willingly sign up for the verbal beating. All while not coming off like a jackass thanks to ingenious use of satire. I’m jealous.

 

Bias for male lecturers in Physics

Lately there has been a lot of discussion here and elsewhere about male privilege and sexism. I think one of the reasons this is such a touchy subject is because many of our actions that are inherently sexist are unconscious, so we can get especially defensive when people call us out on them. For example, let’s look at how Physics students react differently to male and female lecturers:

Why aren’t there more women physicists, and in senior positions? One factor may be unconscious biases that could keep women physicists from advancing—and may even prevent women from going into physics in the first place.

Amy Bug, a physicist at Swarthmore University, examined the bias question. Her research team trained four actors—two men, two women—to give a 10-minute physics lecture. Real physics classes watched the lecturers. Then the 126 students were surveyed.

When it came to questions of physics ability—whether the lecturer had a good grasp of the material, and knew how to use the equipment—male lecturers got higher ratings by both male and female students.

But when asked how well the lecturer relates to the students, each gender preferred their own. And while female students gave a slight preference to female lecturers, male students overwhelmingly rated the male lecturers as being superior. The research appears in the journal Physics World.

Bug says the results may be evidence of inherent biases that could hold women back—along with economic inequalities, such as lower wages and smaller start-up grants. Which reduce career acceleration and thus the amount of force available to crack the glass ceiling.

Note that it’s not just male students who have some sort of unconscious biases – the female students do as well. This is why it is so important to become aware of our biases. When someone points out that something you said is sexist (against women or men) or that you’re privileged, it’s not to make you feel guilty or like a bad person – it’s to make you conscious of your actions. Only once we are aware of what we’re doing can we actively try to correct it.

Back to the science aspect – I would like to see this repeated looking at scientific papers in addition to lecturing ability. Often times when names on papers are represented by initials alone, people assume those authors are male. If given the same paper, but one with a male name and one with a female, would students say they are the same quality?

I’m also curious how prevalent this is in other disciplines. Is it a science thing, or does the same trend hold in liberal arts? Would it be less pronounced in a field with a more equal sex ratio like Biology? Something I get to think about before I become a lecturer…

(Hat tip to Rugved)

Goddamn men and their magical thieving penises!

Yet another thing us women have to worry about when having sex. Thankfully Lady Gaga enlightens us all (emphasis mine):

She may ooze sex appeal during her on-stage performances, but Lady Gaga is a little more conservative when it comes to her life in the bedroom.

In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the eccentric singer, who recently reunited with her ex Luc Carl, says she is trying to avoid sex for a rather off-beat reason.

“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina,” the 24-year-old says in the magazine’s September issue.

Well damn. I thought having sex just fractured your souls like horcruxes. Now I’m losing my creativity too? What other attributes have I been leaking out my genitalia?!

Indiana hospital ridicules transwoman and refuses treatment

Add this story to my long list of “Why I am so happy to be finally moving away from Indiana”:

Erin Vaught went to a Muncie emergency room coughing up blood. Two hours later, she was refused treatment on grounds that she is transsexual. In what is a serious lapse of medical ethics, and had Vaught died, would have been criminal negligence, Ball Memorial Hospital staff treated Vaught with contempt, ridicule, and even eventually met with dismissal of her condition.

It stated when the admitting nurse at the ER entered that Vaught was male into the computer despite the fact that her ID stated that she is female. Vaught stated “I pointed out that my ID says female. There were two ladies there, and one of them snickered a little bit and covered her mouth. The other got a very annoyed look on her face. Vaught was there with her wife and son.

When she went to the exa-room, she was met with stares and insults. She was referred to as a ‘he-she’, an ‘it’, and a ‘transvestite’. Vaught is a transsexual, or one who is physically undergoing the process of changing physical sex. Transvestites are people who often get sexually aroused while wearing the clothes of the opposite gender, but have no desire to change sexes.

The doctor arrives two hours later and said that she could not treat Vaught because of “her transgender condition”. According to Vaught “I was confused. I told them I didn’t know my condition, that’s why I was there. She said ‘No, the transvestite thing.’ She said I couldn’t see a doctor until I came back with test orders from my doctor in Indy.” What her exact condition is has not been released.

It’s so sad that people who make their living out of helping others and saving lives would be so cruel to someone based on their gender identity. Even if for whatever reason you don’t agree with or understand transsexuals, that doesn’t mean you should deny them medical treatment. Maybe since she was transitioning that posed valid medical concerns that this particular hospital’s staff was not specialized enough to deal with, but that doesn’t excuse the insensitivity of their statements.