Sunday is for Horizons: How to do (pop) research on #gender differences properly?

There is one sure way to be able to argue with gender essentialists: knowing the science better than they do. Even if they turn out hard to convince, at least you'll know that the facts are on your side.

Depending on how deeply you want to explore the topic, I'm offering three options: two serious books (written by women scientists, yeah!) and a MythBusters video. Your choice.

Delusions of Gender (2010) by Cordelia Fine will take you through all the common gender difference research. And will show that most of that is rather questionable stuff, mostly reflecting the bias of the researchers instead of actual intrinsic differences among people. Very nice to begin to explore the topic!

Brain Storm (2011) by Rebecca Jordan-Young is a heavier and more serious (as in more scientifically worded and structured) read. And pretty much all of it is dedicated to the ongoing quests looking for female brain as opposed to the male brain. She beautifully traces all the usual tricks used - with special attention to studies of intersex individuals (go, read Middlesex!) - for those trying really hard to find biological/neuroscientific arguments against the idea of complete gender equality.

To give you a taste about what kind of distortions Jordan-Young is dealing with, read this blogpost: “Brain Study Confirms Gender Stereotypes”: How science communication can fuel modern sexism.








And just for a little insight in how you should think about gender differences, trying to disentangle the social and the biological, here you have MythBusters dealing with the throw like a girl thing. Yes, the same one that leads to stuff like the "empowering" Always advertising. 

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Matilda (1996)

#inspirationalmovies

Ok, consider that this is as Halloweenish/All Saints/All Dead I'll go. Here you have superpowers, intimidated children, terrible parents and teachers, and scaring people out of their wits. And the love for books... and Roald Dahl.

Matilda (1996) is a very sweet and very 1990's version of Dahl's tale about:

1) A little girl that has landed in the wrong family by birth. But, as the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, finds her happiness in books first and then in leaving them behind once she has found an alternative, better suiting family.

2) A little girl with superpowers that permit her to fight against injustice, punish the meanies, and have fun.

3) A little bibliophile obsessed with the escape and horizons that books offer.

4) A little smartass that instead of formal schooling chooses unschooling at home as her happy ending.

That's why Matilda is a superheroine I'd chose over Hit-Girl. Also, the crucial story is centered around three female protagonists: Matilda, Miss. Honey and Trunchbull. And that's an emanicpatory thing: you get to see that there are many ways how anyone - also anyone gendered as a girl/woman - can yield power. While the level of stereotypical masculinization of Trunchbull can be discussed (is she depicted as masculine in order to be more of an Other, more scarier?), the very fact that it's a female-dominated narrative (+ Matilda's father) is already note worthy.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Sylvia Plath movies

#inspirationalmovie

This is a tragic story. We've warned you. But it's also essential for your herstory knowledge and a very good way to empathize with the problematic of The Feminine Mystique, to understand the great drama of those women educated (therefore craving stimulus and self-realization) but confined to running a household and suffering whatever comes in order to keep up the appearances and keep the family together*.

We offer a double feature about the poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). Open her wikipedia page, scan through it, then start with the movie version of her acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963) - The Bell Jar (1979, Larry Peerce). A coming-of-age story gone sour is just what you need to observe the moment when the idealism and ambition (to become a renowned poet) clashes with the adult world. In this case the adult world implies dumbing things down for the audience of a women's magazine, men that think people owe them sex, fear of pregnancy, fear of the future, invasive and traumatic psychiatric treatment, the desire to disappear...

The novel is based on the experience Plath had while doing an internship in a New York magazine and her consecutive mental breakdown. A version about that summer in Sylvia's life can be read in Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953.

Then go on with Sylvia (2003, Christine Jeffs) covering Plath's career after the recovery, relationship with Ted Hughes, and suicide at the age of 30. While putting no stigma on Sylvia's history of mental health issues, the movie charts the path from poetry and love, through the hell of betrayal, inability to create and utter abandonment, back to writing from the darkest places of her experience and moving generations of people with the sheer force of her suffering. 

The relationship dynamics are pretty much the same as depicted in Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) - full of the struggle to create, to get out of the shadow of a celebrity-partner and deal with their ego - just more intense and with a tragic ending.

* Here it is about running a household instead of doing anything else as a consequence of social norms requiring it (while offering almost no alternatives, and demanding that you become a wife and a mother primarily even if you are a great poet, scientist, dancer, doctor...). It is obviously not the same as being able to decide to dedicate yourself to caring because that's what resonates with your most authentic self.

LaToya ♥ Being a Girl (and Girl to Girl is an amazing initiative!)

LaToya Lane is an activist in IPPF member association in Barbados, and recently - with the help of internets and many people who though that her ideas are worthwhile - have got the support to launch an innovative and much needed initiative that brings together business, agriculture and empowerment for young girls and women.

My Name is LaToya Lane and I enjoy reading, taking new courses, and listening to podcasts on business.

How did you start your work?

Its funny that you say work, because many people do not see volunteer as real work. I began my work with my local family planning association at the age of 17. I must say that when I began I never thought that it would have assisted me with such personal and professional growth. I have been able to move from the President of that association's youth arm (Youth Advocacy Movement Barbados) to Third Vice President on the Barbados Family Planning’s board of directors. I love working in the area of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and I am at my best when I am delivering information that could enrich someone else's life.

What makes you continue? Why are you still doing it?

I have come to realize that my impact or my reach may not be as large as I want it to be, but having the ability to assist people in making moves to change their behaviors one person at a time still counts for something. It is that ability to impact at least one person that motivates me now, the small changes I can help people make, as these will hopefully snowball into bigger life changes.

What is this your endeavor of yours "Girl to Girl" and what impact will it have?

Girl to Girl is a personal development program for young girls and women using agri­business as a uniting component. Girl to Girl will take 14­20 young women from across the island of Barbados, training them in the area of business, personal development and agriculture. It will allow these women, most who have no experience in farming, to grow a percentage of crop for their families/communities and the remainder will be sold in local markets to obtain further capital to sustain the project.

The world would be a better place if everybody would: ­ 
See To Sir, With Love (1967). ­
Listen... ­ lol.. how about if people learned to listen? ­
Read  ­ I WIll Teach You to Be Rich by Remit Sethi.
­Try ­ mentoring.

Before I'm 80, I'd like to write a book and start a youth home. 

Click to read the feature that Barbados Today did for the Girl to Girl project.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Alice in Wonderland (1951; 2010)

#inspirationalmovies

  

A double treat. Now, obviously, there are some significant differences between Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010).

Disney's Alice is a family-friendly musical basically and only suffering depicted is Alice's existential anguish (+ cards/guards being carried away to be executed + the tension around the naive oysters + some cartoon-like violence). And you get singing/gossiping flowers, the adorable Dormouse, Dinah and the gullible oysters, the rather bipolar Caterpillar, etc...while the basic narrative could be "a girl wonders off and explores a bit". It's not as deep nor dense as the original books, but gives you a somewhat glamoured-up and coloured version of Alice-logic and Wonderland-logic.

Burton's version sequel of the classical story is much darker, much more violent and decisive... in the sense of bringing political power play, oppression, real insanity, death into the picture. The characters that were slightly off the hinge when Alice was young (read: in the books and the Disney movie) have gone quite awry and scary. And - as in most of the bring in the savior stories - Alice's duty (while nobody asked her if she wanted to have such) is to save their world/put the correct monarch in place.

The final verdict is as follows: Disney's Alice is a fun classic, an older and very white version of Dora the Explorer, about a girl enjoying her fantasy world; Burton's Alice is the over-and-over retold story of an unexpected child savior (see The Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, among many others). The only perk is the fact that he has interwoven that with the Alice narrative and explored Carroll's fantasy world and its creatures. Therefore, you pretty much have to be familiar with the books or the 1951 movies (as the golden standard among all the Alice-films) to understand where Burton comes from.
The old one is much better and you should know it by heart (the whole thing on giving yourself useful advices while challenging the rules of those around you, speaking truth to power, trying to balance being polite and not putting up with BS). Burton's Alice is interesting mostly just for his fans. And, well, yes, due to the fantasy world being offered as an escape from dreadful existence as female in Victorian England.  

 

On a lighter note, here you have the tune & video that Pogo has made from Disney's Alice. The singing flowers and such.

Momal ♥ Being a Girl

Through contacts made in WSYA and Women Deliver, we are happy to present:

Name: Momal Mushtaq, creator of thevoiceofyouth.com and thefreedomtraveller.com

I enjoy doing anything that would fall under the category of social media, social entrepreneurship and/or social work.

I founded The Voice of Youth (tVoY) in June 2010. It is an award-winning youth network spread across 151 countries of the world. Social media as an alternate form of media has brought the conflict zones of the world into limelight. With the vision of a peaceful society, one of the goals of tVoY is to speak to millions about resolution of conflicts, their nature and root causes. Our focus is on the young people. By sharing their story, we feel they can be a great source of inspiration and encouragement to those who are going through similar situations.

Other than that, I recently launched The Freedom Traveller. I call it "a young Pakistani woman's uprising, her desire to be free and her dream to travel the world." I come from a male-dominated society where girls can't go out alone anywhere – be it the store or the university – everything is dependent on males. Considering this, just being abroad has been 'precious' for me, because that's when I got to experience the true essence of freedom, and you can talk about it, think about it, see it in on television screen but you can't feel it. I have launched The Freedom Traveller to continue my journey as a traveler, redefine the word 'freedom' for women and highlight the work of other inspiring women from around the world. 

The world would be a better place if everybody would:

See The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Listen to TED Talks (I ♥ Being a Girl seconds that, see here)

Read The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003) by Mitch Albom

Try following their heart.

Before I'm 80, I'd like to travel the world.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Ghost World (2001) vs. The Help (2011)

#InspirationalMovies

Compensating for last week, here we are with a double feature and an almost contradictory message. It is Ghost World (2001, Terry Zwigoff) vs. The Help (2011, Tate Taylor).

Both might result triggering and problematic (nerdiness, cruelty, whiteness, self-righteousness are all featured) but this is not why we are bringing them up. We are bringing these two together because there you have the forever dilemma - especially felt by women in certain situations but universal still - between fitting in and daring to be different.

And those two movies are antithesis to each other: while The Help is exploring the impulses that makes one to step out and stand her ground about one's core beliefs, although it may imply social sanctions, Ghost World introduces you to Enid and Rebecca who, having spent years curating their weirdness and marginalization in the realms of formal education, are negotiating a re-entering into the world of normal.

The morals is the following: trying to find strength to be as authentic as you wish and courage to change if you feel that the previous you is somehow outdated and needs an update. Transformation is human. It's really OK. As is questioning, searching, and not really knowing.

Sunday is for Horizons: Middlesex (2002)

This time the subject of suggestion for widening of the horizons is a novel of herself and not an author.
While the author - Jeffrey Eugenides - is brilliant and outstanding, Middlesex (2002) is a masterpiece not only because of its literary depth but also because of the anthropological interest for everybody passionate about questions of gender and socialization into one, customs and morality, and their malleability.

Middlesex is the perfect combination of a coming-of-age story and a family saga. Imagine all the confusion and pain growing-up being a third-generation immigrant in the stagnating US of late XX century when a conflicting sexual/gender identity is piled onto that. Eugenides is perfectly compassionate and loves his characters, therefore the depiction of sexualities are very decent and have been praised for their humanity/veracity (and no looking-for-a-shocker to be found here). People stories, you know. Family secrets. First loves. becoming yourself.

If you need any more persuasion, well, it won a Pulitzer, too.

Sunday is for horizons: Eve Ensler

We have already talked about Eve Ensler. Truth be told, her Embrace Your Inner Girl, was one of the sparks that started this project of ours. Her work on female genitalia as symbols of vulnerability is widely known (Vagina Monologues, anybody?). So is her power in movement building. We just experienced the One Billion Rising campaign all over small local groups and the internets.

As reading matter we suggest you get your hand on:

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World is exactly what the subtitle says it is. Let go of the slight uneasiness that her idea of a "girl cell" provokes in every equality-feminist. And live through the way it feels to be a teenage girl. Also, there is a movement around this work, too: the V-Girls.

The Vagina Monologues. The classic that comes from a time (1996, mind you) when gender based violence wasn't a generalized awareness thing. So go back and read it.

Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World is what she is talking about in the video above. Advocating for letting go of certainty of (normalized) oppression and embracing the emotional (and very harsh) realities of uncontrollable world full of both violence and compassion.

Ensler's writing is easy and emotional. These are (real life) stories, not academic treatises. Do not expect more or less of  them. But get to know them.

Sunday is for horizons: Elizabeth Pisani

This Sunday piece is for everybody interested in HIV/AIDS epidemics. Our heroine is Elizabeth Pisani who will break all your (wrong) stereotypes about it and will call things by their name. The title of her book The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS gives you a taste of her no-shit writing style.

She'll explain you the difference between the epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world. Also, why exactly because of these differences and generalized social (and therefore decision-maker) squeamishness around the men having sex with men, commercial sex-work and substance use so little success has been achieved. It is as good as it can get: no-nonsense fun writing and well researched.

A special treat: If you feel like deepening your knowledge on the Sub-Saharan epidemics and the Miracle of Uganda, get also Helen Epstein's The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against AIDS. With those two you are perfectly set to understand HIV/AIDS. And make sure that the prevention work you can do, is worth it and based in sound evidence. 

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Como agua para chocolate (1992)

#InspirationalMovie

While Como agua para chocolate (1992, Alfonso Arau) might seem just another period piece about love and customs, it is not so. Based on a  novel of Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate: A novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies (1992), it mixes the traditional Western love story with a healthy dose of magical realism.

It analyzes - as good period pieces should - the pressures that social customs place(d) on people. And seeing in detail how women were coping with the fact that submission and passivity were expected from them and the very reality of being a person. With feelings, emotions, desires, and dreams.

As legions of women have done throughout the history, the heroine here finds solace in cooking and breaking free time-by-time (baby steps, you know). Her cooking, though, goes beyond that of your and our grandmothers... because Tita's cooking is magic: the food she prepares transmits her feelings, therefore she can make the whole wedding-crowd cry and people twirl of pleasure at the dinner table.

Sunday is for horizons: Caitlin Moran

This week we suggest you get your hands on How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. And you might want to read exactly because of what it's not.

This book is not a "how to become a [perfect] woman [like I am]" type of shit that will drown you in tips how to wash red wine stains and get along with your mother-in-law. No. No-no-no.

This is not one of those glossy and fake "auto biographies" that's not much more than celebrity gossip and "gosh, I've been lucky and hard-working". No-no.

How to Be a Women is very honest. And touching. And funny. And smart. And very normal. That kind of normal that resonates. The dramas of growing up and becoming a woman person. Dealing with the everyday bullshit, including the everyday sexist bullshit.

Take this book for a trip. Pick it up in those wacky (normally) airport bookstores. It may turn an 8 hour flight into a life-changing experience. Or at least make it a fun and bearable experience.

Below you can find a taste of Caitlin in a 5-part interview. We warn it that this is not as profound as the book. Same as her Times columns, that's the work of a nonchalant broadcaster, TV critic and columnist and Twitter fan (@caitlinmoran). You get a much more thoughtful and closer Caitlin in the How to Be a Woman. Just sayin'.

Sunday is for horizons: Jaclyn Friedman

#Sunday #Learning

This Sunday we start a new tradition. From now on Sundays will be for learning and for widening the horizons. Every Sunday we'll suggest an author that you might want to get to know in order to grow as feminist, as a SRHR activist, as peer educator, as person...

And we start with writer, performer, and activist Jaclyn Friedman. Her work is mostly centered about the themes of enthusiastic consent, slut-shaming, rape culture... very important and omnipresent things that (somehow) go beyond the basics of the (orthodox) sexuality education, even when the CSE is trying really hard to be sex-positive.

So Jaclyn does make it sex- and people-positive and real life-based. Very relevant also for people beyond their adolescence (oh, yes, sexuality education is a life-long learning process!).

We suggest two ways to get to know her work: 

1. Read her books: Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (co-authored together with Jessica Valenti) and What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. Coming to terms with your own sexuality and realize your needs, while being safe and able to agree enthusiastically to be sexual with people included!

2. Listen to her podcast: Jaclyn does a weekly edition of about an hour long conversation with somebody relevant in the sexual rights/feminist activism and/or writing, etc. and answers real life questions. While it is pretty much US (geography=geography) and Internet centered, it will give you a taste of what's going on in the "sex-related news" while obliging to think about polyamory, internet misogyny, body-positivity, pornography, and other things you maybe wouldn't have noticed around. And it just might suggest new paths for your own activism.
+ It's very informal and nonchalant, perfect listening matter for commutes, dish-washing, taking baths and other drag routines.

Right to Education: Bibliophilia!

#girlwithabook

Following up with the Malala initiative, here we have girls reading in Spain and in Slovakia.

And some of this seems to be a clear dedication to Naomi Wolf's Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (or a Secret History of Female Desire) (1998).

Keep reading!

Right to Eduaction: Malala

#girlwithabook

We have been talking about education and books before but this is different.

Suddenly EVERYBODY is concerned about the fact that so many girls in the world are out of school. Aha, much more girls than boys. And you know, if both Madonna and the UN Secretary General are talking about the same issue at the same time, it's important.

And the reason is a girl. Malala Yousufzai (and bunch of Talibans but they are the really-really bad guys in the story) is the reason. And so is her resilience.

We are celebrating her and all the activists fighting for access to education. And we are doing this by joining the #girlwithabook initiative.

Intimate bibliophile portraits of you and some books can be a part of the movement for Universal Access to Education.
Get your camera and your favorite book... 3, 2, 1, say "Malala"! 

Source: @Half

The double shift: Are women made of cast-iron?

"As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.

'What has happened?' the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby carriage along the sidewalk.

'Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well,' replied the man; 'and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City.'

'Hm!' said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. 'If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?'

I really do not know,' replied the man, with a deep sigh. 'Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron." 

The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) by L. Frank Baum

Educating girls is smart, for girls

Education is good for girls. Full stop. Now repeat it again and again. While standing on a chair or any other elevated object, preferably.

Because, as much as we love Girl Effect or any other efforts promoting empowerment of girls and women, at least some of the feminine mystique around investing in girls has to go. Education for girls is good not because they give all their money back to their family afterwards while boys with the same education will not. The very fact that the boys would not support their families equally is profoundly alarming, and a clear sign of structural disadvantage for girls.

So, education for girls for girls' sake we say. 

Girls + pregnancies

In the SRHR community, we spend a lot of time talking about maternal morbidity and mortality, about the need to insure access to health care services and supplies. We insist on need for access, real access to education for girls. We advocate for mandatory Comprehensive Sexuality Education since very early in one's life.

But the curious thought that sums it all up, as presented by Hugo Schwyzer, somehow surprised me

"Sperm kills.* For hundreds of millions of women over the course of millenia, the riskiest action they ever took was having sex (consensual or otherwise, married or not) with men. As medical historians will tell you, until the 20th century, childbirth was the leading cause of death for all women of childbearing years; in some societies that maternal mortality rate may have reached 40%, while other researchers prefer a lower figure of 1 in 5. Given that many women in the developing world still have half a dozen children or more, as they did in previous centuries, the overall risk is compounded by the sheer number of pregnancies carried to term. (1 in 7 Afghan women today die in childbirth.)

To put it even more bluntly, men have killed far more women by ejaculating inside of them than they have by any other method. Semen has killed more people than any other body fluid."

He concludes that, culturally, as a collective unconscious knowledge, it might be one of the reasons to fear the patriarchy-wise channeled male (hetero)sexuality even in places where the feminist fight is not anymore about the legal right to say "no".

A thought-provoking read, anyways.
 

Starting later thanks to books and your Mom,

Books do good things to everybody!

Although early (go, define!) sex is nothing bad, in case you think it has to be avoided, here are your answers. And, no, it is not socio-economic class of the family or race/ethnic origin (we are talking US data here, keep in mind).

Two factors play critical roles in protecting girls-regardless of their socioeconomic status and household structure-against early sexual activity: (1) the quality of their relationship with their mothers and (2) achievement in school, specifically their reading proficiency.

(The research from Girls.inc + the commentary from Feministing.org)

So, education and social networks are the key! We can still look more into some more particular variables and such, but you get the general image.
And knowing that the academic success is also very much household attitudes-bound, more support for education (oh, books! oh, good public education!) and quality family time (oh, parental leaves! oh, work that's compatible with private life!) should be the key for anybody that actually feels like supporting family values (!) and postponing sexual activities.

If that's not your cup of tea, this might be,

 

Sista Queen "Try Being A Lady"

"Try being a lady?
Use me as your trophy so you can parade me...
Use my vagina to only birth babies...
Be your damsel in distress so a brother can save me...
[...]
If my tongue was a trigger, you'd have been shot...
Get real - I'm gonna stay inappropriate until I fucking rot...
I don't talk about love,
I don't talk about sex,
I don't talk about things that'll put your dick on erect"

Sista Queen

"I wasn't expecting much when a 19 year old newcomer from Atlanta with the cliched name of Sista Queen was announced. Well, this performer blew me away, and I hope that anybody who wants to see Def Poetry at its best will find a way to catch her three minutes. She's an intense, loud, fast talker with an endless supply of breath. Her piece is about the self-cheapening of womanhood, and as her performance built to a crescendo she shot back and forth between mocking poses of cute fawning femininity and furious denunciations of the same poses, switching so quickly you were still catching up with the last change as she shot off into the next one. This is the kind of performance I want to see when I turn on this show. I don't know how Sista Queen got so good at such a young age, but I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing more from her." (Levi Asher on July 25, 2005)