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Newsweek has an article about the differences between Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of D.C. schools. Anyone familiar with Rhee's work can see where this is going; as chancellor, she has become (in?)famous for her almost single-minded determination to "demand accountability" in schools — read: blame and fire teachers. As head of one of the country's largest teachers' unions, Weingarten predictably disagrees.

Both women are also known for their uncompromising personalities. I have my misgivings about both of their stances on educational reform and labor issues; I'm sure I'm not alone there. But I'm also capable of recognizing this argument for what it is, which is a professional disagreement. Newsweek, however, seems to think it's a sequel to Mean Girls. Under the headline Schoolyard Brawl, we get a story that might as well come with a cartoon of them pulling each other's braids in the girls' bathroom. It's creepy and it's sexist. To wit:

Rhee has a chance to set a strong example for weeding out incompetent teachers—if she doesn't overplay her hand against Weingarten, who is a formidable foe. "You have two strong-willed and very smart and determined women with very different agendas," says Chester Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "It has an almost gladiatorial aspect to it."

"Gladiatorial"? Really?

I think what's really going on here is the Bechdel test playing out in real life. The Bechdel test is an idea from an old Dykes to Watch Out For comic, in which a character says she will only watch a movie if it has 1) at least two women 2) who talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. It's amazing how many movies fail.

Out in the real world, we're accustomed to seeing women in the public eye when they're in fields where their bodies are paramount (actors, athletes), and, increasingly, in politics (Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi). But how often do we see a woman engaged in a public debate with another woman, over ideas?

Rhee and Weingarten, who first tangled about five years ago when Weingarten was running the New York City teachers' union and Rhee was testifying against her as the head of a nonprofit organization promoting school reform, clearly dislike each other.

Well I would hope so! It would be hard to have much integrity if they were having tea every week.

This isn't Jennifer and Angelina. It's a debate about one of the thorniest problems in school reform: how to get rid of bad teachers without any fair and reliable measure of what constitutes bad teaching. Rhee and Weingarten occupy the extreme ends of the argument. In a field that is overwhelmingly female, but where administrative positions are still largely held by men, it is refreshing to see women in leadership roles. As I said, I disagree with both of them on any number of issues. But it would be nice if those ideas could be discussed without falling back on stupid gendered stereotypes.

Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth, is interviewed by conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham

What Jessica says: "Valuing young women for their virginity is still valuing them for their sexuality. Women are multi-faceted human beings and this obsession with abstinence is just the flip-side of the oversexualization of young girls, in that they both reduce women to what they do with their bodies."
What conservatives hear: "SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX."

Thus proving the point.

I haven't read her book (it just came out) but I've seen or heard her on a couple shows now, and the reaction she keeps getting is the "what's wrong with abstinence?" strawman. But she's not arguing against abstinence itself; she's arguing against reducing women to their sexual status, whether they're having sex or not.

The proper conservative comeback — and one guest does make this point — is that, in fact, women should be valued mainly for their sexuality, because a woman's sexuality is the greatest gift she has to offer to the world. I disagree, but bonus points for staying on topic.

Anyway, you should listen to this, just to hear the guest who calls in with the "trash in the street" analogy. This man identifies himself as a high school teacher. Egad.

Class Dismissed in Swat Valley: A 15-minute video about the closing of girls' schools in Swat, the region of Pakistan that has been taken over by the Taliban.

Everything about this is heartbreaking, but I was especially moved by the girl who gave a speech about the political situation and had to cover her face to hide her identity. She's only 12 or 13 but already fearing personal reprisals for speaking out in favor of something as basic as her right to go to middle school.

More about the video at alt.muslim

The next time someone tries to talk to you about the misogyny behind the hijab, comparing it unfavorably to the freedom of Western fashion, please direct them to this link: Nina Ricci Fall 2009 Shoes

I need to go soak my feet in hot water just thinking about it.

photo courtesy of yasmine

[x-posted at HijabMan.com]

When HijabMan posted his entry on the murder of Aasiya Hassan yesterday, "On Giving Men a Free Pass," I was thankful. It was, I thought, another sign that the Muslim community is taking the issue of domestic violence seriously. In some cases the talk is coming from corners where the discussion is long overdue – there's no use pretending otherwise – but if there is any small good that can come out of this woman's brutal murder I hope that it will be in the form of more attention to violence against women, and the need for Muslim leaders, in particular, to address it.

Secular North American feminists have been at the forefront of this issue since the 1970s. In theory, they should be playing a leadership role as well. Instead, though, we get quotes like this from NOW-New York, attacking the use of the term "domestic violence" in Aasiya Hassan's case:

The ridiculous juxtaposition of "domestic" and "beheading" in the same journalistic breath points up the inherent weakness of the whole "domestic violence" lexicon… This was, apparently, a terroristic version of "honor killing," a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men. Are we now so respectful of the Muslim's religion that we soft-peddle atrocities committed in it's
name?

I'm not sure what a "terroristic version" of an honor killing is, or how it's worse than the regular kind. But I do know that "cultural notions about women's subordination to men" are not limited to Muslim countries. And the thing is? Marcia Pappas, NOW-New York's president, should know that, too. I expect sensationalistic coverage from FOX News (who tell us divorce "is not permitted in their culture," and that such crimes will increase if left "unchecked by Western law"). But mainstream feminist groups like NOW keep doggedly insisting, year after year, that no, really, we speak for all women, not just white middle-class women. Really! We swear! And yet when something like this happens, they inevitably revert to the same tired script: When white men kill white women, they do it out of misogyny. But when brown men kill brown women, they do it because they're, well, brown.

Last year I attended a conference at UMass-Boston called "Engaging Islam," where Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian-American feminist anthropologist who has done work in Egypt, gave a talk about honor killings. As she was researching this issue, she found that many cases of family-based violence in the Muslim world were labeled "honor crimes" but did not have the characteristics that would merit this label (i.e., a girl killed by male family members over real or imagined sexual indiscretions); for example, one case was that of a Palestinian father who likely killed his daughter because she was about to expose him as an informant. While family-based violence should be a serious issue in any circumstance, there was nothing uniquely Muslim about this case. This lack of distinction between forms of violence, she found, was typical of research on the subject; reported numbers of honor killings varied dramatically, from fourteen a year to four thousand a year, depending on how "honor killing" was defined.

She also asked how descriptions of these situations capture the flow of life-as-lived in areas where these acts are practiced. In her own fieldwork with the Awlad 'Ali Bedouin in Egypt, she said, the emphasis on honor and morality was true, but girls' lives could not be reduced to those factors – as in any community they were valued for their individual personalities, scolded for their mistakes, and so forth. And, as in all societies, there were violent husbands, brothers who committed incest, and other transgressions, but the perpetrators were considered as individuals, not men who were acting out their "culture." Finally, she said there is no evidence of honor crimes being on the increase (because the state of research on the subject is so inconsistent), but if this is true, it's more likely to be found in areas of rapidly changing social circumstances, rather than being an example of societies following an "ancient code of morality."

Was Aasiya Hassan's murder an honor killing? There's no evidence of that. We've only heard that she wanted a divorce. While that clearly infuriated her husband, there's nothing "Muslim" about such fury. It has been well-documented that one of the most dangerous times, for a woman who has been the victim of domestic violence, is when she finally decides to leave. The question, for feminists, is how to condemn honor crimes without playing into a wider discourse that depicts Muslim women as abject and "Other."

This is not the first time that a large, mainstream feminist organization that claims to speak for all women has made it clear that it only speaks for some. We should expect better.

Aliyah’s Choice: The LA Times’ Profile of a Lesbian Muslim:

The problem with articles on gay Muslims is that they often paint a distinct binary of the Muslim identity as constraining, conservative, and judgmental, and the gay identity as free, liberating, and natural. There’s a reality that developed this stereotype, but it’s not quite that simple. When a gay Muslim throws off her Muslim identity because it conflicts with her gayness (as some Muslims do), it’s not as though all the problems of being gay disappear and life is suddenly easy. And it’s certainly not as though families, if only they weren’t Muslim, would accept a gay child. It’s true that many Muslims and many immigrants don’t view homosexuality favorably, but it’s not a position that’s unique to these communities, even when it may be more prevalent in them.

Excellent (and succinct!) analysis of a popular media trope, from Muslimah Media Watch.

When he first took office in 1993, it took President Clinton about two minutes to abolish the Reagan-era policy known as the Global Gag Rule. Then, in 2001, it took President Bush about two minutes to reinstate it. Now it looks like President Obama will be abolishing it again. This is good news.

Officially termed the Mexico City Policy, these restrictions mandate that no U.S. family planning assistance can be provided to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to: perform abortions in cases other than a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest; provide counseling and referral for abortion; or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country.

Called the "gag" rule because it stifles free speech and public debate on abortion-related issues, the policy forces a cruel choice on foreign NGOs: accept U.S. assistance to provide essential health services – but with restrictions that may jeopardize the health of many patients – or reject the policy and lose vital U.S. funds, contraceptive supplies and technical assistance.

This is one of those cases where I get worked up when people say there are no differences between Republicans and Democrats. We can fight battles both epic and tedious here in the U.S. to make incremental change in reproductive rights within our borders, but in the stroke of a pen the president can make a decision that affects millions of women abroad, with no debate here at home or even much awareness of it.

This is not me defending the Democrats so much as it is me lamenting the disproportionate role the U.S. plays in world affairs. However, since that is the case (at least for now) it seems there should be less focus on the president's positions on things he can't control (i.e. stuff that's decided at the local level or in the other branches of government) and much, much more attention to his views on foreign policy. (Note also that there's more to "foreign policy" than "war." See above.)

Countries with Higher Gender Equality Produce Girls Who Are Better at Math

This is why I think international studies in education are so valuable. You cannot argue that something is purely biological if you're not seeing the same result in other countries.

In this case, an analysis of PISA scores shows girls in Iceland outperform boys in math and that boys and girls have roughly equal scores in Scandinavian countries. In the U.S. and Britain, boys slightly outperform girls. The gap (in boys' favor) grows larger in countries like Italy, South Korea, and Turkey. Researchers studied a total of 40 countries and found that girls' math scores generally correlated to their countries' rank on gender equity as measured by the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index and other similar research. The study was controlled to ensure the findings "are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women."

The reading gap (where girls traditionally outperform boys) did not disappear with increased gender equity. The average reading gap is also larger than the average math gap (6.6% to 2%) and there is no country where boys outperform girls. But overall scores for boys were higher in both areas in countries where women have the most advantages: "This is important because it shows that advances for girls do not come at the expense of boys," Sapienza says.

There's room to quibble with the results, and I'm sure people will be falling all over themselves to do just that. There were a few anomalies: Germany has a larger math gap than its high gender equity rank would suggest; Indonesia and Thailand have lower gender equity but girls and boys perform equally. One gender equity index can be found here (pdf); the PISA scores can be downloaded here (xls — look at table 6.2c). One thing that jumps out is that the country where girls outperform boys most is Qatar — by 14 points to Iceland's 4 — and yet the country earns a dismal 109th place on the gender equity scale. Expect that to be headline news in every article and blog post questioning these findings; as an Arab Muslim country it will serve as convenient shorthand for a Handmaid's Tale-style learning environment. Having never studied Qatar I have no idea what's going on there, but I do know that the "boys study math, girls study languages" trope is not universal, and that in the Middle East medicine and engineering are valued for both genders to the point of being a cultural cliche. It would be interesting to tease out what's going on with these outliers, but the fact that they exist does not, in and of itself, negate the entire study. There may be other things that do, however, so it's worth watching to see how this does or doesn't change the discussion around learning differences.

At a bare minimum, though, research like this shows how inadequate it is to use American data alone (or British, or Namibian, etc.) to try to explain biology. Especially when even -that- data evolves over time. Biological differences may still play a role — the researchers themselves discuss this — but it's not the result you'd get if you limited yourself to a single country's test scores.

On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists

1. I finally saw Out of Africa, 22 years after it came out. In the past, this was one of the few movies guaranteed to put me to sleep. I've tried to watch it at least three times and could never stay awake. This time I soldiered on because it came on tv, coincidentally, just as I was finishing the book.

The book was published in 1937 and is as racist and colonialist as one would expect. There is much talk of the Natives, and their charming Native habits, etc. What it wasn't, though, was sexist, and watching the movie I was up in arms at little things I wouldn't even have noticed had I not read the book (for the first time) and watched the movie (for the first time) both in the same week.

I am not one of those people who needs a perfect match between the book and the screenplay, and even if I were, Out of Africa wouldn't be one of the darlings I felt obligated to protect. I also realize that a movie is dependent on dialogue in a way a book is not, and having Meryl Streep sitting alone in her kitchen saying "I am observing something about the Maasai…" just wouldn't work.

BUT, the way they chose to handle this was to turn the movie into a romance between Streep and Robert Redford, and put the author's words into his mouth. That's right, he explaaains Kenya to her, in his rugged, been-there-done-that way, and she, the sheltered woman, nods sagely at his wisdom, with just enough intelligence (this being Streep, not Paris Hilton) for the viewer to think, "my, what a good, almost-equal partner she makes! he's so independent, but she's smart enough to appreciate him! what a well-matched couple!" — when in reality the things he's explaaaining, about Gikuyu history and big game hunting, are taken almost verbatim from the book, i.e. stolen from the female narrator. Those should have been Streep's lines, with Redford, if he had to be there at all, being the one to do all the intent listening, all the thoughtful nodding.

Moreover! Because they made it into a romance above all else, the movie was actually more racist than the book was, even though it was made 50 years later. Because they'd turned Streep into a woman who primarily pined for her man, alone out on the sweeping African hills (how poetic!), the myriad relationships Isak Dinesen had with Kenyans were written out. It's true she did have this lover who would come and stay with her every now and then, and I'm sure that was hot and everything, but most of her energy was spent trying to make her farm work and on interacting with people who weren't out on safari ten months a year. Although her relationships with Kenyans were deeply problematic in a colonial context, at least those relationships _existed_, and took up a good portion of her attention and thus a good portion of her ink.

In the movie, however, she's got a couple of African servants or something, whatever — cut to a shot of her on her porch! wind in her hair! wishing her white boyfriend would come home and kiss her on the mouth. Both of them are portrayed as outsiders among the other colonials, which was true in the memoir as well, but making Redford the leading man (as opposed to occasional visitor) forces whatever knowledge he's acquired of the culture and the landscape to be packaged as evidence of his rugged independence, rather than evidence of things he's learned from the Kenyans, and because Streep's the girl and can't out-independent him, her relationships are even more superficial. There's no room for African characters in that set-up, at least none with any background, history, complexity, or expertise in anything that would outshine Redford. So they mostly plant coffee and sweep floors and do things in large mobs.

2. I also saw World Trade Center. From the trailer, I thought it would be a sappy sentimental ode to cops and firefighters, and how surprising would that be, because that's not anything I've heard before in relation to 9/11. Instead it was a disaster movie about some heavy stuff that fell on these two guys.

In "The stupid things people say to prove they are comfortable with race," The Happy Feminist addresses one of my pet peeves — that of a white person hearing about another white person (including historical, long-dead white people) slighting a person of color and responding with something like "As a white person, I apologize for that person's stupidity," or "Things like this make me really embarrassed to be white."

I understand it's done with the best of intentions, but it's always jarring. Mainly because it whips the focus off the incident in question and straight onto the white person's need to be praised for not wearing a sheet on their head. Online these comments can be ignored, but in real life the person of color is usually expected to find a socially gracious way of assuring the white person that it's fine, I know it's not YOU, some people are just assholes, whatever, because to express anything that looks like shock or outrage might make the white person standing next to them feel implicated, and god forbid we can't have that.

It also assumes some automatic affinity between All White People Everywhere, or at least the white person's assumption that people of color believe this is true. I'm not talking about the fact that all white people benefit from race-based privilege. I'm saying that when you say you're sorry as a white person, as opposed to sympathizing generally, you're giving yourself permission to deny and dismiss the other person's reaction because after all, you speak for All White People Everywhere, and it's up to you to decide what people of color are and are not allowed to be upset about. Now that you've apologized for everything from a single racist slur to the entire history of European colonialism, we should put the past behind us and get on with the peace and love. I understand the need to recognize the ways in which one's own experiences influence one's view of the world, and to that end bringing up one's own race is appropriate in lots of other conversations, but mentioning it in the context of someone else's pain feels less like "I am recognizing my privilege" and more like "I'll always be white and usually that's super great. Sorry it sucks for you. Now let's move on."

See also when men's first reaction to hearing about something like rape or sexual harassment is to remind women that "not all men are like that." The man thinks he's saying "I don't condone what that other man did," which is a noble (though I'd hope obvious) gesture, but what I hear is "get over your anger, get back with the program, don't let this one isolated incident lead you to start questioning sexism to the point where I have to suffer in any way." Alternate translation: "That guy's a dick. Fuck/flatter/serve/flirt with me instead."

I know I'm not saying anything new here, but what year is this? and I'm still seeing versions of these comments come up in blogs over and over again. I think many men would be surprised to learn how OFTEN women hear this, and how quickly those relationships ("the good ones," right?) turn manipulative and even violent when the man perceives the woman as not making enough of an effort to "put her anger behind her," or at least to only and always mention it in the context of that one specific incident. And the truth is most women DON'T see all men as evil predators, but it's also rather exhausting to remind individual men "I was raped – I know you didn't do it – and I had bruising on my thighs – I know you didn't put them there – so I went to the hospital – I know you would have been great, just perfect, had you been there for me – and they did an exam – yes I remember you went to that 'Men Stopping Rape' conference that one time, that's fabulous " –you can see how this isn't really the way a person would normally tell a story about trauma, right? How it inserts an additional burden into what is already a trying experience?

And heaven forbid the woman/person of color DOES start to talk, even a little bit, about the ways in which sexism or racism in general contributed to their experience, because now the conversation is going to have to be all about why their listener is The Exception and how he's been dicked around by life too you know.

Not to imply these conversations are inherently impossible. The question is, are you focused on the pain and frustration this person is feeling? Or is your main concern the PR damage that misogynists inflict on men as a group, or the damage that overt racists inflict on white people as a group? The second reaction is understandable, but it indicates you have greater loyalty to your demographic than you do to the person in front of you, and expecting that person to stop and help you through YOUR pain at being associated with something you didn't do is (literally) insult to injury.

I enjoy poking fun at White Liberal Guilt and Sensitive New Age Guys as much as anyone does. However, when these jokes become the only thing you ever contribute to a discussion about racism/sexism/classism, I start to wonder what your priorities are.

Ann Coulter on Abu Ghraib:

"I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.

I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious."

[FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, May 5]

And oh look! Another gem!

LIMBAUGH: I think a lot of the American culture is being feminized. I think the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country.

[May 5]

Why the Taliban doesn't recruit these people I have no idea.