Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Kathryn Hamen heaves a large sigh and wonders why the London Review of Books has such a very hard time finding women.

Having been asked, I told them: the ridiculously low number of women who are represented in each edition of your otherwise worthy journal is, well, ridiculous. The reply: It’s complicated, “as complicated as it gets”. The response was genuine in its bafflement and its hand-wringing consternation, and ended by stating that the editors at the LRB were desperate to change the situation.

To which I replied: then change it.

And then I posted the exchange on my blog, where it was retweeted and picked up by Salon.com in the US. Many people responded with, “I’ve been thinking that for ages.” We might be the only household where Guess the Ladies is played, but we’re clearly not alone in our frustration with the gender balance of the LRB.

Oh yes? Oh yes – so she did. She sent them an amusing, irritated letter and got a fatuous reply:

Dear Kathryn Heyman,

Many thanks for taking the time to let us know why you’ve decided to give up on the LRB. We’re very sorry to see you go, but respect your reasons. If you were interested, I’d be glad to discuss with you, perhaps in an email exchange, why it may be that women are underrepresented in the paper. I think they’re complicated; actually, as complicated as it gets. However, there’s no question that despite the distress it causes us that the proportion of women in the paper remains so stubbornly low, the efforts we’ve made to change the situation have been hopelessly unsuccessful. We’ll continue to try – the issue is on our minds constantly – in the hope that eventually you’ll feel ready to consider subscribing again. Best wishes,

Paul

No. No, and no, and no. That is not possible. Finding women who can write for the LRB is not like finding a snow leopard or gold or a sonnet written by a chicken. It’s not that your efforts have been unsuccessful, it’s that you haven’t made them. You haven’t asked enough women.

Heyman tells him that.

Secondly, I’m sorry, but I just can’t see what on earth you mean: efforts to change the situation? Really, Paul, with respect, it isn’t that hard. I could give you a list – off the top of my head –  of scores of eminent established female novelists and non-fiction writers who are not being reviewed. I could give you a similar list of emerging female writers. So, what’s the problem? Are your reviewers allergic to lady-words? Or is your problem finding female reviewers (because only women will review women?)I’m sure you are aware of the facts in the publishing industry: more women write books, more women read books. Your pages are a shocking inverse to the reality.

Quite. It’s just bullshit to claim that women who could write for the LRB are a rarity, just as it’s bullshit to claim that women who are worth hearing at conferences on secularism and atheism are a rarity. There are lots of them. People forget to ask them.

But the LRB couldn’t even manage to reply to Heyman.

Although there’s been no reply to my follow-up emails (no phone calls, no flowers, nothing), an LRB editor, Deborah Friedell, wrote to Salon, explaining, “we’re getting better, particularly when it comes to promoting and publishing the next generation of female critics”. She noted that the Review already publishes esteemed women writers.

Yes, but too few of them.

By publishing a literary journal with about 70% male contributors in every edition, the implicit message is that male writing is better than female writing.

Ah, no. With respect, that part isn’t right. The implicit message is that there are more better male writers, not that all male writers are better. The implicit message is that there are lots of good male writers and not so many good female writers.

That might be the case, considered in the abstract. (Or just as easily it might be the other way around.) But the reality is, there are more than enough writers of either sex good enough for the LRB, and people are just desperately stupid about remembering to ask enough. It’s like Cara Santa Maria saying she had a hell of a time trying to find atheist women to do that discussion, and then later revealing that she had asked only two women. I think that’s what Paul and his colleagues have been doing – asking two or three and then collapsing in anguish at how complicated it is to try to remember who the fourth might be.

My LRB correspondent explained that “men vastly outnumber women among writers proposing pieces”, but then went on to confirm that it is the editors who approach contributors – so, surely, in this case, the complication lies with the editors themselves. Is it more complicated to commission a woman than to commission a man?

This is what I’m saying! You have to ask them. You have to commission them. Don’t go telling us they won’t do it when you haven’t fucking asked them.

Bidisha (who is a writer) replies in a comment:

I’m writing this after 20+ years working directly in it, 20+ years putting up with it, 20+ glossing my complexion in the glass ceiling of it, 20+ years fighting it and 20+ years thinking about it. It’s cultural femicide: the act of erasing women from cultural life. I wrote about it 3 years ago in Tired of Being the Token Woman (which gives stats from the LRB) and Literary Women, Literary Prizes and A Call To Action and On Despair.

I’ve now spent about 4 or 5 years of those 20 producing, curating, presenting, commissioning or producing events and projects myself. Guess what? There are countless women around, all expert, all talented, all interested, all professional, articulate, insightful and keen. Despite all the complications of this complex issue – which, by the way, is incredibly entrenched and tricky, snagged on all manner of quantum enigmatic charismatic complexity – there are just gazillions of women experts, writers, critics, commentators, speakers, reviewers, artists, academics, analysts, achievers and advocates who are not shy, not unavailable, not crippled by low self esteem or any of the other victim-blaming excuses which perpetrators use to justify their extreme marginalisation of women.

Despite the positively debilitating complications of this issue let me boil it down – really, as a charitable act to help the perpetrators cut through this cloud of confusion …or shall we just call it a smokescreen… they have created.

Women are prolific and very present and active writers (in all fields and genres, fiction and non-fiction), readers, commentators, publishers, editors, agents, PRs, book event organisers and literary event attendees.

When they are ignored or heavily marginalised in the media it is exactly what it appears to be: misogynistic discrimination.

When women are working as producers, commissioners, editors and in other roles behind the scenes and still marginalise other women when it comes to handing out commissions, coverage and speaking slots, it’s exactly what it appears to be: female misogyny and man-worshipping.

It is easy to get more women: contact them and commission them. If you only know 5 women whom you consider to be worth intellectual notice, get each of them to recommend 5 other women whom they rate. It’s easy.

Precisely.

There’s an 11-year-old girl in Yeman, Nada al-Ahdal, who has a lot of courage and good sense.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows an 11-year-old Yemeni girl called Nada al-Ahdal recounting how she escaped her parents who wanted to force her to marry. Nada comes from a modest family and is one of eight siblings. Fortunately for her, her uncle Abdel Salam al-Ahdal, a montage and graphics technician in a TV station, decided to take her in when she was three years old, to live with him and his aging mother, away from her parents.

Here is that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J7_TKgw1To

I would have had no life, no education. Don’t they have any compassion?

That is indeed the question.

H/t Małgorzata.

I had a poster of this on a wall once. Via Wikimedia Commons.

You know what’s funny? When people rage about “keyboard warriors” and “slacktivists” who don’t do things that matter and don’t make things happen, but just hide behind their keyboards and rage emptily online…

…and they do this raging…

(can you guess?)

…on Facebook and Twitter!

It’s like calling someone on the phone to complain about phones.

It’s like driving to the supermarket and on the way raging about all the god damn people out here in their cars cluttering up the place.

It’s like taking a trip to Florence and raging about all the tourists in Florence.

Survivors of the Magdalene laundries are calling on Catholics to boycott mass tomorrow to protest the refusal of the church to pay compensation to the women.

I would love to say “do it!!” but I doubt that I have many readers who normally attend Catholic mass. Well, to tell the truth, I doubt I have any.

The group Magdalene Survivors Together asked people to stand with them and to withhold donations to local churches as a show of solidarity.

A spokesperson for the group said it was disappointed that the nuns are not contributing financially to a fund set up to provide compensation. The four orders have instead said that they will provide access to their records to allow for claims to be processed, and will continue to provide accommodation for the women who remain in their care.

Oh how generous. They’ll do what they should do anyway (how could they withhold access to “their” records?) but they won’t do what they ought to do if they had a shred of conscience.

The four orders involves are the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity.

One survivor said it would be a “simple but powerful way” of sending a message to the four congregations.

“Why can’t they do the right thing? Why do they want to make us suffer like this?” asked Marina Gambold. “They made us suffer behind closed doors may years ago and now they are doing it in public that is shocking, disappointing and disgusting.”

But not surprising.

As requested…and I’ve been thinking I would do more of it anyway, because I like it too, and they’re public domain.

I’ve had a big poster of this one on my bathroom wall for years. Monet, Apple Trees in Bloom.

The BBC talked to the Norwegian woman punished for being raped in Dubai. She is Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Ms Dalelv says she had been on a night out with colleagues on 6 March when the rape took place.

She reported it to the police, who proceeded to confiscate her passport and seize her money. She was charged four days later on three counts, including having sex outside marriage.

That certainly strikes an outsider as a very odd criminal justice system – one that grabs the passport and money of a foreign woman who reports being raped.

Her alleged attacker, she said, received a 13-month sentence for extra-marital
sex and alcohol consumption.

No no no, try to focus. The issue isn’t marital or non-marital, the issue is rape. Forcible sex, sex without consent, assault.

According to the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, UAE law states a rape conviction can only be secured after a confession or as the result of testimony from four adult male witnesses to the crime.

In other words, only in accordance with stupid fucking sharia.

Dubai has undergone a rapid transformation in recent years, emerging as a five-star trade and tourism destination with its tax-free salaries and year-round sunshine.

It is now one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities with foreign workers and visitors greatly outnumbering the local population.

But it remains a deeply conservative region, and its strict laws have caught out foreigners in the past.

Or to put it another way – stay the fuck out of Dubai.

When I signed this petition my signature was number 24, and it needs a LOT more than that. So please both sign it and publicize it on social media.

63-year old Josephine Komeh is a courageous fighter against FGM/Cutting in Sierra Leone who opposed it in the most practical way – by refusing to cut girls and young women herself. She was severely tortured because she had defied the traditional authorities that maintain this brutal practice.

Josephine sought asylum in Britain, where the Government condemns FGM, but the Home Office plans to deport her on 24th July. She will face further torture back in Sierra Leone unless she agrees to cut. There is no-one there to protect her: her husband is dead, a son & daughter live in Britain, and her other children were killed during the 11-year Civil War.

Josephine’s grandmother and mother were traditional ‘cutters’ and trained her as next-in-line. She opposed FGM and felt it clashed with her responsibility for the girls she taught as a head teacher. When her mother died she tried to avoid
taking her place, but the women’s society that organises FGM forced her to cut young girls until she refused to continue. That is when she was tortured.

On 29th May Josephine was taken from Leeds where she lived, to Yarl’s Wood detention centre. Her asylum claim was rejected despite a medical report from Freedom From Torture, but she successfully resisted an attempt to deport her on 5th June. Since then she has gathered more evidence, but the Home Office plans to deport her before a fresh claim can be considered. Her deportation is set for Wednesday 24th July at 6.30am from Heathrow on Brussels Airlines flight SN2104.

Well good god what are the UK authorities thinking? I don’t know, but let’s hope a petition prompts them to think better.

Sign here.

A Norwegian woman went to Dubai on a business trip. It didn’t go well.

She was raped.

Thinking that the police would help her, she reported the rape to them… and  ended up in jail, her passport stripped from her. She spent three days there  before she was allowed to use a phone to call her family. They, in turn, called  the Foreign Ministry and the Norwegian Consulate, who were able to get the woman released into their custody. They took her to the local Norwegian Seaman’s Center, where she stayed for 6 months until her sentencing.

If that’s not enough to outrage you, her sentence will be: she will be spending 16 months in jail. Alone, in a foreign jail, serving a sentence for having the temerity to get herself raped. Oh, and for drinking alcohol.

 One of the things Islam prides itself on is hospitality (and when I say “prides itself on” I mean “boasts of”).

The true concept of hospitality is not something that is widely practiced in most non-Muslim countries.

For many non-Muslims, the entertainment of guests is of primary importance in many cases for worldly reasons only, not rooted in real hospitality for the sake of God.

In Islam, however, hospitality is a great virtue that holds a significant purpose. Being hospitable to neighbors and guests can increase societal ties as well as unite an entire community. Most importantly, God commands Muslims to be hospitable to neighbors and guests. There is a great reward in doing so. Hospitality in Islam is multi-faceted and covers many different areas in addition to the hospitality that we show guests who visit our homes.

Oh yes? Is that a fact? Is it hospitable to charge, convict and sentence to prison a foreign woman for being raped? Is it hospitable to charge, convict and sentence to prison a foreign woman for such a minor “crime” as drinking alcohol (an act which is not a crime at all in her native country)? Is that a friendly, generous, compassionate, reasonable, kind way to treat strangers? No it is not. It is thuggish, sexist, brutal, and stupid.

One of the things Allah is called is “the merciful.” Really? Is it “merciful” to thrown a foreign woman in jail for being raped? No, it is not. It’s harsh, cruel, and spiteful.

Allah is not a friend to women.

A blazer of trails.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

Covering war, crime and politics was mostly a guy thing.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

Lots and lots of trails. Thank you Helen Thomas.

An end of the day amusement. Don’t be drinking anything when you watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6W2NNCUilo

And speaking of don’t do that, Bruce Gorton did a column about geek sexism yesterday.

When it comes to sexism geeks have a serious problem just talking about it.

We have such a huge problem talking about it that the fact that women gamers are talking about it is seen as censorship. Think about how twisted the logic has to be, that so many arguments amount to some guy telling women to shut up – for the sake of free speech.

And gaming isn’t the only place where this happens. The atheist community was rocked by women in atheism calling for an end to sexual harassment at conventions not that long ago.

Atheist activism currently focuses heavily around breaking the taboo of “You can’t talk about that.”

This was the point to the out campaign, to people wearing t-shirts inviting debate etc…

Yet when it came to addressing real feminist concerns – talking about it was treated as some great taboo.

It was, and is. Really. I’m still getting people solemnly telling me I had no business saying Michael Shermer said something sexist when Michael Shermer said something sexist. Really? Why would that be, exactly? I didn’t say he should be flayed alive, after all, I simply said he said something sexist, which he assuredly did. (Don’t believe me? Try changing it to “it’s more of a white thing.” Not racist? Ha. And “more of a guy thing” is sexist.)

It’s pathetic that we still have to fight this battle. But there it is.

SpokesGay has joined the More Than Men blog and done a debut post. It’s titled Gays, Don’t Do That (see what he did there?) and it says really, don’t.

Now. Let’s get right to the pissing-off-of-gay-doodz. Mainly white gay doodz. Before you wrap your peaches in freezer paper, though, understand this: All the things I list below I’ve been guilty of. Every one of us ambles about in an oblivion bubble about something(s). It’s part of the human condition. Doucheitude doesn’t have to be a terminal disease, but managing it requires acknowledging the illness.

And hoo-boy, is there a problem. These past two to three years have been a horrific. . . enlightenment. . . about the pervasive, unexamined, toxic sexist-misogynist-gender-policing-shit-on-the-guy-below-you sewer we soak in. Foolishly, I was shocked to see fellow gay men perpetrating as much gutter behavior as any prototypical FratBro. Turns out doodz are doodz.

So, from my back catalogue of assholery, here are some of the things you’re not to do anymore, gays.

• Do not think you’re incapable of being sexist/misogynist/racist because you’re gay and you know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to be anything but what you are. If I had a nickel for every time I used to joke about “rice queens” and “jungle fever” I’d have enough bank for facial reconstruction to Cover My Shame.

It’s an outrage that it’s taken Spokesie this long to blog. The dude can write. Read the rest.

The Texas Taliban continues its war on women, Amanda Marcotte reports. Fetal heartbeat this time. Got a heart beat? Abortion forbidden! Slut leaves the fetus there long enough to develop a pulse, she’s stuck with it, the slut.

Like the lush at the bar who can’t stop himself from ordering one more round, some Texas Republicans don’t know when it’s time to give it up for the night. Drunk off the win of passing a bill into law that will shut down most abortion clinics in the state and ban abortions after 20 weeks, three Republican state legislators introduced yet another anti-abortion bill Thursday.

This one, which is even less likely to get far in the lower courts than the one Rick Perry just signed, would ban all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected through a transvaginal ultrasound. That means it could ban abortions as early as six weeks, though functionally, I can’t imagine many doctors would be willing to practice abortion at all for fear that anti-choicers would claim that they didn’t try hard enough to find the heartbeat.

Alex Gabriel reports on Creationism and fundamentalism in Keswick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w0DzQEBIjE

Alex transcribed much of it. AM=audience member; P=preacher.

AM #10: No no no no no, I’m asking, d’you not think you are scared – you are scared?

P: I’m telling you what I think. I think that atheism is a crutch for people who are scared of Judgement Day, and they… they cling to the… the… the ridiculous lie of evolution in order to silence their conscience that tells them they are guilty before God, and that they know that they’re accountable because they’ve lied, stolen, looked at porn on the internet, when they’ve slept around, sinned outside of marriage. All sex outside of marriage of one man, one woman, is a sin against God. That’s what God says. Now that’s unpopular today. People in churches believe and tell us that homosexuality’s okay, they were just born that way – that’s a lie from the pit of Hell.

AM #10: Oh, really?

P: Yes.

AM #10: Really?

AM #5: Oh don’t even start…

P: [Inaudible] They feel in their heart, they’re not born that way. They’re not helpless. Homosexuality is an abomination-

[Booing]

Unknown sources: Shut up! Disgusting!

P: -sin against God! And Jesus Christ said unless you repent, you will perish, so…

Then someone from the town council shuts him down.

Turkey is now going to have halal blood.

Wut?

I don’t know. That’s what they say.

A recent Turkish Red Crescent initiate is set to be turned into a factory-supported production process, making medicine out of Turkish people’s blood in order to rule out any risk of non-Islamic dietary impact, according to the organization’s head, Ahmet Lütfi Akar.

Akar told daily Hurriyet that the move could both eliminate dependence on drugs imports, as well as providing Muslim Turks with assurances that their medicine complies with their religious codes.

Uh huh. Because if it’s Turkish blood, it’s clean, and if it’s kaffir blood, it’s dirty. That’s always a great way to think about people.

“For instance, if we are buying medicine from Britain, it is made out of the blood and plasma of the blood of the people of that country. We have different dietary habits from those countries. Being a Muslim nation, we do not eat pork. We don’t eat some of problematic foods, but these exist in the medicine that we import,” he said.

Akar said treatment through one’s own national production would be healthier. “We will eliminate imports, and create an opportunity to export to Islamic countries. There will be no change in the regulation of receiving blood donations; no one will be asked whether or not they eat pork. 95 percent of Turkish people already don’t eat port anyway,” he told daily Hurriyet.

It’s not the pork, you see, it’s the Turkishness. Turkish people are just cleaner, that’s all.

Turkish Medical Association head Özdemir Aktan, however, ruled out any chance of his association offering scientific facts to support the Red Crescent’s point.

“There is no scientific fact that says national blood is more helpful. Being a doctor, how can I possibly say that one blood is halal, and the other isn’t? We are just watching events unfold in complete shock,” Aktan said.

I feel sympathy for Özdemir Aktan. It sounds rather like watching events unfold in Texas.

H/t Torcant.

Via Taslima – a study shows that chimps and orangs can have episodic memories after three years.

It has been well established in humans that sensory cues like songs and smells can help transport our minds back to the past.

The team, led by Gema Martin-Ordas of Aarhus University, Denmark, used the same principle. They found that cues – keeping the experimental set up the same – triggered the apes’ memories.

They observed that 90% of the apes who experienced the event three years earlier found the tool in the correct location almost instantly.

“Our data, and other emerging evidence, keep challenging the idea of non-human animals being stuck in time,” said Dr Martin-Ordas.

“We show not only that chimpanzees and orangutans remember events that happened two weeks or three years ago, but also that they can remember them even when they are not expecting to have to recall those events at a later time.

“What this shows is that the episodic memory system in humans is not as unique as we thought it was, as we share features with non-human primates.”

National Geographic has more.

In 2009, the team ushered 12 of the apes into the middle of several connected cages. In full view, they hid two tools in different boxes within the adjacent rooms. Their job was to remember where these tools were—they would need them to reach an inaccessible piece of food in a later test. They had four shots at doing this.

Over the next three years, the apes went about their lives. They ate, slept, socialised, and took part in many more studies. Then, in 2012, eleven of them were led into the same set of rooms with tool-containing boxes in the same locations. And all of them, except for one, went straight to boxes and retrieved the tools. They remembered.

Call was surprised at “how quickly they retrieved the tools as soon as we opened the doors”. They all did this on their first attempt, without prompts or trial-and-error. They didn’t know this test was coming—in 2009, even the researchers hadn’t planned to repeat their experiment three years later. And by contrast, seven individuals that weren’t part of the original experiment didn’t head for the boxes; they just explored the rooms randomly.

Three years. That’s impressive.