Re: Engineering and Science positions

I can't speak for science jobs - I've heard tales of actual misogyny there and won't try disputing that claim. Academia is a cruel world indeed.

But in Engineering and especially Computer positions, at least in private companies/labs I've worked for, I would put the cause of not sharing information more with overcaution than misogyny. No one ever (to my knowledge) got sued for sexual harassment for talking to someone of the same gender. With the big push to make workplaces women-friendly, all too often the guys I see will be "strictly professional" to the point of avoiding all unnecessary communication with women in the workplace just to avoid potential repercussions if they're accused of anything.

I'm not trying to put the blame on either side of the argument, nor am I trying to claim that the steps that have been made forward in combatting sexual harassment in the workplace are at all a bad thing - just that the 'inside communication networks' the article blasts may be the result of fear, not hatred.

Thanks so much for the Rosetta Tharpe post! I've never heard of her until now. She's awesome!

Re: Bonnie Richardson:

I nominate her for replacing Captain America. Rock on woman!

Re: Missouri:

WTG! A Take ownership of your legislature!

Re: Venetian fanny-fan:

FAIL! Taking pictures is just tacky. Glancing at a nice heinie might slide, but photography is right out.

Re: Cussing Canuks:

If he had offered an apology for just the "bitch" part I would have respected this a lot more. If you thinks someone is dumb, then stand behind it.

About the plus size model article... while I do think that the commenter Ennui is a jerk, I think he made a valid point in his original post. Hayden did not look starved in that picture, she looked perfectly healthy. Yes, she's skinny. But we can't hate on skinny girls while expecting respect for larger women. It doesn't work that way. If we're going to say that people should be respected despite their clothes size, that goes for skinny women as well as larger women.

That article about what makes a movie misogynistic actually does a good job of showing why it's usually a futile effort to determine if an individual piece of art/statement/etc... is racist or sexist.

All of her criteria besides #4 are implicitly or explicitly statistical, which is a problem since movies have a small number of major characters-all sorts of discrepancies can pop up through random chance.

When we look at all of the media produced and see that these negative characteristics overwhelmingly tend to be associated with women, we can obviously see that sexist bias is causing it.

But if there is an individual film where most of the women characters are lame, this could be due to random chance. Necessarily, this won't be so for most such movies, but those who make it could always claim so and it's not that easy to discern which movies are using a sexist bias and which not.

In regards to the essay on same sex marriage: There is minor potential fallout, BUT as we have seen in Massachusetts, this is a fabulous step for California law, not just in terms of marriage, but in terms of schools who have up to now been able to ban books that depict homosexuality. If the law considers homosexuality on the same level as heterosexuality, it pulls the rug out from under those who would bring lawsuits for, say, a pre-school showing books that depict households with two daddies or whatever.

GaelicGirl1983: I agree. I'm a personal trainer, nationally certified and college-educated, and the hate that fit people get is kind of ridiculous - believe it or not, not everyone hits the gym because they are just desperate to have men check out their size 0 ass. Hayden Panettiere is not a starving twig. She has a rather athletic figure, actually. And a lot of those comments are incredibly ignorant. A size 14 can be perfectly fit; a size 14 can also be obese. It depends on the body composition of the individual. (And BMI is not a reliable measure - it will place athletes with body fat percentage in the single digits as "overweight" because muscle weighs so much more than fat.) The alleged plus-size model is obviously not a big girl either, but there's no reason to act like anyone smaller than her is an anorexic. Panettiere's quite a bit shorter than she is, for one thing. Believe it or not, I often see Hollywood blogs refer to Panettiere as "dwarfish," "dumpy," "mannish" and "thick," and of course, "no boobs." Poor girl can't win.

And yes, it is in fact possible to be too fat. Women should be around 22-25 percent body fat. Not because the fashion magazines say so, not because of what's attractive or sexy, but because that's what's healthy. The human body is not designed to be half made up of fat. The heart and the joints are not equipped to handle it. It's sad to me that feminism concerns itself with so many aspects of women's health, but often refuses to touch the issue of weight - unless of course the woman's judged to be "too skinny." Calling normal women fat is not good. Calling normal women starving and skinny is also not good. Our national sense of body image is warped on both ends of the scale.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women in America right now. 1 in 3 women die from it. More women die from it than breast cancer, and it kills more women than men. There's this attitude that any weight is just yay-okay and that obesity is just something looks-based constructed by the media. And that attitude is killing us.

On another topic, good for Venice for busting the perv. It's a nice change from my home state of Oklahoma, where they've apparently decided that men are entitled to take pictures up your skirt whenever you venture out in public.

LottaTroubleBaby:

The issue causing bad health is not fat. The issue causing bad health is lack of exercise and not eating properly. And both fat and thin people are guilty of that.

I'm fat. 5-10, 210. But I eat good, balanced meals, avoid processed sugars and carbs, and I bike to work, walk, hike, and ride horses.

I'm in pretty darned good shape. I have no trouble climbing stairs. The woman in the cube next to me is thin (about 5-8, 130). She dosen't eat as well as I do. She doesn't exercise. She gets winded climbing stairs.

I'm healthier than she is, and weight has nothing to do with it.

The problem is not obesity. The problem is the American lifestyle, and that lifestyle affects folks of all sizes. To pretend it does not is quite silly.

By the way, the issue with the "Fetal Personhood" Initative is a really important one. Colorado is a battleground state this year, and the anti-choicers have already declared that they will be focusing money, time, and energy getting this thing passed, and it's a nasty amendment. If it passes here, they're gonna use the experience and momentum to get it on the ballot in other states, so this isn't just about Colorado.

Please, feministing, if you could, do a seperate post on this issue, I'd really appreciate it, as would all of us pro-choice activists in Colorado. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is the head of the Protect Famlies, Protect Choices colition which will be fighting this thing. If anyone can, please donate:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/defeatballotinitiative

or here

http://www.protectfamiliesprotectchoice.org/

Please. We really need all the help we can get.

And if you wonderful feministing readers can spread the word to family and friends, that would be super.

Cheers!

I'm surprised this didn't make it on here:

http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/2008/05/isef_2008_the_science_that_won.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=sublink

I mean, everybody loves awesome science, ya?

I'm in the health field, so I'm well aware of the various types of unhealth out there. There are many issues causing bad health. Fat IS one of them. WEIGHT does not actually matter - like I said, muscle is both heavier and more compact than fat, so athletes weigh a lot. Too much FAT matters. There are many components to fitness, and proper body fat percentage is one of them. Lack of exercise is bad; poor diet is bad. Those things of course affect things like stamina and cholesterol. Nowhere did I make the case that people who appear thin are automatically more fit than everyone larger than they are (or vice versa - some of those big muscle guys that do nothing but pump iron would keel over if they had to run a mile).

But obesity is also bad. Obesity forces the heart to work harder, making it grow thicker, making it more difficult for the heart to contract, which can lead to heart failure. More fat tissue requires more oxygen, which requires increased blood circulation and an increased workload for the heart at rest. Increased circulating blood creates more pressure on artery walls, which increases blood pressure. Extra weight on the joints contributes to osteoarthritis. It increases the risk for CVD and diabetes. All medical fact. Period. People can draw conclusions based on their own experiences all day, but the science says what it says. All of these things are obesity-related, not just due to diet or how much one exercises. I work with cardiac rehab patients every day, as well as a host of people referred to me by doctors for various weight-related health issues, and saying that obesity is irrelevant is very misinformed and does people a disservice. Obesity is a huge risk factor for CVD.

"Fat IS one of them. WEIGHT does not actually matter - like I said, muscle is both heavier and more compact than fat, so athletes weigh a lot. Too much FAT matters."

It also depends on *which* fat...

But obesity is define by BMI, which doesn't take into account body composition or fat distribution.

"But obesity is also bad. Obesity forces the heart to work harder, making it grow thicker, making it more difficult for the heart to contract, which can lead to heart failure."

While it's impossible to take seriously arguments that fat isn't unhealthy, this is just wrong. You're a personal trainer, surely you've heard of cardiovascular exercise? Which is god for your heart? Which makes the heart grow larger, stronger, and more efficient BECAUSE you are forcing it to do strenuous work?

"Kill a sex worker, get a two year prison sentence? (Cara has more.)"

BTW, did seeing this remind anyone else of http://feministing.com/archives/009185.html#comments ?

"But if there is an individual film where most of the women characters are lame, this could be due to random chance."

There is no "chance" involved. A person (or people) write those movies, and their biases and beliefs are reflected in the characters they create. If all the women in a movie are stupid/clumsy/slutty/whatever, that's not "chance"; that's a writer (or writers) with serious issues with women. And unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of those in Hollywood.

Also, re: the women artists article, I studied Gentileschi this semester and there is some controversy over whether she was actually raped by Tassi or not. Our modern definition of "rape" and the 17th century one are not necessarily the same.

"While it's impossible to take seriously arguments that fat isn't unhealthy, this is just wrong. You're a personal trainer, surely you've heard of cardiovascular exercise? Which is god for your heart? Which makes the heart grow larger, stronger, and more efficient BECAUSE you are forcing it to do strenuous work?"
No, it's not wrong, but thanks for talking to me like I'm an idiot. I've more than "heard of" cardiovascular exercise, my degree is in exercise science. The "hard work" that I was referring to is not just the pumping of the heart that occurs in exercise, it is an increased blood volume that the heart has to deal with. It's different from the normal exertion of the heart under exercise. Strenuous work because of physical exertion and strenuous work just to stay alive are two very different things. Give me a break.

Here's a pretty straightforward link.
http://www.fairview.org/healthlibrary/content/ca_fatheart_car.htm

As far as BMI, it's just an estimate. Every hospital-affiliated facility I know of uses body comp to determine obesity.

You might have a point about BMI if we were only addressing hospital-affiliated facilities. We're not. We're addressing society in general, doctors and other HC workers, insurance companies, etc.

I've never once had someone measure body comp. Not once.

"There is no "chance" involved. A person (or people) write those movies, and their biases and beliefs are reflected in the characters they create. If all the women in a movie are stupid/clumsy/slutty/whatever, that's not "chance"; that's a writer (or writers) with serious issues with women. And unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of those in Hollywood."

I don't mean that movie characters are generated by drawing lots or anything. I 'm probably using the wrong mathematical terminology here, but the distribution of outcomes can be random even if the factors determining each individual outcome aren't. Look at "streakiness" in sports. The streaks players have are very well predicted by statistics, but commentators and players attribute it to various "intangibles" and semi-mystical phenomena because whether a basketball player (say) makes an individual shot is clearly not random.

Hypothesize a world where no one has any sexist biases regarding what attributes people have. Then in movies as a whole men and women would be equally likely to be portrayed negatively, but in some movies there would be more negative female characters.

Since movies as a whole are overwhelmingly sexist, I don't think randomness plays much of a factor compared to sexism. But it always gives an out which the people who make or defend any movie can take. I've never heard someone explicitly invoke random chance, but its implicitly invoked when someone says the decisions they made in writing their characters weren't sexist, but just happened to have a sexist distribution for whatever reason.

Despite the validity of everyone's comments - which I applaud - I think the focus of the piece isn't now we determine fat/obesity, or the validity of BMI. It's that on television, there's a pressure to abnormalize a size 8 which I think we can all agree is not fat. The size isn't fat, the girl it's attached to in the post isn't fat.

The crazy commentor (Ennui or something) seemed to think that "feminists" (always the guilty culprit) are "normalizing" her huge size-8 frame. While I'm willing to observe and appreciate a whole spectrum of discussion on body definition, I think we need to step outside of petty argument to state that, as the original piece wanted to emphasize, aint nobody gonna convince me that size 8 is fat, including Ennui or whoever.

Of course, we could examine why we're linking "plus-size" with "fat." I mean, I get it, but I think there is a possibility to expand or at least explore those definitive relationships. Not that we have to change them, but that we're establishing "fatness" by size, or by regular/plus(extra) size, is in itself defining bodies by industry standards, rather than health, BMI, fat percentage, or any of the other (better) measurements that posts have been discussing.

LottaTroubleBaby--
I wish my doctor would use body comp. I'm a thin person, but I eat what feels right for me (ie, I eat when I feel hungry and I stop when I'm full...what I'm guessing most people do) and I feel healthy, not starving. Is my BMI below the 'healthy' range? Yes. But I have muscles, and I feel fine. Yet whenever I see my doctor, it's always: "you don't weigh enough. You're 80th percentile height and 5th percentile weight. Your BMI is too low. Eat more."
It ain't that simple. It's no more simple for me to gain the weight than it is for a naturally-bigger person to lose it.
And people need to get it into their skulls that people come in different sizes, and that telling all of us we need to change our bodies only makes us miserable.

"Strenuous work because of physical exertion and strenuous work just to stay alive are two very different things. Give me a break.

Here's a pretty straightforward link.
http://www.fairview.org/healthlibrary/content/ca_fatheart_car.htm"

Well now I'm very confused. It makes sense that short bursts of extreme exertion would have a different effect than constantly having a slightly higher level of exertion. However, you and the link you posted claim that this is harmful because it makes the heart muscle increase in size. Isn't this the same effect cardiovascular exercise is supposed to have? Is it that in the case of a person with too much body fat the heart enlarges in a different manner than from cardiovascular exercise.

...

The BMI is a useful tool that is just used improperly way too much, even (especially?) by people who should know better. Over a large enough group of people, the average BMI is a great predictor of average body composition. For some types of research, it is more sensible to use this proxy than bother measuring body composition.

UneFemmePlusCourageuse: I would actually guess that if someone is too small, the more muscle skeletal muscle you have, the worse. I know that in terms of body composition, you can have too little fat (I've heard 5% but I don't know if this is for everyone or just men or even correct) because some body fat is used for absolutely vital functions, but becomes mostly superfluous above that level.

Re: sexism in engineering and technology fields

The sexism encountered after graduation is bad enough. But what's really sad for me is that the percentage of women who complete a computer science degree has gone *down* since I got my BS/CS degree in the 1980s. Here's a link to a table by the National Science Foundation (PDF file):

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf

What societal factors could be causing this continued downward trend?

It's very strange to me. Of course, I was naive enough when I graduated that I truly believed that sexism would be a thing of the past by the time I was in my 40s.

The article about the ballot in Colorado said they needed 76,000 signatures by May 13, does anyone know if they got enough? It's my home state, and I can't find any follow up articles...If I find out first I'll repost :)

In my experience, about 99% of catcalling is obnoxious at best and frightening at worst. The other 1% (maybe 2%, maybe 5%, still the huge minority) is not really "catcalling," and can be sweet.

Maybe I've overly easygoing, but when a man approached me in San Fran and said, "Ma'am, I hope I don't offend you, but you have beautiful legs," I did not feel threatened. (My legs were mostly hidden under a seersucker skirt that goes to below the knee, so I'm pretty sure he was complimenting my calves.)

I've had WOMEN "cat-call" me, and, in my world, it's kind. "Beautiful hair!" Or, my all-time favourite, a woman yelling out her car window, "I LOVE LOVE LOVE your skirt!"

Problem is, the 99% who are creepy hide behind the ones who are kind (or just dense). The difference is readily apparent: men who are out to pay you a compliment are gentlemen about it. They usually preface their remarks with a qualifier - "I hope I'm not upsetting you," or the like - make their statement, and then go on with their lives, so you can go on with your life.

The jerks leer, usually have the word "baby" in there (or explitives), and make some totally general comment or comment on body parts.

That is my best articulation of the difference between paying someone a compliment (IMHO, not something to get worked up about, although your mileage may vary) and harassing and intimidating them.

Re sexism in engineering and the sciences: Scarily true, about how women start out and where they end up. In my experience, the vast majority shift over to, say "Quality" groups in their mid-30s cause they finally start to spawn and then they just can't pull the 24/7 requirements these jobs have. Yes, they almost all have husbands, but somehow usually it's THEY who end up accomodating the kiddies.

Staar84: They got 131,245 signatures.

Here's the DP coverage:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9246298?source=bb

As for declaring a fertilized egg to be a person, that is horrifying and not scientifically based. My reproductive physiology professor in medical school said that less than 10 % of fertilized eggs implant anyway in the best of circumstances. There are so many ways for these ridiculous people to reduce abortions if they so desired - universal access to free birth control and accurate sex ed, for a start. They just want to control women's sexuality.

Tiberius- Talking to a woman will not get you sued for sexual harassment and any man who feels that threatened by reasonable sexual harassment precautions in the office is being delusional. This is most likely due to the fact that they and/or the other men creating the culture which they have been spoonfed have been so sure for so much of their lives that they have every right to sexually harass every woman they see that they actually feel threatened and upset when this "right" is taken away and must imagine a giant conspiracy of lying man-haters in order to justify their feelings of persecution.

Also, the line between sexually harassing someone and treating them like a human is extremely fucking clear and anybody who is so unaware of where that line is that they choose not to talk to women rather than risk it is sexist, knows they are sexist, and is trying to cover up their sexist behaviors. Period.

Finally, not acknowledging either of these facts means that you are in fact blaming one side. You are blaming the victims of sexual harassment by implying that many of them are liars who have cowed perfectly harmless men into fearful untalkative submission.

Dude, I think on someone tall enough to be a model, an 8-10 is not even "average",

I'm 5'10, 8-10 sized, and people usually think I'm thin, if not /too/ skinny. (of course, I have kinda big hips which bumps up my pant size, but still... a lot of models are fairly curvy)

I think if that model who won the contest had flatter breasts (like me) she'd look pretty svelt too...

oh, and btw, I think there /are/ a good number of non-plus-sized fashion models who are a size 8. Most are like 2-6, but whenever I've read stuff on "what are the requirements" for fashion modeling, 8 is usually listed as the largest possible size.

So I don't know what's up with the Top Model stuff. Maybe for very high-end fashion modeling, 8 is too big. Maybe it's just the particular way this woman is built, and if she was a size 8 but built differently it might work. Just some guesses.

Ah, cool. Mina didn't have enough fun in the original thread, so she's harping on how bad prison abolition is while having obviously never read any of the literature again.

Your very basic question seems to be "What do we do with the people who need to be restrained/commit violent crimes?" My position, and that of many prison abolitionists, is that we eliminate patriarchy along with other coercive hierarchies in order that the privileged don't feel empowered to destroy those they view as "lesser" and that the underprivileged are no longer desperate and angry. Those who continue to behave in a sociopathic manner would go to local institutions which offered them mental help, which is something that you can't get in a maximum-security prison in a different state. Even the ones that nominally offer counseling rarely actually have it, and anyways counseling is impossible and ineffective in a traumatizing environment.

Bear in mind as well that the majority of people in prisons are there for nonviolent crimes and that the majority of violent sociopaths never get caught or go to jail. Also bear in mind that even people who commit awful crimes rarely serve life sentences and that prison is a well-documented way of making a violent criminal worse.

Which brings us back to this post. Yes, it's shitty that someone gets punished less for killing a prostitute because the lack of punishment is obviously motivated less by the fact that our society would ever want to abolish prisons and more by the idea that prostitutes are somehow subhuman. But, if rapists/murderers go to jail for longer periods of time, they just get released angrier and more brutalized.

Resources are better put towards researching and implementing ways of teaching men not to rape and kill than towards incarceration, which actually increases violence.

re: Engineering etc., my observation is that women get tired of working the ridiculous hours without equal pay, and without the prop of having someone at home to take care of everything to enable them to work the insane hours. Many of the project managers at my company work 50+ hours a week by default and 80-120 hours a week at certain points in their projects. They almost all have multiple children. How many women could pull off that kind of schedule and still keep their relationship with their partner intact, much less raise children? How many of us are willing to only parent on the weekend, and miss out on the rest of the week?

On another note...I've noticed that every time we have one of these Readers lately, the discussion about body image has precluded pretty much any discussion about anything else. Why is that? 15 out of 33 comments have been in response to the article about the model. I guess I just believe that if we can gain leverage in the other issues discussed here....Positive depictions in movies and TV, employment in the technology and science fields, and control over our reproduction, then maybe the body image thing will correct itself in the next couple of generations.

A while back, another commenter pointed out the problem with using pervert as a pejorative term. I'd really appreciate it if the bloggers at feministing could take that to heart. It seemed that Jessica did in this post where dykelawyer brought it up, but apparently that hasn't been taken up blog-wide because I've seen it used many times since then. To me that sort of thing is a necessary element of attempting to address a larger audience that may well include a wide variety of people. Perhaps I'm mistaken and there's a post I've missed explaining why, even given its history, the bloggers here have a rationale for continuing to use it. But it really seems to me like it's just not seen as that big of a deal here. Say it's not so!

I think so many people comment on body-related stories because it's the one topic that has affected nearly all women personally.

Re: the health thing. I think we get caught up in the middle range of weight. It's easy to use terms like "healthy" and "unhealthy" or "normal weight" and "overweight" without backing those terms up with numbers. It's not necessarily unhealthy to be moderately overweight if one exercises and eats well, just as it's not necessarily healthy to be a "normal weight" but never exercise and eat junk food all the time. But it is necessary to define your terms. There's a difference between being a size fourteen and weighing four hundred pounds, and I think that's a difference that gets lost in the shuffle.

"Your very basic question seems to be "What do we do with the people who need to be restrained/commit violent crimes?" My position, and that of many prison abolitionists, is that we eliminate patriarchy along with other coercive hierarchies in order that the privileged don't feel empowered to destroy those they view as "lesser" and that the underprivileged are no longer desperate and angry."

In these conditions prison abolition would be desirable, but would probably happen automatically anyway.

...but, these conditions can't be created without a massive and brutal use of prisons and other means of political terrorization. Contrary to cold war propaganda (and those oh so subversive leftists who reject violence and power) we know what societies have made progress towards achieving these conditions (USSR before 1956, China before 1978...all other revolutionary states improved things but never had a feasible chance of ultimately defeating class society) and all out class war was necessary for achieving and defending these advances (this is admitted in reactionary propaganda in a very distorted way "Stalin killed all those people as a means to maintain power!"). Prison camps were used as a means of breaking and destroying enemy classes. Prisons don't do a good job of achieving their purported functions in capitalist societies, but prison abolitionists presumably understand that they are effective at their real function of repressing those groups in society which the rulers don't like. This use of prisons doesn't magically disappear-in fact it becomes more effective for a variety of reasons- when state power is wielded by the "good" side.

There isn't an inherent contradiction to supporting this and favoring the eventual abolition of prisons (rather, it is contradictory to want to abolish prison and not want to do what it takes) but the rhetoric of existing prison abolitionists is usually the touchy feely crap which propagandizes against real progress; your implication that it is wrong to decide that other people or groups need to be destroyed, for example. [Of course, the larger implication of all this is that the entire imperialist country "left" is a sham on the face of it because they never really try to learn from those movements which had real success in fighting imperialism, emancipating women, improving the health, education, and standard of living of the masses (while facing every possible disadvantage and not kidnapping millions of slaves, leaving the entire world undeveloped etc... to do it) and building real democracy]

...but, these conditions can't be created without a massive and brutal use of prisons and other means of political terrorization. Contrary to cold war propaganda (and those oh so subversive leftists who reject violence and power) we know what societies have made progress towards achieving these conditions (USSR before 1956, China before 1978...all other revolutionary states

To call the USSR a "revolutionary" state is only accurate with some serious caveats. It was a revolutionary society briefly, before Lenin (who turns out to have been on the Kaiser's payroll) subverted the revolution, crushed the revolutionary institutions, and instituted what could more accurately be called state capitalism. This development was exacerbated under Stalin, who openly admired Taylorism and Henry Ford's management principles.

What Leninists like to forget is that there is an example of an actual revolutionary society, in Catalonia, one that was ultimately crushed with the aid of the Stalinists and the Republicans, who were more concerned with preventing popular revolution than with directing all efforts towards the defeat of the Falange.

Elise: I wonder if Noam Chomsky appreciates you plagiarizing him near verbatim...

"To call the USSR a "revolutionary" state is only accurate with some serious caveats. It was a revolutionary society briefly, before Lenin (who turns out to have been on the Kaiser's payroll) subverted the revolution, crushed the revolutionary institutions"

Maurice Brinton (from whom Chomsky took and popularized this meme) was factually wrong about the Bolsheviks stepping in and some mythical socialist revolution they weren't leading but its late (not to mention you could read literally any other book about the Russian revolution to see that this is wrong) and I'll focus on the conceptual problems behind this.

This nonsense appeals to people who have heard the 5 second definition of what socialism is -"workers controlling the means of production" and decide that superficial changes like workers owning the means of production and making administrative decisions constitutes socialism. This was the ideology of the petty bourgeois and utopian socialists whom Marx completely refuted by indicating what the infrastructure necessary to build socialism would truly be like. Brinton and Chomsky are of course wholly within this tradition, which doesn't stay dead because it appeals to those who see something wrong with contemporary society but lack the fortitude to make any serious change in their worldview. The commodity is the cell form of capitalist society. Commodity production spontaneously reproduces capitalist relations of production. Commodity production need not take the form it has in laissez-faire type capitalist economies. If a unit of production has to produce something and exchange it with another unit of production or consumer in order to get its inputs, its the same damn thing. Whether this process is carried out through central planning, or money and private property is irrelevant. Seizing property and giving a different group of individuals decision making power is comparatively easy, abolishing commodity production is hard. The technological and social (i.e. knowledge about how to do things) legacy bequeathed by capitalism is designed to function and be effective in an economy regulated by commodity production (to a much greater extent than it is acclimated to hierarchal workplaces or whatever).

The point? The Bolsheviks rightly saw that the collective production which had arisen in Russia was little more than a superficial step towards developing communism (Marx actually liked the communes of Russia and thought that they provided Russia a chance to skip capitalism. He doesn't elaborate on why he makes this conclusion-he just says he has studied the village commune and that the theory in Capital doesn't necessarily apply outside of western Europe. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm ) While the Bolsheviks never thought of the existing collectives as an economic basis for building socialism, they provided a political base for socialist power hence some of the rhetoric of the revolution. But since they didn't provide much more than a superficial economic basis for socialism it wasn't a big deal to dismantle some of them if doing so benefited some other aspect of socialist construction.

The deeper fallacy is that socialists must at all times try to maintain and develop any particular element of socialism they see an opportunity for, rather than try to achieve deeper and more permanent victories for socialism. All of the "leftist" historians who whine about the USSR establishing this or that seemingly capitalist production process admit that the reason for this was to step up production (either Kevin Murphy or Harry Cleaver derisively refers to it as "productivism," don't remember which one). I'm sorry but I don't think it would've suited the cause of building socialism for Russia to be run over by fascists. It is an extremely crude form of politico-economic determinism to think that the working class (when it is in power) can't realize that in particular temporary conditions it might be advantageous to them to amplify some capitalistic aspects of production.

Yes, both Lenin (who was actually a bigger fan of Taylorism and is more well known as one) and Stalin did admire (for some purposes) Taylorism but they never thought of Taylorism as some sort of model for their economy and its practices never predominated. This certainly did not intensify with Stalin. The heroic industrialization of the USSR was achieved by the creativity and enthusiastic action of the workers, which is impossible under Taylorism. A further point beyond all of this is that in a country where feudalism needed to be swept away, capitalist production can have a progressive role compared to the U.S. where Taylorism was seen as anti-worker.

I certainly do not want to give the impression that there was not widespread worker controlled production which would meet the petty bourgeois socialists' criteria in the USSR under Stalin, however.

As for the LOSERS in spain, while I disagree with your analysis I'll just point out that "not getting crushed" is sort of the A number 1 priority for any revolution. How come only Marxist revolutionaries managed to achieve anything without getting crushed pretty damn quickly?

If you aren't endorsing the theory that the Bolsheviks stepped in to crush a revolution independent of them then disregard that part. If you meant that the Bolsheviks lead the revolution but ultimately subverted its aims then the rest of my post should respond to that. But if Noam Chomsky is so egregiously and laughably wrong about this why take the rest of his analysis of the Bolshevik revolution seriously?

Elise: I wonder if Noam Chomsky appreciates you plagiarizing him near verbatim...

While I see no reason to derail this any farther by replying to the other nonsense (I find it hard to debate with the faithful), the accusation of plagiarism is completely false. While the idea and the underlying facts have been discussed by Chomsky, amongst many others, the words are entirely mine.

Nor, to my knowledge, has he ever mentioned Lenin's ties to the Kaiser, which only recently came to light in the past few months. Der Spiegel ran an article on the detailed records found in the German archives.

To try and get back to the original point raised before we ended up in a breakdown of Bolshevism...

Sera, you complained that Mina linked back to the previous conversation about prison abolition, but I notice that you didn't have anything to contribute to it at the time. The only "literature" that was posted in the conversation was incomplete and illogical, and more information or someone who could weigh in on the side of abolition was requested - we even emailed Justice Now. Care to enlighten us (posting under the previous chat, since going to much further into it here risks another derailment)? You've succeed in laying out the basic premise for abolition here, but the reasons you gave so far have been very broad declarations declarations about the present system without any support.

I consider unequal pay for equal work a serious problem. I am even unable to reconcile paying people more simply for working longer at a job, if gains in experience or skill are not necessary for the job. For example, increased experience and skills will definitely benefit a physician and the patients they serve. Not necessarily so for a groundskeeper working in civil service whose job description and qualifications explicitly state that there are no education or skills necessary for the position. Pay the people enough to make a living (a considerable amount in a place like Hawaii, and considerably more than most employers of any type are willing to pay), period.

That said, I cannot judge that a $3.00 per hour wage gap between average men's and women's salaries right out of college are discriminatory, unless they have comparable applicable skills and qualifications, for comparable employers and duties, in comparable communities. Male and female engineers working together, with unequal salaries is a definite problem that should be resolved - with punitive findings against the employer or management, if necessary. However, even a 60:40 student body ratio in women's favor does not mean men and women are pursuing the same studies, possess similar qualifications or find and work at comparable jobs, in comparable locations.

For example, an RN in San Francisco can earn six figures. An RN in Hawaii, with a nursing shortage and with a comparable cost of living would be fortunate to earn two thirds that much. Though unfair on the surface, I do not call that discrimination. Also, nurses who know (those who have trained there and returned or relocated here) will say that nurses in mainland hospitals can see in six months (with gains in skills), what would take two years in Honolulu. (And hardly ever in my community, where we do not deal with say, gunshot or knife wounds, with ANY regularity. We do not even handle cardiac cases or neurological events, but must fly them immediately to Honolulu where specialists are on staff. Oncology patients must also fly to and relocate to Honolulu (losing jobs and family ties) for months at a time for radiation treatment. Also, even the largest hospital here cannot provide a surgical team on a 24 hour emergency basis, therefore, VBAC is not an option open to women, despite the low risk involved.)

Duties and hiring in every institution I have studied at or been to are quite different. The main employer in my community previously used LPNs like RNs (in an acute ward, of all places), while paying them one-third less. There are no increments for increased qualifications such as a BSN, an MSN, or even a doctorate in nursing. All RNs are paid like they have associate degrees or diplomas (though there are increases for years of service). WTF. Be certain that greater qualifications (and the research involved) will benefit the nurse, patients and employers, straight out of school.

P.S. re: nursing salaries. I read in a years old article for a research paper I wrote on patient:nurse ratios, that nurses in San Francisco can START in the six figures. The only nurse I know in this community of 75,000 who earns six figures (and much was made of it in my school), was the director of nursing at said largest hospital in the community.

Also, California by law restricts patient:nurse ratios to 6:1 (now 5:1) in acute wards. Hawaii has no such law. If an employer wishes to have one nurse juggling six, seven or more post surgical and acute patients, while paying them two-thirds of a San Francisco salary, they are free to do so. In one extreme example, one long term facility in Honolulu had my former classmate (male, BTW) as the only nurse on duty for SIXTY patients, on the DAY shift. Yeah, make an LPN right out of school a charge nurse, responsible for the lives and well being of 60 patients, with malpractice and liability always a hazard, for less than the "average" female new university graduate salary.

P.P.S. The people who become director of nursing at the largest hospital in my community have 20-30+ years of clinical experience and possess a BSN or MSN (if not a doctorate). They may be paid like starting nurses in San Francisco. Also, "instructors" at the local college are paid crap, regardless of their background like 30 years mainland experience as an RN, and a doctorate. No one claims discrimination in either case.

"The sexism encountered after graduation is bad enough. But what's really sad for me is that the percentage of women who complete a computer science degree has gone *down* since I got my BS/CS degree in the 1980s. Here's a link to a table by the National Science Foundation (PDF file):

" http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf

"What societal factors could be causing this continued downward trend?"

Maybe one of the factors is the perception of opportunities in tech? I got the impression that some of the people who would have thought "breaking that glass ceiling is worth it for the great jobs" in the 1990s would think "breaking that glass ceiling isn't worth it, all the jobs got outsourced away from here" today.

Meanwhile, I also heard (but forget where I read it and don't remember enough keywords specific enough to find it again) that in the 1990s CS departments in US universities and colleges got more discouraging to deter some of the sudden influx of more students and keep enrollment down...and stayed just as discouraging after they lost popularity. The article said the same thing happened to many physics departments in the US (still grading more harshly than biology departments, even though they're not as popular as they were around Sputnik's time).

Of course, take those guesses with a grain of salt since I'm not in tech myself.

Maybe I'm the only person besides gaelicgirl1983 who feels this way, but I found the "fat" model article really noxious. The mere fact that it starts off with a Hitler analogy is bad enough - if it's not a discussion of actual dictatorship or genocide, it's really inappropriate. But then to post a photo, and probably a paparazzi one at that, of a teenage actress (who looks slender-fit, by no means unhealthy) and make catty judgment calls about her body... score one for feminism there, right?

I've noticed that men rarely catcall when the women is in the presence of other males. This simply wouldn't be the case if catcalling were indeed an expression of "innocent admiration", as some guys claim it to be.

I've always thought of catcalling as a particularly passive aggressive behavior stemming from the fear of rejection.

Some of this fear is channeled into outright hatred (e.g. name calling and more aggressive behavior). But I think in many cases, when men catcall, it is an attempt to outwardly objectify a woman, with little risk of hurt to their fragile ego. After all, it is pretty much expected that women who are catcalled will just keep walking.

The actual fear of rejection, although based on some valid underlying psychology, is really more of an intense dislike of "losing" to a woman in the "game". That's pick up 101, btw.

Also, it's tragic how some women have been conditioned to feel that they need strange men to reaffirm their fuckable status through behaviors that under any other circumstance would simply not be tolerated.

SophiaPriskilla, seconded. Almost without fail, a Hitler/Nazi analogy proves to be the most lazy, inappropriate, and intellectually bankrupt way to make a point. And calling Hayden miserable and starving for losing weight? How many days ago did we have a post on bodysnarking...?

I agree on the article about the 'plus size' model. There is a really good point to be made about how unreasonable women's body expectations are that gets scuttled by the Hayden Panatierre comments.

The fact is that unreasonable body expectations get used in the mainstream media to attack all kinds of women, including Panatierre. If a woman is perceived to be big she is attacked. If she is perceived to be skinny she is attacked. And if she's perceived to be just right... well, how many are really? Remember the pictures just a few weeks back of Cameron Diaz that had been altered to make her body seem more filled in than it was? And nobody was saying she was emaciated... she had done everything 'right.' There always seems to be some creative way to attack women based on their appearance and the message (of course) is that women are never and will never be good enough.

We need to stick together while undermining this message. I was very put off by the comments on Panatierre. Better points could have been made.

I'm really surprised that nowhere mentioned here is the
plus sized" model that won America's Next Top Model. I thought that you all would be covering it for sure.

my bad I needed to read a little more thoroughly. The show dose address that Whitney would be considered a "pretty woman" not a full figured or plus sized woman if she were walking down the street but by fashion industry standards she is "full figured" or "plus size".

I thought this acknowledgment was a good step in the right direction.

Re: Catcalling.

I generally take catcalling in the spirit in which it is intended. Yelling at me as I go about my business does not connote good intentions. I'm not walking/dressed for your viewing pleasure.

But what I'll never understand is how those who catcall from cars expect to be understood when they yell as they zoom by. This is what I hear from those catcalls:

vmrrncxAAAAYYYYYmnvrprrrr!

Seriously, I second the call for assistance on the Colorado Fefertilized egg = person legislation. WE NEED YOUR HELP.

I've created a Facebook group to help spread the word:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18649924011

Just like to say that I find that coercive transgender therapy really disturbing. *shudders*

Re: science and misogyny

I have to agree with the article. I've worked in the "hard sciences" for the last 15 years and deal with sexist comments just about every day. It permeates the culture in every lab in which I've worked and continue to work. And, sadly, it's derned near impossible to be taken seriously by anyone, male or female, when you own two copies of an X chromosome. When it comes to getting paid, HR people love to tell you that you're lucky to have a job so don't complain. Bosses like to tell you that you shouldn't expect to get paid all that much in science. And I'm constantly asked when I'm going to have a child - I've never even heard of a guy being asked that by a boss or coworker.

In response to SophiaPriskilla, I think you're hitting on something interesting. While I agreed with many of the points made in the "plus size" article, it only detracts from the point to make fun of skinny girls. However, I'm not sure that implying that Hayden was suffering was making fun of her, rather the people encouraging her to diet (she looks healthy in both pictures to me).
But on the subject of ostracizing thin people, I would be classified as "underweight," and people sometimes make rude comments to me regarding my weight (are you like, anorexic? Is that all you're going to eat? You're way too thin!) While I doubt that thin people like myself endure as much snark as larger individuals, I think it proves that people (especially women) are constantly being judged, and are expected to fit ONE body type, not too fat, not too thin. Repugnant.

More on how other factors affect salaries, even for what might be argued to be for similar duties and qualifications, albeit in different locales:

http://starbulletin.com/2005/08/16/news/story4.html

Isle teacher pay at bottom in survey of 50 U.S. areas

Hawaii's high cost of living effectively reduces salaries to an average of $27,048

By Dan Martin
dmartin@starbulletin.com

Honolulu teacher salaries were the lowest out of 50 U.S. metropolitan areas in 2003-04 when adjusted for the cost of living, and likely will remain so despite a planned pay raise, according to a nationwide analysis.

Hawaii's average public-school teacher salary of $45,467 for that period -- the most recent complete set of data -- ranked 26th in the country, according to the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis,which compiled the inaugural study.

However, Hawaii's high cost of living reduced that figure to an effective $27,048, dead last in the survey, it said.

[end quote]

See the original story, or any such comparison of nationwide teacher salaries, for sample figures, or even figures for all fifty states or major metropolitan areas. Note: Hawaii even ranks lower than Washington D.C. when cost of living is taken to account. Hawaii is dead last.

This story is three years old. Mind you, it remains true today. More to the point, here is a nationwide list of STARTING salaries, for teachers with either bachelors degrees or masters degrees.

That said, is it fair for those employed by the federal government (e.g., the Veteran's Administration or TSA) to receive a 25% COLA (cost of living allowance) simply for living in Hawaii, for a similar job description as anywhere else? I can't really decide. But it is part of the equal pay for equal work argument.

Determination of discrimination is not as simple as gender or qualifications, unless of course, one is talking about coworkers in the same workplace, which is of course, why it makes sense that a discrimination lawsuit (of any kind) is probably directly against one's own employer, with direct comparison made with the salaries or opportunities for advancement of one's own peers.

Oh. Here is the URL of the

"Bachelors vs. Masters: Compare [starting] Salaries in 50 States"

http://www.theapple.com/careers/2078-bachelors-vs-masters-compare-salaries-in-50-states-

Sad. In my state and county, unskilled laborers with a minimum 8th grade education who clean and maintain roadsides and parks (I have done this work as a university student) start at a comparable salary to licensed teachers with bachelors degrees ($31,596.00 annually), are able to leave their work behind at 3:30 p.m., have weekends off, and their off time really is off. It is also less hazardous. People in Hawaii don't harass, threaten, assault, or shoot custodians or groundskeepers as may and has occurred with teachers dealing with a room or schoolful of youths and sometimes irate family members.

Mind you, Hawaii teachers do not consider nationwide salary related issues to be discrimination. At least not in those terms. It is a living wage issue. $32,000 a year in Hawaii is jack.