Month: May 2013

[#wiscfi liveblog] The Mattering Map: Religion, Humanism, and Moral Progress

Miri, , , , 8 Comments

The WiS2 conference logo.

I’m liveblogging Rebecca Goldstein’s talk, “The Mattering Map: Religion, Humanism, and Moral Progress.” Goldstein is a novelist and professor of philosophy at Barnard College. Follow along!

4:18: “Amanda just said in her wonderful talk that she wasn’t going to bore you with philosophy. That’s my job.”

I agonized over this talk. Should I publicly address the gender issue for the first time? [Audience: yes!!!]

4:21: Criticism of literary criticism can be used to unearth biases. For instance, that it’s okay for women to write certain kinds of books that are mostly read by other women, but those books are then dismissed as being “for women.” Subconscious gender biases undermine women and make them unwilling to enter the fray–though that doesn’t seem to be an issue at this conference.

In preparation for this talk, I polled some very prominent women and asked them if they ever feel that their gender undermines them professionally. Virtually all of them reported saying something in a discussion or meaning and being completely ignored–until the comment is picked up and reported by a man. Then, suddenly everyone jerks to attention.

Obviously it’s true that compared to more violent manifestations of misogyny, being ignored/interrupted/talked over is easy to dismiss because it’s an experience of privileged women. We privileged women can feel petty and ashamed voicing complaints about these things.

Psychologists call these experiences “microaggressions,” and they cite evidence that for women (and other marginalized groups), these small attacks take a greater toll than the more outright expressions of misogyny.

Derald Wing Sue, a researcher on microaggressions, says that it’s easier for marginalized people to deal with the more outright expressions of bigotry because there’s no guesswork involved. You can easily dismiss them as bigotry.

4:26: As secularists with strong scientific orientations, we’ve concentrated almost exclusively on the way religions exploit the “will to believe.” We’ve used science to argue against this. And that’s important, but we’ve largely ignored another issue: the “will to matter.”

I first thought of this idea through one of my fictional characters. I was invested in being “rigorous” and these ideas seemed to lack rigor. My editor said, “I don’t really understand Renee [the character].” Renee, like me, was a rigorous philosopher. She started coming up with these ideas about “mattering.” We’re invested in “mattering” and will give up our lives to causes for the sake of “mattering.”

Her other idea was “the Mattering Map.” A person’s location on the Mattering Map is determined by what matters to them and their perception of people–who the somebodies and nobodies are, who the heroes are, who should never have been born. We differ on who we think the heroes are because we differ on what matters. If what matters is intelligence, then the heroes are the geniuses. (In fact, Renee, the character, married a genius and regretted it.)

4:31: The idea of the mattering map has become a working theoretical concept in certain areas of psychology. The idea of my fictional character has been incorporated into actual theoretical work! I Googled it and got tens of thousands of hits, more than I got for me. [audience laughs]

It was even written about in the Harvard Business Review: an article called “How Mattering Maps Affect Behavior.” The article even quotes Renee herself.

4:35: What is it that keeps intellectually sophisticated people clinging to propositions about the world so improbable that they can be described–if you’ll allow me to use the technical terminology of epistemology–as crazy-ass shit?

These beliefs extend at least 30,000 years to Cro Magnon man, whose cave paintings are interpreted as expressions of spiritual beliefs. But the religions that still resonate with people were all originally forged during the period called “the Axial Age“–between 800 and 200 BCE. At the same time, secular philosophy and tragic drama emerged in ancient Greece. This period is called “the axial age” because these traditions still extend into our own age, including among the secularists who are the inheritors of Greek tradition.

What they have in common is a preoccupation with the issue of mattering.

Some lives achieve mattering and others don’t. Perhaps there’s something a person can do that will make the difference when it comes to his or her mattering. The question is, what is the human life that matters?

The belief that you might mess up and have a life that doesn’t matter, that you might as well have not even had, erupted during the Axial Age.

4:38: Why did this preoccupation emerge in this age? One possibility is that it was spurred by the emergence of cities, and the greater anonymity and choices that they provided. Markets and money, which provide an impersonal measure of wealth, could also have provoked this development.

The ancient Greeks had religious rituals to ward off evil, but when it came to the issue of what makes a human life matter, the Greeks did not really use religion. They used human terms. This is what allowed philosophy to develop in ancient Greece.

The belief is that life must be extraordinary in order to matter; ordinary lives are not worth living. It’s not immortal attention you need to attract, but that of other mortals.

In The Apology, Plato has Socrates compare himself to Achilles, who chose a short extraordinary life over a long ordinary life. Of course, Socrates was already 70 years old…so it was too late to have a short extraordinary life. But still, this shows that Socrates/Plato bought into this general Greek idea of the “ethos of the extraordinary.”

4:45: On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Hebrews were grappling with the same issue. They approached the problem of mattering in divine terms, not human terms.

But only one of these approaches has been self-correcting, and that is secular moral reason, initiated by the Greeks.

Back to microaggressions. What do they do? They undermine a person’s sense that they matter. And they’re even worse when they come from someone who matters to you, who can’t be dismissed as the ranting bigots and slobbering misogynists.

4:50: Without sensitivity to the will to matter and how it gave rise to religion in the first place, we fail to understand the secular ethical progress to which we are the heirs, and upon which we wage an assault, macro or micro, every time we undermine a person’s sense that he or she matters.

4:54: Audience question: What about the tendency to matter by notoriety rather than popularity? When people like negative attention, is that because they feel like mattering by something positive isn’t an option?

Goldstein: The various ways that people want to matter are interesting. The Greeks had a concept of celebrity too (having poets fawn over you). Maybe when you’re a secularist and you think that this life is all you have, the attention of many people becomes all the more important. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to lead to a satisfactory life, though, and that’s an empirical question. That’s something for the psychologists to figure out.

4:56: Audience question: How do you justify the claim that we secularists are the heirs to the Greeks when there’s such a strong aversion to philosophy and the liberal arts in the atheist movement?

Goldstein: I think there should be a correction to that. A lot of times when we make points in the atheist movement, we’re relying on philosophy whether we know it or not. The idea that science is the best way of knowing is an epistemological claim. People are always wondering into philosophy without realizing it, and I think philosophers should be given some credit.

4:58: Audience question: Can you comment on traditional gender roles in terms of mattering?

Goldstein: One can become convinced of these things because they’re so rigidly imposed. They’re often just handed down to us–men/women, slaves/owners, adults/children. The empirical question is, do they work? Do they make people feel as though they really matter? Is it conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number of people? But throughout history, these roles break down. The suggestion is that they don’t work. It took so long to realize that slavery is wrong, that racism is wrong, that sexism is wrong, but after that you never go back. People never start owning slaves again. They never become racist again. It’s progress. It’s just as much progress as scientific progress, and the two are linked together.

5:01: Audience question: Can you bring your ideas on mattering and your ability to develop complex characters to understand the psychology of the reviled misogynist?

Goldstein: I feel like I do understand reviled misogynist. I’ve had quite a few in my books. I’ve never created a character that I don’t in some sense sympathize with, understand what’s motivating them. I think the explanations for misogyny are fairly well-understood. How wonderful it must be to be born and think that everything is coming to you, and that even if you don’t matter very much, you can be sure that there are people who matter less than you. That’s why, again, social justice is the answer to all of these questions. One has to make all people feel like they matter and don’t need to put down some group to feel like they matter.

~~~

Previous talks:

Intro

Faith-based Pseudoscience (Panel)

How Feminism Makes Us Better Skeptics (Amanda Marcotte)

[#wiscfi liveblog] The Mattering Map: Religion, Humanism, and Moral Progress
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[#wiscfi liveblog] Faith-Based Pseudo-Science

Miri, , , , , 18 Comments

The WiS2 conference logo.

It’s the first panel of WiS2!! The topic is faith-based pseudoscience and the panelists are Carrie Poppy, Sarah Moglia, Rebecca Watson, and (Surly) Amy Roth. The moderator is Desiree Schell.

The panelists! From left: Carrie Poppy, Sarah Moglia, Rebecca Watson, and Amy Roth.
The panelists! From left: Carrie Poppy, Sarah Moglia, Rebecca Watson, and Amy Roth.

2:05: Panelists are introducing themselves! Rebecca’s talking about Skepchick: “We also have Teen Skepchick, which is just like Skepchick except without the profanity.”

Desiree: We’re not talking about “faith” just in terms of religion, but in terms of belief-based treatment in general. So homeopathy, anti-vax, and all that is included.

2:08: Amy: A really good example of this is homeopathy. Homeopathy “works” on the principle that “like cures like.” So if someone has certain symptoms, you cure them by finding something that would cause the same symptoms in a healthy person–something that might be poison. You dilute it into water or alcohol. And you shake it. “We’re not gonna get into the details of why, that’s just silly.” You continue to dilute it until there’s not even a molecule of the poison left. They take what’s left, which is basically water or alcohol, and they put it into a sugar pill and give it to you.

Amy poisons the water to demonstrate homeopathy.
Amy poisons the water to demonstrate homeopathy.

Amy’s getting volunteers to take the happy sugar pills!

Here’s how it works. You take the alternative medicine, and either you feel better for whatever reason and you assume that it works, or you get worse and you die. Or you eventually go to a real doctor and you forget about the part where the altmed didn’t work.

2:14: Rebecca: Homeopathy started in Germany in the 18th century and came to the U.S. mainly thanks to the same woman who started the Christian Science movement, which doesn’t believe in medicine but rather praying away illness. They do support homeopathy, however. So religion was an integral part of the way homeopathy was popularized in the U.S.

Amy: At the time, blood-letting was the most popular treatment, and homeopathy sure felt better than that!

Carrie: People who practice altmed are often very religious, although when I was religious this sort of thing was very looked down upon.

Rebecca: I grew up Baptist and even meditation was seen as “the work of the devil.” But even that validates it–“it’s evil, but it works.” You’re still saying it works.

Desiree: There are a lot of similarities. Reiki is very similar to faith healing, for instance.

Carrie: Faith healing is a term for anything where you’re not using “medicine” to heal someone–just waving your hands and stuff like that. Reiki requires “certification,” where you go to someone else who’s been “certified” and get trained.

Rebecca: There’s certification for reiki?

2:19: Rebecca: Pretty much every religion has pseudoscience in it. Creationism is a good example. Creationists believe that god made the world within the last 5,000-or-so years. Another example is female genital mutilation; adherents believe that women need to be cut to make them pure and chaste. The Jewish tradition of male circumcision is similar, and has actually spread disease and led to the deaths of infants.

Another example is the war on women. This is also full of pseudoscience, such as the idea that women who are raped can’t get pregnant. This was something actually said by an elected politician [“Not anymore!” -audience member]. Or, women can’t have contraception or abortion because they are equivalent to murder. This has NO basis in science–only in religious belief.

2:24: Sarah: The idea that god “has a plan” for everyone or that “everything happens for a reason” is another example, and a terrible thing to say to someone who has an illness. But it’s often said to sick people and it discourages them from seeking treatment because it leads them to believe that god will help them through it.

Rebecca: The Secret, too, is faith-based pseudoscience. The “Law of Attraction” (a theory, rather, not a law) states that you can get anything you want in the universe if you pretend you have it. If you pretend hard enough, the universe will give it to you! One idea is that you create a “vision board” where you put things that you want. (Rebecca’s would have a unicorn on it.)

This may seem innocuous–just people pretending to have what they don’t have–but the people most attracted to this idea are the people who are most desperate. And what it’s saying is that kids with cancer just aren’t wishing hard enough. It’s victim-blaming.

It’s become like a religion–people treat it like one.

2:28: Desiree: I want to talk about this idea of “what’s the harm.” Do these things have varying levels of harm? Or all they all harmful?

Amy: Is the law of attraction like the Underpants Gnomes? Step one, collect underpants, step two, ???, step three, profit?

[lots of laughs]

Amy: They’re all harmful. If someone does a “detox” diet, they might not kill themselves per se, but you get a positive response from society for doing something that’s actually harmful, and people end up believing that there are toxins in everything and that they can’t trust their doctors and etc. etc.

Sarah: Are they using altmed in conjunction with going to the doctor, or are they doing it instead of going to the doctor? One is more harmful than the other. Also, there are secondary harms–for instance, sharks are killed to make powder that’s supposed to have some sort of effects.

Amy: Some animals are almost extinct because of this.

Carrie: Yes, there are varying levels of harm, but you can’t estimate how someone might have very little harm for you might have much more harm for someone else. When I was pretending to convert to Mormonism, they told me that there’s no such thing as intersex people and that it’s very “clear” which sex you’re supposed to be.

2:33: Rebecca: Chiropractors also use pseudoscience and believe stuff that has no basis in anything.

2:37: Desiree: It seems that both religious and secular pseudoscience targets women. Is that just my biased perception? If not, why is that?

Amy: That’s because according to our gender roles, the woman is the one who’s in charge of the family, and the shopping and healthcare for the family. So a lot of altmed products are marketed towards women and they “empower” women in a sense because they allow women without much money to be able to afford “healthcare” when perhaps they couldn’t afford to go to an actual doctor. You’re doing something active for your child if you’re buying them some sort of medicine.

Sarah: It also has to do with the fact that modern medicine does not treat men and women equally. For instnace, women are more likely to die of heart attacks because doctors don’t take women’s reports of pain seriously. When I had a Crohn’s flareup at 15, doctors were like, “Oh, you’re just being hysterical.” It can get frustrating after seeing doctor after doctor and you might end up going to a naturopath instead, because they spend much more time with each patient than real doctors do. We need to empower women to speak up and tell doctors that they can’t ignore them, and that they need healthcare.

Anemia is a good example. Women often get it and it’s often attributed to women’s periods. But actually, it can be due to a gastrointestinal bleed, which is really serious. Women should be able to speak up and say that no, it’s not just because of their periods.

Rebecca: The concept of “women’s intuition” also has to do with it. People believe that men use logic and reason, while women have this “other way of knowing” that they should be proud of. But the problem with that is when you find empowerment in something that doesn’t exist.

Jenny McCarthy–[audience groans]–advocates against vaccines because she claims they cause autism, even though all the research says otherwise. Jenny has a son, and when he was very young she believed that he was a “magic angel being with psychic powers called a crystal child” and that she was an “indigo child,” which is also a magical being. [WHAT?!?!?!] Apparently being blonde and blue-eyed has something to do with it? (Kinda racist.)

What happened was that Evan (the child) was diagnosed with autism and the crystal child stuff went away. Instead, Jenny began advocating against vaccines because she believed that that’s what caused it–against the advice of her doctor.

How this ties into empowerment is that Jenny called this “being a tiger mom.” She wasn’t going to just sit back and let the experts decide what was right for her son; she was going to take charge because of her “intuition.”

One writer, an About.com editor, has an autistic child and says that some people criticized her for not being more like Jenny and not being like a “tiger mom.” But she did her own research and chose to trust her doctors, and felt less like a woman for doing so. That’s the problem with presenting magical powers as “empowering” for women. That’s why I argue strongly for empowering women through science and education, and encouraging women to be more skeptical and to fight for themselves.

Amy: Jenny McCarthy has managed to indirectly kill a bunch of people. Just last week a baby died of whooping cough because it wasn’t vaccinated. Everyone, when you go home, get yourself a pertussis booster shot and save a baby.

2:45: Desiree: We’ve talked about a number of other issues besides vaccines and homeopathy. What’s your perspective on the fact that we always take on these two subjects? If we were to go somewhere else with our skepticism, where would you want to go?

Sarah: We need to make skepticism more human-focused. Why do so many women believe in pseudoscience? Why are women predominantly affected by this? rather than simply sitting on our high horses. We need to have more compassionate and focus on the people affected rather than on the problems themselves. [applause]

Amy: I know we’re all atheists and agnostics here, but [some] churches do a really good job of empowering women. If a religious woman decides she’s going to give up god, is she going to find something comparable in our community? If you need help with your baby, if you need advice with your relationships, the secular community should provide that.

Rebecca: We should take advantage of the people in our community. We had a Blog Against Disableism Day on Skepchick, which Sarah participated in. People with disabilities don’t necessarily want an able-bodied person lecturing at them about why they should give up pseudoscience. Someone who has struggled with the same issues might do a better job.

Same applies to women. Having women talk about the same issues that male skeptics talk about might also help reach out to women. Likewise for mothers–Elyse Anders has done a great job writing about raising children, whereas I couldn’t do that.

Amy: People think that talking about this stuff will “dilute” skepticism or atheism, but you can have all kinds of groups. There’s room for all of us.

2:52: Carrie: People focus on homeopathy because it’s hilarious. But the most important things you can tackle are the ones that matter to people who matter to you. If your mom sees a chiropractor, read about chiropractic and see why people believe in it and try to look at it from the point of view of your loved one who believes in it.

Rebecca: The war on women’s rights so obviously overlaps with the goals of the skeptic movement. We need to educate people on the science. There are feminist groups involved in this, but I’ve always wanted skeptic/secular groups to get more involved (although some already are).

Sarah: Part of the problem with our movement is that we like to consistently cite studies and data. But that’s hard to relate to someone who isn’t very educated or interested in science. I’m really mad that pseudoscientific people have co-oped the term “holistic,” because there is a lot to say for the idea of caring for a person rather than a disease. It’s really scary to have a serious illness and have someone come into the hospital room and say “What’s your living will?” We really do need to focus on the whole person and promote patient-centered care.

2:57: Desiree: Audience questions!

Rebecca just drank some of Amy’s fake-poisoned water and spat it out. Amy: “Thanks for not doing the spittake in my face.”

Audience question: What can we do to help lost and suffering people from a secular point of view?

Amy: We need to be better at providing social support.

Rebecca: Altmed conferences/fairs attract a huge number of people. Someone needs to step up and be the Oprah of critical thinking, because the current Oprah is not.

Sarah: The problem is we have Bill Maher. Who doesn’t believe in germ theory.

Rebecca: Skepticism does tend to be in-your-face and about telling people, “Your belief is wrong and here’s why.” But there’s another side of it–the compassionate side. It’s always been there but it hasn’t been stressed. It’s the side that says, “We want to save people’s lives. We want to stop people from being taken advantage of.” I’ve always known that we need an Oprah, but it’s not going to be me. I’m too mean.

3:02: Audience question: Harvard recently conducted a study showing that over 50% of patients reported improvement even when they knew that something is a placebo. So what’s the problem?

Rebecca: Everyone go read Trick or Treatment. It’s written by a former homeopathic doctor. It discusses in detail how we know what works, regardless of whether or not we know how it works. It talks about the first controlled experiment, when many sailors would die aboard boats and a doctor on board decided to split the sailors up into four groups. One group got apples, one got salted beef as usual, another got limes, and another got something else. The group given the same stuff died. The group that got apples didn’t get worse. And the group that got limes got better. It might be considered “alternative medicine,” but it works.

When we talk about pseudoscience, we’re not talking about stuff that we don’t know how it works. We’re talking about stuff that’s been shown not to work. That study about placebos suggests that we shouldn’t give placebos without being honest about what they are.

Carrie: I’d have no problem with homeopathy if it said on the carton that it’s placebo.

Amy: Who knows which disease the example from Trick or Treatment discussed? [Scurvy!]

Also: Hawthorne Effect. When people know they’re being watched, they get better. It works with doctors, too–you want to please your doctor so you feel better and report feeling better.

Carrie: My partner and I play that “please the doctor” game all the time.

[laughs, applause]

3:07: Audience question: What do you think about religion taking over instead of getting help for mental health issues?

Rebecca: Scientology is really bad at this. They have a number of sham organizations and one of them is dedicated to ending the practice of psychiatry entirely. And that’s really harmful, because they blame the people with mental illness for not being “clear” and needing more “auditing.”

Carrie: There can be good motivations behind this, because there are a lot of unsolved problems in psychology. But psychologists admit that. That can only be solved with more science, not less.

Rebecca: Outside of the sphere of real mental illness, it can be beneficial to have someone in the community whom you trust and can go to to talk about your problems. I wish there were more secular alternatives to the religious leaders who serve this function. And with religious leaders and psychics it can get out of hand.

Amy: Should we have a skeptics’ confession box at events?

Rebecca: I would like to be the person hearing the confessions because there would be some juicy shit!

3:10: Audience question: Those of us who think that skepticism can be used to address social issues (stop and frisk, immigration, etc.) are accused of mission drift. It seems that the skeptic movement doesn’t want us.

Amy: Start your own group:

Rebecca: It may seem that the larger skeptic movement doesn’t want you, but everyone on this panel wants you! You get to decide which groups you support, which conferences you attend, etc. You can vote with your dollar.

And the people who are already working on this issue can use a healthy dose of skepticism. A few years back the government convened a panel to determine when women should start getting breast cancer screenings. The panel saw that between the ages of 30 and 40, there were a lot of false positives and it was having a negative impact. So they recommended that the age be pushed back to 40.

I first saw this news on a feminist blog, and the blogger was furious because it’s “just a panel of men who have no idea what women go through” and who just want to not worry “poor hysterical women” with false positives. But that’s wrong! The recommendation was based on solid evidence, and luckily a lot of skeptics in the comments corrected that blogger and pointed out the actual evidence that this was based on.

It’s very important for the feminist blogger to see this and adjust her point of view. What then happened was that on another feminist blog, which was concerned with issues of race, noted that the recommendation that was put out was “for the average woman.” But the average woman is white. When Black women get breast cancer, it tends to happen much earlier and be much more aggressive. So Black women shouldn’t necessarily follow those guidelines. So this is a good example of skeptics getting involved in the feminist movement and making it better.

Encourage leaders of groups to get involved in the issues you are about. And if they won’t, start your own blog or group. That’s why we have guest posts at Skepchick, that’s why we have Skepchickon in July.

3:15: Sarah: Maybe some organizations do consider social justice to be mission drift. But the students in this movement are overwhelmingly supportive of making skepticism and secularism about social justice. There are lots of students here, especially student bloggers. [HI!!!] They’ve called us [the Secular Student Alliance] out, asking why our conference is predominantly white. They raised tons of money for Light the Night, which went to cancer research. We have students doing grassroots activism every single day. College is a very formative time in people’s lives–I became an atheist in college. High school and college are the time to reach people; if someone’s been doing pseudoscience for 20 years it’s gotten ingrained, but if you reach people during high school or college, you can change their minds.

Yay students!

3:16: Panel’s over!

~~~

Previous talks:

Intro

[#wiscfi liveblog] Faith-Based Pseudo-Science

Occasional Link Roundup

Miri3 Comments

It’s finally WiS2 weekend! Kate, Jason, and I will be taking turns liveblogging everything, so check our blogs if you want to follow along. If you’re going, I hope to see you there!

~~~

1. Greta points out the hypocrisy of expecting religious communities to “police their own” while not doing the same within our own communities. This is a must-read:

I don’t give a shit about the common ground I share with these people. The common ground of “we both don’t believe in God” is a whole lot less important to me than our differences: the difference that they think it’s okay to call women cunts and I do not, the difference that they think I should be ignored because I’m ugly or a whore and I do not; the difference that they think it’s okay to persistently harass and threaten people and I do not; the difference that they think it’s okay to hack into my private email lists and I do not; the difference that they hope I get raped and I do not; the difference that they want me to fuck myself with a knife and I do not. And I have serious problems with the expectation that I should set aside these differences, and focus on our common ground of having concluded that God doesn’t exist… and that I’m not being a good team player if I don’t.

2. We had a bit of a controversy on campus around Cinco de Mayo–the student government wrote a long email trying to tell students not to be culturally appropriative in their celebrations, but they mostly failed to get the point across. My friend Mauricio does a much better job:

At this point someone might object: “But we wear ‘Irish’ costumes every St. Patrick’s Day, and there seems to be nothing wrong with that.” This objection brings up the second important feature of the case of the Native costume. The American soldiers and the captured Natives are not on equal ground—the Americans are in a position of power. It is this power differential that makes the mocking offensive. To see this, imagine a friend mocking one of your mannerisms, and then imagine a professor doing the same in front of the whole class. Clearly the second is much more humiliating, simply because this person holds a kind of power over you that the friend does not. The Irish haven’t been an oppressed minority in the US for a century, which is what makes St. Patrick’s Day celebrations ok. They are on equal grounds with the people celebrating.

3. Scott Alexander shows that you can, in fact, study prejudice and discrimination empirically and rigorously.

4. A writer at the Crunk Feminist Collective talks about Beyonce’s daughter, Blue Ivy, and the politics of Black women’s hair:

I don’t know if it is internalized racism as much as it is internalized standards of beauty within black communities that makes this so commonplace.  Well that and an obsession with blackgirl hair that is tamed, in order, slicked down on the sides, wrapped around in braids or covered in curls.  We don’t seem to know what to do with blackgirls whose hair is left to do what it will, with baby hairs flying with wild abandon and little afros sticking out every which-a-way.  We want black women’s hair to be “fixed” in the same way we want them to be “fixed” (and “right”–whatever that means).  And blackgirls are no exception.  They are not protected from the harsh judgments about our hair that we oftentimes received ourselves.

5. Over at the Belle Jar, a discussion of the deadly factory collapse in Bangladesh and why the solution is not as simple as refusing to buy “cheap” clothing:

There are a lot of problems with these types of statements. For one thing, the price of a piece of clothing is not at all indicative of the working conditions of its manufacturer. For another, implying (or outright saying) that there is something morally wrong with paying ten dollars for a t-shirt is incredibly classist. And finally, saying stuff like this shows a serious lack of understanding about how the garment industry works.

6. Ania explains how abusers use the promise of “dialogue” to perpetrate more abuse:

 You cut them off, except cutting them off doesn’t give you any peace. They manage to get in touch with you through someone else. Someone they have convinced that they want to talk to resolve things. The person urges you to make up with them. After all family is family and it is not good to be divisive. You want to agree; you want to hope that this time finally you can have an honest discussion about everything that has gone wrong, on how their actions have made you feel. You want this to be over. You want your anxiety to end, and go back to talking about the things you both care about instead of being called names. But you also remember the last time they promised to work things out, when the dialogue ended up being nothing more than an excuse to yell at you some more. To tear you down just a little bit further. So you ask for a show of good faith; something small, but something to show that they are sincere. Or maybe something not that small, but something that has to be done for any resolution to take place. But they aren’t willing to make that sacrifice. Because it is not about resolution, it is about further abuse. It is about getting the chance to yell at you and abuse you further, but in a new location; a location, where if you don’t show up, you are accused of being the unreasonable one.

7. Jason talks about Danny Brown, the rapper who was recently sexually assaulted while performing:

I lay the blame for all the pain experienced by Brown in dealing with the consequences of his assaulter’s actions, squarely at the feet of the power dynamics of privilege at play. That same power dynamic disadvantages women who are raped by men, and practically ensures that the comparatively few men who are raped by women, like Brown, will probably never see real justice. They’re forced to play it off like it’s no big deal. They’re forced to accept that they don’t get to choose what happens to their dick, by whom, and when. They get to taste in one small way what it’s like to be a woman in a rape culture, and some of these male rape victims even internalize the fucked up narrative that you should be thankful that someone is willing to suck your dick — that you should take it as a compliment, or as something to be cheered on, and never, ever get to say “that was fucked up”, on penalty of having a swarm of self-appointed gender police attack you for stepping out of line.

8. This is a bit older, but it’s very applicable for this weekend: Emily Finke explains that harassment and abuse of women is not just an internet thing:

If you think that inappropriate comments and requests for sex are an internet thing, you’ve never tried to stop a coworker or boss from hitting on you repeatedly, or a head of security, or the guy at the convenience store across the street.

If you think that being shouted at and asked to show people your tits just because you present as a woman only happens in chat rooms and online games, you’ve never walked past a frat house, or, unfortunately, through the main thoroughfares of either university I’ve attended.

If you think unasked for commentary on a woman’s looks only happens because girls post pictures on internet forums (which probably means they’re asking for it), you’ve never been at a bus stop, or the city square, or a mall, or… well, anywhere, really.

If you think insecure men trying to drive women out of activism only happens in online male-dominated communities, you’ve never paid attention politics. Or Fox. Or CNN, sadly.

9. That “Fitch the Homeless” thing is really, really icky. Here’s why:

The big deal comes in when homeless people are being exploited to prove a point. Many homeless people are already widely disenfranchised and lacking a platform to be heard or to get access to the resources they need. By attempting to make a brand look bad by associating it with homelessness, the message is that homeless people are so gross, dirty, shameful (insert negative attribute here) that by associating the brand with these types of people, we are really making the brand look shitty, because these people are so shitty! get it? It’s all such a laugh! This type of “activism” is a farce. It contributes to and propagates a culture wherein homeless people can be used as props to further an agenda.

10. According to this blogger, a “practicality troll” is “one who blames young people for their own economic misfortune, on the grounds that they chose an impractical education or career path,” and their narrative of financially troubled young people has become dominant:

I am one of the lucky ones….But I have friends who are suffering. They are being bounced around between unpaid internships, or desperately sending out resumes, or stuck working in underpaid fast-food jobs when they have master’s degrees. It’s nasty out there, and for baby boomers with secure pensions to shrug their shoulders and say that we should have been more shrewd with our career planning when we were seventeen and there was no recession and everybody was telling us to follow our passions is not just wrong; it’s also insulting. It’s a deliberate attack on unemployed and underemployed young people, aimed at implicating us in our own misfortune and diverting attention away from political choices that are needlessly exacerbating the recession. That this wrong and hurtful narrative has been accepted by the media and political elites is a big, big problem.

11. An excellent Geek Feminism post on organizational structure, majority rule, and injustice:

Majority rule is, then, a problem because majorities often opt to keep minorities in their place for the benefit of the majority. And yes, a group made up of entirely people who see themselves as good and ethical can and will deny basic rights, respect and dignity to people based on gender, sexuality, ability, race, class, and other axes of oppression. The world might be different someday, but we can’t get there by pretending we are there.

Self-promote in the comments and enjoy WiS2 if you’re going!

Occasional Link Roundup

"But I'm a man and I don't feel like I have any privilege."

Miri, , , , , , 181 Comments

Another one inspired by the comment thread of doom.

The hardest thing about explaining privilege to members of dominant groups is that, usually, the fact that you’re advantaged in certain ways doesn’t mean you’re not disadvantaged in many other ways. So when we’re talking about gender and a man is told that he’s privileged–or when we’re talking about race and a white person is told that they’re privileged, or whatever–their immediate response is often, “What privilege? Look at all the ways my life has been unfair!”

To be clear, this argument is not always made in good faith*. However, for the sake of this post, I’m going to pretend that it is, because there are important points to be made about this.

Privilege is best understood as a system of interacting benefits (or disadvantages). When people in a feminist space talk about “privilege,” they often just mean male privilege. All other things being equal–this is the important part–if you are a man, you are at an advantage relative to a woman.

Of course, that’s only useful theoretically. In practice, gender isn’t the only thing that matters. Race, sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity, (dis)ability, religion, skin color (within race), class, weight, attractiveness, immigration status–all these things make a difference. (This is what feminists refer to as “intersectionality.”)

Say you’re a man but you lack privilege in another area–say you’re a man of color. Are you more privileged than a white, upper-class, straight, able-bodied, Christian woman? Probably not. Are you more privileged than a lower-middle-class, queer Latina woman? Probably. And your being male is only one of many ways in which you are more privileged than this hypothetical woman.

Many men have trouble understanding or accepting the concept of privilege because they do not feel that they have much of it. On one hand, this is true–men can be poor, men can be disabled, men can be non-white, men can be queer. On the other hand, privilege often remains unchallenged because it is invisible. If you are white, you don’t spend much time thinking about the fact that you never (or almost never) get stopped by the cops for absolutely no reason, searched, and subjected to harsh questions. If you are a man of color, this is something that’s almost certainly happened to you, and a problem of which you are very much aware. Likewise, if you’re a man–unless you’re very visibly gender-nonconforming–you don’t have to worry every time you go out alone at night that someone will harass you, that someone will rub up against you on the subway platform and make disgusting sounds, that someone will follow you down the street yelling at you to come back to him. All of these things have happened to me and most other women.

But this probably isn’t something you think about all the time. It’s natural that you’d think more about the ways your life can be challenging, not about how lucky you are to not get followed down the street by strange men all the time. The injustices in your life are probably more salient to you than all the myriad ways in which things work as they should. So it would make sense that, overall, you feel like you lack privilege rather than feeling like you have it.

Another way of looking at it is that a man can very much have a really difficult life that’s almost devoid of any privileges. But if, hypothetically, this same man with these same circumstances had instead been born a woman, her life would be even more difficult and even more devoid of privilege.

This is why privilege is best used as a theoretical concept and not taken too literally. It’s impossible to “measure” it. It’s impossible to know, for instance, whether a hypothetical man necessarily has more total privilege than me, or whether I have more than him.

This is also why, when discussing privilege with folks who aren’t very familiar with intersectionality, it’s best to be as specific as possible. “You just don’t get this because you’re privileged” or “Check your privilege” is never going to work if the person you’re talking to actually lacks privilege along every axis other than the one you’re talking about (well, or if they don’t know what the hell privilege even means). If I–a white, able-bodied, cisgender, middle-class woman–yell at a poor, queer man of color to “check his privilege” because he said something sexist, he would (and should) laugh in my face. Because he’ll probably immediately think of his class, race, and sexual orientation and wonder how, exactly, he’s so privileged.

When this comes up, it’s vital to remind people that the disadvantages they face in life are not a product of the fact that they’re male (or white, or whatever). If I tell you that being a woman means I have to worry about people harassing me on the street and you tell me that, well, being a queer man means you get harassed on the street too, you’re missing the point a little. It’s not being a man that gets you harassed. It’s being queer, because we have a society that’s unjust toward queer people.

Some have tried to get around this hurdle when educating about privilege by creating metaphors in which you get a certain number of “points” in different domains. If you’re white, you get more “points” than if you’re not white. If you’re male, you get more points than if you’re not male. If you’re straight…you get the idea. Then the total points you have is your privilege, and you can see that getting few points in one category doesn’t mean you can’t get many points in another category. (John Scalzi made a similar metaphor brilliantly here.)

Such metaphors are fraught with complications (should being male give you more points than being white?), they’re useful for showing that you can’t just look at one axis. It’s not just about being male. It’s not just about being white. It’s everything.

Privilege is a theory, a framework that can be used to explain how our social world works. Like all theories, it has weaknesses and blind spots. Some try to make up for these by continually inventing new forms of privilege–vanilla privilege and couple privilege are a few that I’ve heard relatively recently–but in reality, the problem with taking privilege too literally is that there are just too damn many variables that shape our circumstances and what we are able to achieve. It is completely possible to be a straight white cis able-bodied middle-class Christian mentally/physically healthy English-speaking American plain-ol-vanilla-white-bread man and still have your life completely destroyed and fucked over by circumstances beyond your control.

That does not mean that you do not have privilege.

All it means is that privilege is just a theory, useful for explaining many but not all things, and that you, my friend, were really unlucky and that legitimately sucks.

~~~

*Examples: “Male privilege? But women never answer my OkCupid messages!” and “White privilege? But [insert story about how you got rejected from a job/college because some Totally Unqualified Black Person got it instead].”

"But I'm a man and I don't feel like I have any privilege."

[meta] On Tone, the Policing Thereof, and What It Is I Do Here

Miri, , , , , , , 15 Comments

So my “Why You Shouldn’t Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She’s Hot” post went a little bit viral and I’m still responding to comments on it. One thing that has come up a lot are guys telling me that they basically agree with me, but that they are very concerned that the tone with which I delivered that message will keep other guys from agreeing with what they do earnestly believe is a very important message.

I ended up responding to one such comment with such a long rebuttal that I thought I’d repost it as a regular post and perhaps clarify some things for people who don’t understand why I dislike the tone argument* so much, and what I’m actually doing with this blog anyway.

~~~

Here’s the thing with concern/tone trolling and telling writers/activists how to be writers/activists.

Actually, here are the multiple things.

1. The fact that a given rhetorical approach does not work on you is not, in and of itself, evidence that it shouldn’t be used because it doesn’t work on anyone. Different people respond best to different argumentation styles. Some people need more hand-holding that they’re going to get here. That’s fine; there are other spaces where there is more hand-holding. Some people respond well to much harsher tactics than I ever use here–for instance, PZ Myers’ blog, Pharyngula. Someone once told me that it was PZ and his harsh commentariat that made him abandon his anti-feminist beliefs. Yup! Different strokes for different folks.

I’ve convinced many people of many things in the short few years I’ve been blogging. I’ve also failed to convince many people of many things. That’s okay. Either those people are best convinced by a different strategy, which I’m sure they’ll find their way to eventually, or those people are just too set in their views to be convinced. Yes, that’s a possibility, and I fully accept it.

If you are not satisfied with the style used in this space because you think it’s too harsh, you are welcome to start your own space, whether it be a blog, a forum, a subreddit, a meatspace discussion group, you name it. I will warn you, though, that hand-holdey spaces for anti-feminist men can go very, very, rape-apologetically wrong, à la the Good Men Project. But if that’s your passion, give it a shot.

Regardless, what is under discussion in this post and its comments are the ideas I’ve laid out in the post–not my writing style, not my tone, not anything else related to how I do what I do. Not only is that simply off-topic, but also, I did not ask you for advice on my writing style and tone and activism. That’s not to say that I never solicit or accept such advice–I do, but from fellow writers and activists who know what they’re doing. I promise you that there is plenty of discussion going on inside feminist spaces on how to reach men/non-feminists and all sorts of other issues that we face as a movement.

One reason you may have received such a hostile response from my commenters is because you don’t seem to realize that 1) we discuss and debate this issue vigorously on our own, and 2) you are not the first person to come in here and offer us unsolicited advice on something we have more experience with than you. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but that’s how it is. You are not the first person to do it on this post, you are not the first person to do it on this blog, you are not the first person to do this on ANY online feminist space, you are not the first person to do this in the history of the movement. And, by the way, if you look at the history of the feminist movement, you’ll see that it’s been massively successful despite people from the very beginning being all like “BUT HOW ARE YOU EVER GOING TO CONVINCE MEN IF YOU ARE SO ANGRY.” Somehow, we did it. We got the right to vote. We got anti-employment discrimination laws passed. We made marital rape a crime. We made abortion and birth control legal. We got Title IX. We will end street harassment, too. Maybe not this year. Maybe not even this decade. But we will end this shit. Promise!

2. You may be misunderstanding what it is I do here. My aim with this blog is not to convince every single viciously anti-feminist man to be a feminist. In fact, it’s not to convince any viciously anti-feminist men to be feminists, although if I get a few then that’s great. If that were my goal, though, I would’ve burned out years ago, because it’s very rare that that happens. Not because I have the “wrong” style or techniques, but because that depends mostly on the person being convinced and not on the person trying to convince them.

And, yes, the title of this post literally addressed men; that is, it was written in second-person. That’s because I would like men to read this post and think about it. But also, because it’s a good rhetorical strategy that gets attention. A post titled “Why I Personally Believe Men Shouldn’t Tell Random Girls On The Street That They’re Hot” is clunkier and less attention-grabbing, and also sounds kind of dumb. That’s all there is to it.

So, if I don’t write in order to convert people who vehemently disagree with me, why do I write? To give people things to think about. To provide people who agree with me but lack the words to express it with arguments they can take away and use elsewhere. To show people who struggle with the same things I struggle with that they are accepted, understood, not alone. To tip the people on the fence over to my side. To inform people of things they didn’t know about before. To have fun.

Accordingly, the way I judge my own writing is not, How many people did I convert?

It’s, Have I expressed myself clearly and eloquently? Have I stayed true to my own values and opinions? Have I given people things to think about? Have I made people who are struggling feel a bit better? Have I taught them something? Did I have a good time writing this, and did people have a good time reading it?

So, not only are you giving me advice that I did not ask for, but you’re also giving me advice that I don’t actually need.

3. You, and many other commenters, claim that I and those who agree with me don’t “understand” the male perspective or don’t “take it into account.” Oh, but we do. It is impossible to be a woman in this world and not “understand” the male perspective. The male perspective is on TV. It’s in the papers. It’s the professors giving our lectures at school. It’s our fathers, and our mothers who echo our fathers. It’s shouted at us on the streets. It’s provided without solicitation in every space we ever enter, including the online spaces we try to create for ourselves.

You cannot be a woman in a patriarchal society and not understand men. But you can be a man in a patriarchal society and not understand women.

This blog is not a space where I have to provide anyone’s perspective but my own. While there’s much more to me than being a woman, one thing that I’m definitely not is a man. You will not see the “male perspective” in my writing, and nor should you.

~~~

Some excellent resources:
A Few Things To Stop Doing When You Find a Feminist Blog

Derailing For Dummies

Geek Feminism on the tone argument

Geek Feminism on concern trolls

Greta Christina on arguing effectively on the Internet

~~~

*It is not, by the way, that I think tone doesn’t or shouldn’t matter, or that there are never important considerations to be made about tone. I just don’t think this is one of them.

[meta] On Tone, the Policing Thereof, and What It Is I Do Here

Richwine and the Inherent Goodness of Intelligence

Miri, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 16 Comments

[Content note: racism]

In news that should surprise absolutely no one, conservatives have once again embarrassed themselves by attempting to “prove” with “science” that people of color are stupider than white people. Yup, again.

You’ve probably read this story elsewhere so I’ll make my recap brief: It has come to light that Jason Richwine (I’m not making this name up, folks), the lead author of a study on immigration from the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote his 2009 PhD dissertation on…why Hispanics are genetically stupider than whites and will therefore continue to have children who are stupider than whites:

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — ‘the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ’ — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, ‘No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.‘

In case you’re wondering at which podunk school Richwine wrote such a dissertation, well, it was Harvard.

(Awkwardly, the very next day after WaPo broke this story, a Pew Research Center report was released that showed that Hispanic students’ rate of college enrollment is now greater than whites’. LOLZ. [However, note that Hispanic =/= Latino.])

Why are conservatives so goddamn obsessed with trying to “prove” that people of color are stupid? Zack Beauchamp at ThinkProgress has a great analysis:

These spats don’t generally endear conservatism to the general public, so it’s not like this is a political move. So why is it that the right-of-center intelligentsia keeps coming back to this topic? I’d suggest two reasons: first, a link between race and IQ moots the moral imperative for public policy aimed at addressing systemic poverty; second, it allows conservatives to take up the mantle of disinterested, dispassionate intellectual they so love.

One mistake that all of these people make–aside from the glaring one of being racist, that is–is that they treat the distinction between “IQ” and “intelligence” as completely irrelevant. Scrupulous research psychologists are quick to acknowledge that the measures they use are imperfect and can only provide an approximation of the actual abstractions they are trying to assess. So if you score higher on a scale of depression, we don’t say you are “more depressed”; we say that you “scored higher on the Such-and-Such Depression Scale.” If you score higher on a scale of extroversion, we don’t say that you are “more extroverted”; we say that you “scored higher on the Blah-Blah-Blah Extroversion-Introversion Scale.” At least, that’s what careful, conscientious psychologists do.

Many believe that intelligence is a much more concrete (and therefore measurable) quality than extroversion or how depressed you are. They may be right; I’m not a cognitive psychologist so this is not my specialty. However, serious criticism of IQ as a measure of intelligence has been made–and by “Real Scientists,” too, not just by Bleeding-Heart-Tree-Hugging-I’m-Mixing-Metaphors Liberals. And in terms of race, some researchers have suggested that IQ tests are biased against Mexican Americans because the tests contain “cultural influences” that reduce the validity of the test when assessing these students’ cognitive ability.

Back to Beauchamp’s analysis of conservatives and why they’re so obsessed with race and IQ:

This vein of argument was pioneered by Richwine’s mentor, Bell Curve author Charles Murray. Murray’s research focused more on the purported unintelligence of African-Americans, but his conclusions about its role in sustaining poverty were similar. Murray has taken this conclusion and used it to argue against everything from affirmative action to essentially all policy interventions aimed at reducing economic inequality. It’s easy to see how this argument works — if some people are less intelligent than others, as a consequence of either genetics or “underclass culture,” then government programs aren’t likely to help equalize society — creating an economically more level playing field will only cause the most talented to rise to the top again. Inequality is thus natural and ineradicable; poverty might be helped at the margins, but helping the unintelligent will be fraught with unintended consequences.

Moreover, this framing allows conservatives to explain the obviously racial character of American poverty without having to concede the continued relevance of racism to American public life. If it’s really the case that people with certain backgrounds simply aren’t as smart as others, then it makes sense that they’d be less successful as a group. What strikes progressives as offensively racial inequality thus becomes naturalized for conservatives in the same way that inequality and poverty writ large do.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? People of color are disproportionately likely to be poor compared to white people. People of color are stupider than white people. Ergo, there’s no need to try to alleviate poverty and economic inequality because it’s natural.

Hopefully you noticed the big honkin’ naturalistic fallacy in that argument. Even if it’s natural for people of color to be poor (because they’re stupid and therefore can’t get off the couch and get a job), that doesn’t mean that this is a good way for society to be. It does not follow that we should just allow things to continue this way.

The other big flaw is that these conservatives are also succumbing–as, to be fair, most people do–to the notion that people with higher IQs/more intelligence are inherently better than people with lower IQs/less intelligence. It is okay that people with little intelligence should struggle just to get by, should be unable to give their children a better life (whether those children have low IQs or not), should be unable to afford basic healthcare, should have to eat cheap, unhealthy food, should have to choose between dangerous, dehumanizing, low-pay work (or none at all) and breaking the law to make money, should have to live as second-class citizens. All because they are “less intelligent,” which is supposedly mostly genetic and therefore not something they chose.

I wish liberals talked about this more. I wish that when conservatives started trotting out these reprehensible arguments, that liberals would, rather than simply emphasizing that there is no proof that people of color are “naturally” dumber than white people and that this is a racist argument, also ask why it is that intelligence should determine whether or not you have access to food, shelter, and healthcare.

There are, of course, many other important things to discuss here. We could talk about how there are so many different types of intelligence and IQ tests only measure a certain type. We could talk about how growing up in poverty drastically reduces one’s opportunities for intellectual enrichment and growth. We could talk about how you don’t necessarily need to be “smart” to contribute to society; we do need service-sector workers and types of unskilled laborers and they should be able to live on what they make, too.

But I think we need to talk about this idea that having a lot of “intelligence” (whatever that even means) makes you better than those who do not have a lot of it. So much better, in fact, those without sufficient “intelligence” do not deserve to live above the poverty line.

~~~

Edit: Not quite related to the main point of this article, but the conservative response to this controversy and Richwine’s subsequent firing/resignation from the Heritage Foundation is veeery interesting. I won’t link to any because you can Google it yourself, but it’s all about Richwine’s “crucifixion” and how liberals are trying to “destroy” him and so on.

Conservatives have this interesting theory in which, when someone does something wrong, it is the fault of the person who calls attention to it that the wrong-doer experiences negative consequences. It’s not that Richwine did something wrong, it’s that the meanie liberals are trying to destroy him. Similarly, when someone accuses someone–say, up-and-coming football players–of sexual assault, many conservatives accuse the victims of “ruining” their rapists’ lives by bringing what they did to light.

The fact that people’s reputation suffers when they do something terrifically stupid or harmful is not a bad thing. That is, indeed, society working as it should. It is a feature, not a bug.

Richwine and the Inherent Goodness of Intelligence

Self-Diagnosis and Its Discontents

Miri, , , , , , , 37 Comments

There’s a certain scorn reserved for people who diagnose themselves with mental illnesses–people who, based on their own research or prior knowledge, decide that there’s a decent chance they have a diagnosable disorder, even if they haven’t (yet) seen a professional about it.

I understand why psychologists and psychiatrists might find them troublesome. Nobody likes the idea of someone getting worked up over the possibility that they have a mental illness when they really don’t. Professional mental healthcare workers feel that they know more about mental illness than the general population (and, with some exceptions, they do) and that it’s their “job” to serve as gatekeepers of mental healthcare. This includes deciding who is mentally ill and who is not.

Self-diagnosis also gets a bad rap from people who have been professionally diagnosed with a mental illness. They feel that people who self-diagnose are doing it for attention or because they think that diagnosis is trendy.

This actually bothers me much more than the arguments against self-diagnosis coming from professionals. Why?

Because the claim that people who self-diagnose are just “doing it for attention” or because they think it’s “cool” is the exact same claim frequently made about people who get diagnosed professionally.

To be clear, I’m not saying that people never label themselves as mentally ill for attention. Maybe some do. Maybe a significant proportion of people who self-diagnose don’t really have a mental illness at all. I’d have to see research to know, and from my searches so far I haven’t really found much research on the phenomenon of self-diagnosis. (But I’m taking note of this for my master’s thesis someday.)

However, there’s a difference between someone who’s feeling sad for a few days and refer to themselves as “depressed,” and someone who’s been struggling for weeks, months, or years, and who has read books and articles on the subject and studied the DSM definition of the illness. The former may not even count as “self-diagnosis,” but rather as using a clinical term colloquially–just like everyone who says “oh god this is so OCD of me” or “she’s totally schizo.” (This, by the way, is wrong; please don’t do it.)

(It’s also likely the case that some people self-diagnose because they have hypochondria. However, the problem is not that they are self-diagnosing. The problem is that they have untreated hypochondria. Maybe diagnosing themselves with something else will get them into treatment, where a perceptive psychologist will diagnose them with hypochondria and treat them for it.)

Even if some people who self-diagnose are wrong, I still think that we should refrain from judging people who self-diagnose and take their claims seriously. Here’s why.

1. It gets people into treatment.

I wish we had a system of mental healthcare–and a system of social norms–in which everyone got mental health checkups just as they get physical health checkups. For that, two main things would have to change–mental healthcare would have to become affordable and accessible for everyone, and the stigma of seeing mental health professionals (whether or not one has a mental illness) would have to disappear. (There are other necessary conditions for that, too–the distrust that many marginalized people understandably have for mental healthcare would have to be alleviated, and so on.)

For now, going to see a therapist or psychiatrist is difficult. It requires financial resources, lots of time and determination, and a certain amount of risk–what if your employer finds out? What if your friends and family find out (unless they know and support you)? What will people think?

Because the barriers to seeing a professional are often high, many people need a strong push to go see one. Having a strong suspicion that you have a diagnosable mental illness can provide that push for many people, because nobody wants to go through the hassle of finding a therapist that their insurance covers (or finding a sliding-scale one if they don’t have insurance), coming up with the money to pay the deductible, taking time off work to go to the appointment, dealing with the fear of talking to a total stranger about their feelings, and actually going through with the appointment, only to be told that there’s “nothing wrong” with them.

As much as I wish things were different, the reality right now is that relatively few people go to therapists or psychiatrists unless they believe that they have a mental illness. If self-diagnosing first gets them into treatment, then I don’t want to stigmatize self-diagnosis.

2. It helps them find resources whether or not they see a professional.

In the previous point, I explained that for many people, self-diagnosing can be a necessary first step to getting treatment from a professional. In addition, once people have diagnosed themselves, they are able to seek out their own resources–books, support groups, online forums, etc.–to help them manage their symptoms. This can be extremely helpful whether or not they’re planning on getting treatment professionally.

While psychiatric labels like “depression,” “generalized anxiety,” and “ADHD” have their drawbacks, they are often necessary for finding resources that help people understand what they’re going through and help themselves feel better. If I’m at a library looking for books that might help me, asking the librarian for “books about depression” or “books about ADHD” will be much more useful than asking them for “books about feeling like shit all the time and not wanting to do anything with friends” or “books about getting distracted whenever you start work and not really having the motivation to finish any of it and it has nothing to do with laziness by the way.” Same goes for a Google search.

It’s certainly fair to be worried that people looking on their own will find resources that are unhelpful or even dangerous. But I think this is less of a problem with self-diagnosis per se, and more of a problem with the lack of scientific literacy in our society, and the lack of emphasis on skepticism when evaluating therapeutic claims. For what it’s worth, going to see a mental health professional will not necessarily prevent you from encountering quackery and bullshit of all kinds. And in any case, the blame does not lie with the people who self-diagnose and then fall for pseudoscientific scams, but with the people who perpetrate the scams in the first place.

This point is especially important given that many people will not be able to access professional mental healthcare services for various reasons. Maybe they can’t afford it; maybe they work three jobs and don’t have time; maybe they can’t find a therapist who is willing to accept the fact that they are trans*, kinky, poly, etc. Maybe they are minors whose parents are unwilling to get them into treatment. Maybe they were abused by medical professionals and cannot go back into treatment without worsening their mental health.

There are all kinds of reasons people may be unable to go and get their diagnosis verified by a professional, and most of these are tied up in issues of privilege. If you have never had to worry that a doctor or psychologist will be prejudiced against you, then you have privilege.

3. It can help with symptom management whether you have the “real” disorder or not.

At one point when my depression was particularly bad I noticed that I had some symptoms that were very typical of borderline personality disorder. For instance, I had a huge fear that people would abandon me and I would bounce back and forth between glorifying and demonizing certain people. If someone made the slightest criticism of me or wasn’t available enough for me, I would decide that they hate me and don’t care if I live or die. I had wild mood swings. That sort of thing. It’s not that I thought I actually had BPD; rather, I noticed that I had some of its symptoms and wondered if perhaps certain techniques that help people with BPD might also help me.

Luckily, at this time I was still seeing a therapist. So in my next session, I decided to mention this observation that I had made, and the conversation went like this:

Me: I’ve noticed that I have some BPD-like symptoms.
Her: Oh, you don’t have BPD.
Me: Right, but I seem to have some of its symptoms–
Her: No, trust me, I’ve worked with people with BPD and you do NOT have BPD.

I suppose I could’ve persevered with this line of thinking, but instead I felt shut down and put in my place. I dropped the subject.

So determined was this therapist to make sure that I know which mental illness(es) I do and do not have that she missed out on what could’ve been a really useful discussion. What she could’ve done instead was ask, “What makes you say that?” and allow me to discuss the symptoms I’d noticed, whether or not they are indicative of BPD or anything else other than I am having severe problems relating to people and dealing with normal life circumstances.

The point is that sometimes it’s useful to talk about mental illness not in terms of diagnoses but in terms of symptoms. What triggers these symptoms? Which techniques help alleviate them?

So if a person looks up a mental disorder online and thinks, “Huh, this sounds a lot like me,” that realization can help them find ways to manage their symptoms whether or not those symptoms actually qualify as that mental disorder.

This is especially true because the diagnostic cut-offs for many mental illnesses are rather random. For instance, in order to have clinical depression, you must have been experiencing your symptoms for at least two weeks. What if it’s been a week and a half? In order to have anorexia nervosa, you must be at 85% or less of your expected body weight*. What if you haven’t reached that point yet? What if you don’t have the mood symptoms of depression, but you exhibit the cognitive distortions associated with it? Acknowledging that you may have one of these disorders, even if you don’t (yet) fit the full criteria, can help you find out how to manage the symptoms that you do have.

4. It helps them find solidarity with others who suffer from that mental illness.

I understand why some people with diagnosed mental illnesses feel contempt toward those who self-diagnose. But I don’t believe that sympathy and solidarity are finite resources. If someone is struggling enough that they’re looking up diagnostic criteria, they deserve support from others who have been down that path, even if their problems might not be “as bad” as the ones other people have and/or have not yet been validated by a professional.

Acknowledging that you may have depression (or any other mental illness) can help you find others who have experienced various shades of the same thing and feel like you’re not alone.

My take on self-diagnosis comes from a perspective of harm reduction. The idea is that strategies that help people feel better and prevent themselves from getting worse are something we should support, even if these strategies are not “correct” or “legitimate” and do not take place within the context of established, professional mental healthcare.

We should work to improve professional mental healthcare and increase access to it, especially for people in marginalized communities and populations. However, we should also acknowledge that sometimes people may need to help themselves outside of that framework. These people should not be getting the sort of condescension and eye-rolling they often get.

~~~
*The diagnostic criteria for eating disorders are expected to improve with the release of the new DSM-V, but I’m not sure yet whether or not the 85% body weight requirement will still be there. In any case, this is how it’s been so far.

Self-Diagnosis and Its Discontents

Excited, Worried, Scared Shitless: How I Feel About Moving

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Photo May 08, 19 16 27
Apartments in SoHo, April.

As I’ve certainly mentioned here countless times already, I’m moving to New York City at the end of the summer–in just three and a half months. I’ve wanted to do this for years, and I’ve visited the city so many times while I’ve been in college that it’s long felt like a second home. Or third. Or whatever.

My love for the city is like nothing else I’ve ever felt. I’m not really one to be a huge “fan” of things–TV shows, book series, comics, games, drinks, anything–but when it comes to New York I’m like one of those obsessive fans, an aficionado, a groupie. I read about its history and geography. I trek through its streets and make my own mental maps. I follow its news and politics. A particularly stunning photo of New York will often make me tear up, and when Hurricane Sandy hit last fall it was like getting punched in the gut. But each time I travel there and see the lights of Manhattan through the plane window yet again, it’s like reuniting with one of those friends–you know, the ones you’ve only known for a few years, but feel like you’ve actually known since childhood and wonder how you ever lived without.

So in many ways, when I move in three and a half months it’ll feel less like moving and more like coming home.

Who’s cutting onions in here, by the way? Yikes.

Most people who know me know all this, because I talk about it all the damn time. You know those people who won’t shut the fuck up about Beyonce or cats or beer or whatever? That’s me with New York. Many people have even mistakenly assumed that I’m from there, which puzzled me until I realized that in this country it’s customary to love the place you’re from. If I love New York so much, that must be my hometown.

So, when I got into graduate school and told everyone I’m finally-finally-finally moving to the city I love, people were happy for me because they knew how much this means. And as the still-undecided date nears, conversations with people often go like this: “So you’re moving soon! Isn’t that SO EXCITING? Aren’t you SO EXCITED?”

Yeah, I am, and that’s obviously a reasonable assumption to make. But that’s not at all the only thing I’m feeling right now, and when people ask me that it makes it impossible to talk to them about what this is really like for me, in all its complexity. (When I’ve tried it with people I know well by saying things like, “Yeah, I’m really excited, although it’ll also be pretty stressful finding a place to live,” they usually wave it off with something like “Yeah but you’ll figure it out I mean come on NEW YORK ISN’T THAT EXCITING?”)

Of the two extremes, this is by far the better one. There have also been people in my life before who seem desperate to make everything into a negative: “Oh, boy, just wait till you see what it’s really like. Unaffordable, hot, loud, and smells like garbage. You’ll be back in the Midwest before you know it.” Uh, thanks, dude, but I think I know where I’d prefer to live.

It’s true that I dislike small talk and prefer conversations that actually go somewhere and result in people actually learning things about each other, so maybe that’s why being compelled to grin and talk about how excited I am rubs me the wrong way. Maybe people don’t really want to hear about some of the other thoughts I have about moving. Which is fine.

That’s why I have a blog.

So yeah, I’m excited. But I’m also scared shitless. How will I find a place to live? How will I be able to afford the things I need, let alone just a few of the ones I want? How will I find a job in two years?

I’m also proud. Because despite being scared shitless, I’m doing it anyway, and I might not’ve at an earlier point in my life. I might’ve chosen to stay close to my family and the friends I already have and decided that the risk of moving somewhere new and dealing with those new stressors was too much for me to handle. And I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing that, but I still get to be proud of myself for overcoming those fears.

I’m also just unsure. Will I miss the leafy streets of the suburbs I’ve lived in? Will I miss the quiet? Will I miss the smell of freshly mowed lawns, and the joy of running through sprinklers in the summer? Will I miss lying by the pool, everything silent except for kids laughing somewhere in the distance? Will I miss going to parks in the fall? I don’t mean like Central Park. I mean big state parks with trails and rivers and ravines and fallen trees you have to step over. People have told me my whole life that I belong in a big city, but were they right?

(Sometimes I miss my parents’ house so much I can’t breathe. Sometimes I just wish I could call it mine again.)

I’m also curious. Who will my friends be? What will my routine be like? Which subway stop will become “mine”? Where will I go thrifting, where will I buy groceries, which bookstores will I fall in love with? Will I ever find a coffee shop that has wifi and outlets and at least one empty table? I know I won’t get to do all the things I want to do, but which ones will I get to do? Will I take up martial arts? Will I volunteer somewhere? Will I join some queer/poly groups?

I’m also worried. Which of my friends will I never see again? How will I be able to visit my parents? Will I still be able to go to conferences? How will I work out? Will I have to choose between eating healthy food and buying clothes when my old ones rip?

I’m also sad. I’m sad to be leaving everyone and everything behind, and sad that I didn’t grow up in New York so I wouldn’t have to abandon my life just to live there. I’m sad that I can’t look at my room anymore without imagining it already packed up into boxes. I’m sad that, to a certain extent, wanting to move to New York so much kept me from just being happy to be here.

All of this I cannot say when people ask me if I’m excited, expecting an unhesitant “Yes!”. And although I’m happy to talk about how much I love the city and how much I’m looking forward to moving, sometimes the weight of the unspoken fears and regrets and uncertainties feels heavier than the boxes into which I’ll pack up my life and send it–by car or train or plane or all three–800 miles east.

But, yes, I’m excited. I’m excited to drive over the bridge to Manhattan for the last time, excited to check out CFI-NYC and meet all the people here, excited to help lead my school’s feminist student group, excited to start my classes and my internship. I’m excited to finally get a pet, if my lease allows it, and to have a creature to love and take care of.

I’m excited to finally explore all the places I’ve wanted to explore and all the ones I haven’t even heard of yet, and to return to the ones I already love. I’m excited to see the new World Trade Center when it’s finished. I’m excited to watch Central Park turn orange, red, and yellow in a few months.

I’m excited to take the subway to Queens or Brooklyn to see my family. I’m excited to get to know even better these distant relatives whom I nevertheless call “aunts” and “cousins” because that’s a better approximation of how it feels. I’m excited to get out of the city sometimes–to Long Island to go to the beach, upstate to go camping, to New England to go skiing, to Boston and DC to see friends.

I’m excited for all the nights out, the lectures and talks, the yoga classes, the concerts and operas and ballets, the sports games, the dates, the shopping trips, and the days at the beach that are in my future. But not only that–I’m excited for the nights spend cooking and watching TV with my roommates, the weekends spent writing at my desk, glancing out the window to see the snow fall. I’m excited to feel like I can just relax at home for as long as I want without the pressure to go out and explore, because my days in the city won’t be numbered anymore.

I’m excited to finally put down roots somewhere for the first time, because for my whole life I’ve known that “home” is only temporary. I don’t want to move anymore. I don’t want to move for years and years, if ever.

I’m excited for the day when someone asks me where I’m from and, for the first time, I instinctively say, “New York.”

Railroad tracks to Manhattan
Railroad tracks to Manhattan
Excited, Worried, Scared Shitless: How I Feel About Moving

[blogathon] Restorative Justice for Sexual Assault

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This is the eighth and last post in my SSA blogathon. It was requested by a reader. Don’t forget to donate!

[Content note: sexual assault]

Restorative justice is a word you sometimes hear in discussions about how to reform our criminal justice system. It refers to “an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender.” As you can see, it would probably look quite different from the system we have now.

Someone asked me to write about what restorative justice might look like from the perspective of a rape survivor. To be clear, I am not a survivor of rape, although I am a survivor of sexual assault. In any case, I can only speak for myself.

But when I think about justice, this is what comes to mind.

I would want a perpetrator of sexual assault to have to learn about the roots of what they did. It’s not as simple is “Sexual assault is bad, don’t sexually assault people.” I would want them to understand rape culture. I would want them to understand all of the factors that might have contributed to their decision (because, yes, it was their decision) to sexually assault someone. I would want them to understand that their socialization has prepared them to become a person who sexually assaults people, but that this can be undone.

I would want the perpetrator to listen to the survivor talk about what they want through (if the survivor is comfortable). This doesn’t need to be a face-to-face conversation, of course, and I don’t think that many survivors would be willing for it to be. It could be an audio- or video-taped recording. It could even be a written account.

If prison is involved, I would want the prison to be humane. Regardless of whether or not we switch to a system of restorative justice, prison violence (including rape) must be addressed. This isn’t (just) because I’m concerned for the welfare of prisoners; it’s also because violent environments are much more likely to create violent individuals. For both selfish and altruistic reasons, I want perpetrators to serve their sentences feeling healthy and safe.

I would want the perpetrator to receive help with integrating back into their community afterwards–with finding a job, getting a place to live, and so on. Again, this is not because I think they “deserve” help. This is not about what they do and do not deserve. This is about what will make them the least likely to offend again.

But enough about the perpetrator. What about the survivor?

I think it goes without saying that in a system of restorative justice, there will be no victim blaming. The past “behavior” of a victim should have no bearing on the outcome of a trial. Not even if they had been sexually “promiscuous” (whatever that even means) in the past. Not even if they are a sex worker. Not even if they have committed crimes. Not even if they are an undocumented immigrant. Nothing makes someone deserving of sexual assault, and nothing makes it not worthwhile to pursue justice following an assault.

In a system of restorative justice, a survivor should not have to pursue any legal action that they don’t want to pursue. If a survivor doesn’t want to testify, they shouldn’t have to. That’s what it would mean to prioritize the needs of the survivor over our desire to punish the perpetrator.

Hopefully, in a system that focuses on reforming the perpetrator rather than punishing them, community members would be much less likely to blame the survivor for “ruining” the perpetrator’s life–which, tragically, often happens now when survivors of sexual assault speak out. But in any case, a system of restorative justice would also help community members support and affirm the survivor. Friends and family of the survivor would learn–both directly from the survivor and in general–what sorts of challenges survivors of sexual assault may face in dealing with the aftermath of their trauma. Rather than blaming the survivor for their feelings and expecting them to “get over it,” community members would learn how to help them cope.

Of course, this is all probably incredibly naive and the cultural shifts it would require are immense. But that’s a bit of what it would look like for this survivor of sexual assault.

~~~

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[blogathon] Restorative Justice for Sexual Assault

[blogathon] Female Bullying, Internalized Misogyny, and Challenging Cognitive Bias

Miri, , , , , , , , , , , 30 Comments

This is the seventh post in my SSA blogathon. Don’t forget to donate!

I’ve seen a lot of great articles lately about women who don’t like women and don’t have female friends. One starts out:

For as long as I can remember, there’s been this sub-breed of girls and women who seem to think that not having female friends is a noteworthy, noble way to live. “Guys don’t cause drama,” they say. “Girls are catty/ jealous of me/ the devil,” they say. To those girls, I have a response: the problem is you, not every other woman in the universe.

And:

Coed friendships are great, I’m not knocking them. What I’m knocking is the idea that females are incapable of providing someone with the same support a male friend can provide. What I’m knocking is this notion that treating women like a bunch of catty chickenheads somehow makes you the one and only non-catty, non-chickenhead. Not every woman is dramatic. Not every woman is jealous. To say otherwise is to put yourself on a pedestal where you are the one true goddess, the one woman who “gets it,” the one woman who is unique and special and one of the guys and something no other woman can be. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t live up to that fucking standard. You couldn’t pay me to try.

I’ve heard this sort of stuff a lot, too, and I used to say it myself. Women are jealous. Women gossip. Women are boring. Women just don’t get it.

Of course, I was wrong. But I do think that these articles largely fail to explain the proximal cause of this distrust of fellow women (the distal cause being socially-sanctioned misogyny and devaluation of women’s friendships): bullying.

Most people are unwilling to express vulnerability in front of others. So I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these women who say stuff like “I just don’t trust women” and “Women will just stab you in the back” might be speaking from personal experience. A comment that puts it much more strongly than I would:

I think the article would have been much more honest if you could have conceded that these women might have at some point, been victims of “mean girls.” You just vilify a group of women who have most likely come up with this sad mantra as a coping mechanism because they’ve been rejected by women, and you don’t go into the potential causes of their attitude. You just paint them as two dimensional women-haters when that is most likely not the case. Most women who feel alienated from other women have mother-issues- their moms refused to bond with them or even were abusive, and may have treated them as “competition” as they got older; and/or they were subjected to “mean girl” treatment; targeted and bullied by a group of women at work or in school. This is phenomenon that has been well-documented, and unlike you, scholarly studies rarely point the finger at the victim.

I don’t agree with all of this comment and I think the part about “mother-issues” is a huge presumption. But there’s some truth in it, I think.

Of course, bullying isn’t limited to any gender. However, the type of bullying that seems to cause the most lasting insecurity when it comes to friendship is relational bullying, which (according to some of these “scholarly studies”) is more common among women. Relational bullying relies on psychological manipulation, which often requires close ties like friendship. (A lot of my perspectives on this are informed by Rachel Simmons’ book Odd Girl Out.)

However, consider the difference between women claiming to dislike other women and women claiming to dislike men.

Despite the fact that many women have been hurt by men–in many cases to a greater extent than they’ve been hurt by other women–it’s not acceptable in our culture to declare, as a woman, that you “just don’t trust men” or that you “just can’t get along with men.”

You might argue that this is because women are expected to want/be able to date men, but it’s not even okay to say that as a lesbian. In fact, some people still think that lesbians are just straight women who hate men and decided to play for the other team.

On the contrary, men who have been hurt by women face few social repercussions for claiming that all women are bitches, that you can’t trust a woman, and so on.

So I do think that sexism is at play. If it’s more acceptable to make generalizations about all women after being hurt by a few women than it is to make generalizations about all men after being hurt by a few men, it’s more difficult to let women off the hook when they claim that women just can’t be trusted.

On a psychological level, though, it makes sense. Gender is a very salient category for people and they can’t avoid perceiving it and thinking about it (as much as we may wish that they could). Sometimes when you get hurt by someone whom you have placed into a category that’s salient for you, you end up reflexively terrified or distrustful of others in that category. To make an overly simplistic analogy, if you encounter an angry dog that bites you, you might be scared of all dogs afterwards.

Is this rational? Of course not! But that’s how our brains are set up to work. And I think it’s absolutely vital to be mindful of this and to work to correct our biases, but I also think that this means we might want to be a bit more gentle with people who are stuck in this frame of thinking.

That’s why, as much as it bothers me to hear women say things like “I just don’t trust women,” I realize that it might be coming from a place of unresolved pain and unchallenged cognitive biases. As someone who is both a skeptic, a feminist, and a person who cares about helping people feel better, I think a bit of sensitivity is warranted–even if we acknowledge that statements like these are misogynistic at face value.

~~~

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[blogathon] Female Bullying, Internalized Misogyny, and Challenging Cognitive Bias