Tag: Feminism

  • Imagine it was Mitt Romney

    Via Dana who found it via Kylie, a Facebook note by Harriet Page. I know, not everyone is on Facebook. But that’s where it is!

    She introduced it with

    This week I wrote a response to the several occasions on which I had been challenged on my feminism by men and women who felt that I was misguided, wrong, aggressive or unhelpful in my responses to what I viewed as sexist behaviour.

    Been there. Many times. I can remember heavy sighs back in the early 70s when I pointed out some (to me obvious, indeed blatant) bit of everyday sexism. And of course have been there again just lately, with people who consider themselves feminists nevertheless going into Full Outrage mode because I had the gall to criticize something sexist that Michael Shermer said.

    (Really. Imagine it wasn’t Michael Shermer who said it. Imagine it was Mitt Romney. Imagine Mitt Romney was on a talk show and the conversation turned to the scarcity of women in politics. Imagine Mitt Romney said: “It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it; you know, it’s more of a guy thing.” Imagine I did a blog post saying that was a sexist stereotype, and a particularly damaging one at that. Would there have been the same kind of outrage from the same people?

    I don’t know the answer, of course, but I think it’s extremely unlikely.

    Notice by the way how plausible it sounds as a thing Mitt Romney would say. Notice how well the clueless smug “that’s just how things are”ism fits Mitt Romney. Notice how many other clueless smug prosperous dudes one could slot in there and notice how unsurprising that remark would still be.

    So why is it so hard to see it that way when it’s Michael Shermer who said it?)

    Back to Harriet Page.

    …what I want to talk about is not the obvious misogyny that we can all agree to despise, but rather the unconscious behaviours and attitudes that go unchallenged because in this country there is a taboo about breaking the silence on the wearying, everyday grind of normal, legitimized sexism. And so I want to talk about the men who claim to stand on the side of equality but, through their words, actions and inaction, perpetuate the culture of sexism. I want to talk about feminism’s false allies; the men I call the sleepwalking sexists.

    Sleepwalking because sleepwalkers can get aggressive if you wake them up suddenly.

    And, in a way, this is exactly what happens when nice, reasonable men who call themselves feminists are called out on their unconsciously sexist behaviour and attitudes. These men have sleepwalked contentedly through the minefield of gender relations without ever having cause to question what they’re doing and then BAM. Some crazy feminist with no regard for how scary and disorienting it’s going to be comes along and wakes them up with the rude news that, actually, they have unintentionally been engaging in some pretty sexist behaviour.

    BAM. Some crazy feminist who isn’t a big Name in Skepticismolandia comes along and says “that was a sexist stereotype.” And the world comes to an end.

    In the case of sleepwalking sexists, the responses are more varied. It might be immediate, unhinged abuse – ‘Crazy bitch, you must be on your period or something’. It might be icy politeness and contempt – ‘I’d thank you not to be so aggressive, it’s completely unnecessary’. It might be fake concern – ‘You maybe don’t realise it, but when you attack men like me who are only trying to help, it hurts the whole cause of feminism’. Whatever the method used, the result is the same; instead of reflecting on their own behaviour and attitudes, these men will retreat into an impenetrable defensive fortress.

    Here’s the hard and unwelcome truth. You are a sleepwalking sexist if:

    -You think jokes about rape and domestic abuse can be funny.

    – You know that victim-blaming is wrong, but you also feel that in purely logical terms, it’s obvious that women who wear provocative clothing are taking stupid risks.

    – You have ever told a woman to ‘get over it’ because she was upset by a sexist joke, a catcall or a whistle.

    – You have ever felt that a woman’s frustration or anger invalidated the content of her argument.

    – You believe that you have as much right as a woman to determine what does and doesn’t count as offensive material, even though you are not the subject of the material in question.

    – You believe that the world is full of men who are potential-feminists, and that they’d be mobilised to help if only women would be a bit nicer to them.

    – You believe that a woman making a generalisation about men is just as harmful and oppressive as a man making a generalisation about women.

    – You did consider yourself a feminist. Then one upset you when she pointed out some problematic behaviour, and now as far as you’re concerned the feminists are on their own!

    – You believe that it’s counterproductive for feminists to call you out on your accidental sexism when there are men whose behaviour is so much worse than yours.

    Recognized.

    This is the hard truth that must be learned; if you are one of those men who looks for these slip-ups, then you are NOT a feminist. If you are one of those men who believes in equality in some vague and idealistic way, but then turns on a woman the second she says something that remotely implicates you or the people you share a common chromosome with in something you don’t like, you are NOT a feminist. If you believe that a woman has to reward your attempts at feminism with niceness, like a dog getting a treat for a trick, you are NOT a feminist.

    Being a feminist means believing ALL the time, regardless of whether women are nice to you, that the struggle for gender equality is on-going and real and essential. It means condemning all those ‘harmless’ little jokes about nagging women, female drivers and periods because you recognise that from the fertile soil of casual, unconscious sexism sprout the seeds of justification for serious assault. It means making the connection between a joke about a woman who bares her breasts on screen in the portrayal of a rape, and the man who thinks it’s funny to grope a woman in a club because she has cleavage showing and Hollywood tells us that boobs exist purely for sexual entertainment. Being a feminist is not about wanting equality for women because they’re nice to you. It’s about fighting for women every single day because you believe that they are human and that humanity is worth defending regardless of how nice, kind, clever, rude, attractive, funny, accommodating or mean the woman in question is.

    That.

  • Sarah Palin what now?

    Oh this is fun – I was poking around with Google, searching for this and that, and turned up this 2010 post at Jezebel on “Sarah Palin Feminism.” Say what? Yes, apparently Sarah Palin was calling for a new, conservative feminism (starring Sarah Palin, presumably?), and Kate Harding came up with five ways to look at it.

    All this would hardly merit more than a quick Inigo Montoya impression, if not for the fact that people won’t quit trying to make the idea of Sarah Palin Feminism happen. And if the fringe right has taught us anything over the last few years, it’s that the more the media takes your horseshit seriously, the more people start to forget that you’re completely disingenuous and/or out of your friggin’ mind.

    So fine, let’s take an old, liberal feminist look at this concept before it gets too much more traction. Five looks, in fact.

    A new, conservative feminism…what does that remind me of? Oh, I know – it reminds me of Sarah Palin’s funny way of being a brave hero by quitting her job as governor, and of serving the people of Alaska by quitting her job as governor. She’s a woman who like to square the circle. Conservative feminism is another one of those. Yes, sure, there are people who combine the two, but let’s face it – it’s a bad fit.

    Look 1: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me

    In a series that begins with “anti-choice feminism,” “Tea Party feminism,” and “Sarah Palin feminism,” what comes next? “Phyllis Schlafly feminism?” “Patriarchal feminism?” “He-Man Woman Hater Feminism?” I mean, how long until the Washington Post publishes a “feminist” argument for repealing the 19th Amendment (there’s no truly pro-woman party anyway, don’t you know?), or widening the pay gap (so more men can be sole breadwinners again and more women can freely choose to stay home) or, I don’t know, reclaiming the word “chattel”?

    See why I say this is fun? It is. That’s funny stuff.

    So, can’t I just agree to disagree with Sarah Palin – or at least to ignore her use of the term and continue to go about my business? Well, evidently not, or I wouldn’t be writing this. The problem is, words mean things. I could start calling myself a red meat conservative, or campaign for those of us who are against the death penalty to “reclaim” the term “pro-life,” but at some point, the relationship between your beliefs and your choice of words either passes the sniff test or it doesn’t. And someone who actively seeks to restrict women’s freedom calling herself a feminist is, not to put too fine a point on it, a liar. There’s a difference between a big tent and no boundaries whatsoever; if Palin’s “entitled to be accepted” as a feminist just because she says she’s one, then the word is completely meaningless — as opposed to merely vague and controversial. And I might just start calling myself a “right-winger” because I’m right-handed, or a “fundamentalist” because I believe everyone deserves a solid primary education, or a “birther” because I once hosted a baby shower.

    That was 2010 though. Now this shiny new conservative feminism is all the rage, and we crazy old liberal feminists are twisted sisters.

  • We are told we are respected, and yet

    Feminism is resurging, says Ellie Mae O’Hagan at Comment is Free. It’s resurging because there is still so god damn much sexist shit going on. In that sense it would be nice if feminism could drop dead because it’s no longer needed.

    O’Hagan recently read The Feminine Mystique for the first time.

    To my mind, the most amazing and miserable aspect of The Feminine Mystique is how relevant it still is. Women of my generation are still being sold lies to keep us obedient. We are told that we are valued, until we accuse a revered man of rape. We are told we are equal, and yet we still do most of the low-paid and unpaid work. We are told we are respected, and yet we are harassed in the street, objectified and ridiculed in the media, and haunted by words like nag, harridan and hysteric in our personal relationships.

    And not just those. Also bitch, cunt, twat, pussy, slut, whore, ho…

    And then there’s the new, more friendly, more accommodating kind of feminism.

    For every campaign against objectification, we have the Sex and the City brand of feminism, as personified by a burgeoning movement in America calling itself “sexy feminists“, which reassures us that one can believe in gender equality and still pay hefty sums of money to have pubic hair ripped out at the root.

    In my mind, if being sexy and funny are the two cornerstones of a new feminist movement, we may as well all pack up and go home now. At its core, feminism should be angry. It should be angry because women are still being taken for a ride. Like the women in The Feminine Mystique, we are being sold a lie of equality in a society where the odds are politically, socially and economically stacked against us.

    Feminism’s most basic function should be to emphasise that sexism is not an accident, but an inevitable consequence of a society structured to favour men. Jokes about vaginas and reassurances that we won’t have to give up lipstick are not enough. To put it bluntly, a new feminism should not be afraid to piss people off.

    Yes but you see the thing is…feminism is about equal rights for women, and women are women. The first duty of women, because they are women, is to be sexy and funny. That’s because they’re women, you see. Women have to be pleasing in some way. They just do. I’m sorry, I know it seems unfair, but they just do. Because they’re women. Men don’t have to be pleasing in some way, because they’re men, and they can do other things. They have other things to offer – success, or strength, or talent. Men can give us things like Microsoft, or coal, so we don’t care so much if they’re sexy and funny. Women can’t give us anything like that, so they have to make up for it by being pleasing. That’s why we hate older women so much: they can’t be pleasing, so they’re violating this important rule that they have to be pleasing. We wish they would just fuck off and die already.

    So if feminism is angry, we’re all going to hate it and attack it, because if there’s anything we don’t want, it’s unpleasing angry women all over the place, telling us not to call them cunts.

    Sexy, funny feminism is inspired by the fear that feminism will never get anywhere unless it is likeable. For a long time now, feminists have been told that their message will never spread to the masses if the messenger appears to be an angry man-hating lesbian shouting the odds from a gender studies seminar room. But we need to realise that popular, non-threatening feminism is destined for failure as well. In a patriarchy – and if you are a feminist, you accept that we are living in one – what is popular and non-threatening is what men deem to be acceptable.

    Can’t be helped. It’s be pleasing or get out.

  • In which I “show up” again

    Well I was going to ignore it but no one else is, so I’ll say a thing or two. About Harriet Hall’s latest Address to the Feminists, which announces that she’s not our enemy by way of prelude to telling us what shits we are.

    I have been falsely identified as an enemy of feminism (not in so many words, but the intent is clear). My words have been misrepresented as sexist and misinterpreted beyond recognition. I find this particularly disturbing and hard to understand, because I’m convinced that my harshest critics and I are basically arguing for exactly the same things. I wish my critics could set aside their resentments and realize that I am not the enemy.

    Two weeks ago I published an article on gender differences and the recent divisions in the skeptical community.  Ophelia Benson showed up in the comments. Not unsurprisingly, she disagreed with me about the Shermer incident, but then she said “I like the rest of this article a lot. I particularly like the point about averages and individuals, which is one I make all the time.”

    I took that as a hopeful sign that friendly communication might be achieved, but my bubble was quickly burst by a hostile takedown of my article on Skepchick by “Will.”

    Really? Her bubble was burst by Will’s article? That’s odd. Mine was burst a lot more promptly and directly than that. It was burst on that same thread, within minutes, by hostile replies to me from David Gorski and others.

    I was making an effort to achieve friendly communication. That’s why I said the thing that Hall quotes. It was an attempt to get a more friendly conversation going. It failed dismally because no one took me up on it. I thought Gorski had at first, but I misread him, as he later made clear. I gave it up and left.

    This isn’t a one-way street you know. Hall has never made any such attempts in my direction. She’s done the opposite. She’s done it again in this post. She wants us to “ set aside their resentments and realize that I am not the enemy” – yet she proceeds to pick another fight. Well which is it?! And what about you setting aside your resentments, Dr Hall?!

    Much later in the piece, she renews her quarrel with me, in a bizarrely off-topic, even Dadaist way.

    And if you want a really surreal excursion into the thought processes of my critics, take a gander at this exchange  [the names of two participants were redacted].

    Ah yes, the names of two participants were indeed redacted – while mine was not. Why? No reason. Absolutely no reason on earth except that those two participants are Friends and I’m Enemy. Yet Hall is either dense enough or malicious enough to treat that as self-evidently fair and reasonable. At this rate she’ll soon be posting on the mildew pit – which is where that exchange was first posted as a screenshot of Hall’s Facebook page, and where the names of the two Good participants were “redacted” to protect their “privacy” while mine was not.

    That Facebook conversation was another one where I tried to achieve friendly communication with Hall. That attempt too was disrupted by trollers (Travis Roy and Richard Murray).

    Hall discusses that unedifying Facebook tangle for awhile, then moves on to another authoritative critic of my thinking.

    Another blogger has deconstructed a list Ophelia made of antifeminist tropes. He claims she sets up a series of straw men and tries to create problems where none exist. You can judge for yourself.

    That’s Al Stefanelli’s post, in which he fundamentally misunderstands what I was saying, in a way that makes me embarrassed for him. Hall seems to think it’s cogent stuff. You can judge for yourself.

    What can I say? She’s angry and unpleasant and she’s pretending she’s not an enemy while acting exactly like one. I don’t want to talk about her, but she won’t shut up about me.

    Now, finally, one substantive point. At the end she gives a list of items we all probably agree on.

    • That there are still obstacles to women in our society. (We can congratulate ourselves that many of the “hard” obstacles such as legal restrictions have been eliminated. Unfortunately, the ones that remain are “softer”, harder to identify precisely and harder to deal with effectively),
    • That we should endeavor to identify and remove the remaining obstacles
    • That it is unreasonable to enforce a requirement that equal numbers of men and women be present in any sphere of human endeavor
    • That society has much to gain from letting everyone, male and female, develop their individual talents in a field of endeavor that they have freely chosen.

    The first two, yes. The third and fourth, wait wait, slow down. It’s not that simple.

    No one is talking about enforcing a requirement that equal numbers of men and women be present in any sphere of human endeavor. But, that doesn’t mean we should just look at any particular sphere of human endeavor that has a huge gender imbalance and conclude that it reflects pure choice and that’s all there is to it. That’s especially true when the sphere in question is a highly rewarded one, whether with money or status or intellectual stimulation or other such goods. (And that cuts both ways. There are vocations whose rewards are emotional and relational, where men may be scarce.) That’s especially true at this point in the timeline, because it’s just way too early. Maybe after many decades of effort to level all the playing fields, a time will come when it actually is safe to say “ok, this is how things shake out when there are no obstacles hard or soft,” but that time is not yet.

    So no, nobody wants the job police to collar women who want to be poets and force them to be computer scientists. But that’s not the issue.

    I’m not the enemy either.

     

  • The wot is feminism chart

    Also known as antifeminism bingo, I believe.

  • Arithmetic via shopping

    Chris Chambers and Kate Clancy point out at the Guardian that pseudoscience and stereotyping won’t solve gender inequality in science, via what they call a “stereotype-enforcing guide to addressing the gender imbalance in science” also published by the Guardian.

    Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a developmental neuroscientist at University College London, points out that finding reliable gender differences in the brain is complicated by individual differences: “There are a lot of girls who are better than boys at maths, for example, and a lot of boys who are better than girls at cooking. Therefore, these generalisations based on gender are unhelpful.”

    Two recent books – Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender and Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm – rigorously test many assumed sex differences, and find all of them lacking.

    Even in cases where gender differences in behaviour or brain function can be shown, where is the evidence that such distinctions can be applied usefully to tailor learning? How do we know, for example, that advice such as making “domestic scenario[s] more mathematic and scientific” wouldn’t apply equally to boys? As Blakemore puts it, “Making mathematics relevant to everyday life problems (e.g. cooking, supermarket shopping) is a good idea when teaching all children, not just girls.”

    Wait wait boys don’t relate to cooking and supermarket shopping because it’s only girls who grow up to be women and it’s only women who do cooking and supermarket shopping. Blakemore is so so so wrong to say that. Isn’t she?

    Yet where the article touches on such evidence, it remains not only gender-specific, but gender-conformist: “Research shows that as girls get older they retain their mathematical and scientific abilities when applied to domestic scenarios.”

    Right! That’s what I said! Oh, wait…is that gender-conformist? Sounds like radical feminism, that kind of talk. Radical gender feminism. Radical scary gender creepy castrating dyke feminism that’s only for ugly women.

    Finding ways for girls to integrate interests in science and shopping doesn’t work if girls think this is the only way to engage with it. Girls are not a monolithic, pink princess-loving entity that responds uniformly to the same siren calls of colour, shopping and cooking. None of these was present when we were evolving; none of this is universal, hard-wired, or intuitive.

    And if so many of these gender-conforming expectations are so harmful to boys’ and girls’ identities, why would we rely on them as a means through which to teach science?

    Becaaaaaaaaaaause, we like things the way they are and we don’t want people to shake free of gender-conformity. That’s why.

    We suggest an alternative to pseudoscientific list-making, and that is to identify and address structural inequality in our societies. There are two broad factors that drive our behaviours: our own individual agency, and the institutions around us. While it is useful to think about ways we can draw more girls into science by integrating it with their existing interests, it is also limiting. For instance, most adult women who hit the glass ceiling are just told to work harder, to be more pro-active, to seek more mentorship, and this can feel exhausting, especially if she already feels like she is doing those things without results. This is because it’s hard to win on agency if you’re not also winning on institution.

    The broader societal constraints that lead so few girls to consider themselves “science people” by middle school derive not from whether we push them into science, but what we value in girls as a culture. What gendered representations of science continue to exist in underperforming countries like the US and UK? What messages do we send about how we value intelligence and knowledge, about how girls contribute to society? And, what would it take to overcome these obstacles to produce a more egalitarian learning environment?

    Dropping the sarcasm now. Really. Adult women are also told to stop “complaining” or “whining” or being “professional victims.” We’re told the best way is just to put your head down and get on with it and be a role model for the three women who will ever be in a position to see what you’re doing. We’re told to shut up about institution because reasons. We’re told nice women don’t discuss broader societal constraints, because that’s radfem. We’re told only ugly women talk about broader societal constraints while pretty women are fully content with how things are because the vote.

     

     

  • Cultural crap

    What is “radical feminism”? I see peculiar definitions here and there – or not so much definitions, as ad hoc explanations apparently pulled out of people’s…imaginary reference materials. The definitions or ad hoc explanations are crafted in such a way that they appear to fit feminists the crafters dislike, unless you actually know anything about the feminists in question.

    There’s Vacula’s definition for example.

    Secular Woman is an organization, launched in June of 2012, which aims to “amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious woman.” I was initially supportive of the organization and helped promote it because I had hoped that this organization would provide a fresh breath of air to the discussion about women’s issues – something much different than what many have already heard from the likes of radical or gender feminists in the secular community who seem to believe that men, ‘the patriarchy,’ and misogyny are responsible for all or most of the problems women face.

    Mmm. Yeh. Except we don’t.

    Not even close.

    A straw definition if ever I saw one. I don’t talk about “the patriarchy” for example; I don’t even talk about it much without the definite article. I also don’t think anything as stupid or crude or off the mark as that. I don’t think even actual radical feminists think anything as stupid as that. Most of the problems all people face are just part of being a mortal animal! There are core human problems and challenges that feminism can’t possibly touch. Feminists aren’t so stupid that we don’t know that.

    And even if we improve the definition by specifying social problems or political problems or the problems of being seen as subordinate, they still don’t boil down to making “men, ‘the patriarchy,’ and misogyny” responsible for all of them.

    The sources of sexism and misogyny (and no, I do not treat them as identical; that’s a later post) that interest me most are cultural; memes, if you like. Women are responsible for them too! I don’t think there is a cabal of patriarchs running a meme factory that keeps women down. I think it’s a lot more complicated than that.

    I do also think it matters. That, I think, is what people mean when they call us “radical feminists” – that we think cultural crap matters. But that’s not radical feminism. Second wave feminism always thought cultural crap matters. All second wave feminism. That was the point of it.

  • Uglies v pretties

    Seen the 9 Ugliest Feminists In America thing?

    It ends with a bizarre non sequitur.

    Feminists want to be valued for their brainpower and ideas above all else, but they still engage in professional photoshoots to push the prettiest picture of themselves on their web sites and book jackets. I guess even feminism can’t completely demolish a girl’s desire to be pretty.

    Well one reason for that might possibly be the way people like this “Roosh” fella like to shame feminist women for being ugly.

    I’m fortunate to be too obscure to be on the list, but I certainly get plenty of shaming-for-being-ugly elsewhere, especially of course on the mildew pit (let’s give it a new moniker for a change). I get double shaming because I’m not just ugly, I’m also a million years old, so I get all the old AND ugly shaming. My name is Prune. This of course is because it’s a crime to be ugly, also to be a million years old, let alone to be both at once.

    This has always been the way – the hyena in petticoats, you know. But the Internet provides a cornucopia of new ways to disseminate the ugly-shaming. It’s no longer necessary to get on a bus in order to shout insults at ugly women. You can just set up a website or a forum or a blog for the purpose, and then besides there’s also Twitter and Facebook. Life is good!

    “Roosh” awards the top honor to my colleague and friend Jen McCreight. I’m not going to quote what he says, because it’s too vicious. I’ll just say that it’s there. It’s deeply sad that there are people who take pleasure in doing that kind of thing. Maybe they’re all psychopaths, so they simply don’t have the working bits of the brain that would prevent them – but that’s deeply sad.

    A former colleague of mine mused about this on Twitter

     Jeremy Stangroom@PhilosophyExp

    I wonder if it’s a coincidence that many of the “chill girls” who are vilified (for no good reason) happen to be very attractive…

    Well first I would want to know what is meant by “vilified.” But leaving that aside, it’s a good point. The unspoken bit represented by the ellipsis is of course “and the feminists happen to be very ugly.” Well spotted. The idea is that we hates’em because they’re so pretty and we’re so ugly.

    Well, actually, not all of us are, but that’s probably beside the point. At any rate I certainly am, and one should be enough to make the observation relevant. So is that what’s going on? Pretties on one side, uglies on the other? Uglies just pissed off because they’re not pretties, and pretties victimized by the ugly old cunts?

    Let’s say yes for the sake of argument. Sure. Whatever. Lucy Wainwright @Whoozley (a pretty) agreed with him, so that’s an objective outside view, so let’s say yes. But is it quite as simple as uglies hating pretties because the uglies are ugly? I think it’s not.

    One, the being pretty itself tends to shield women who are pretty from that kind of abuse, which can have an influence on how feminist they are. Rebecca has talked specifically about this. She used to be a “chill girl” herself…until people started calling her a cunt.

    Two, the fact that they don’t get that kind of abuse may make the pretties indifferent to that kind of abuse directed at the uglies. That might be because of the belief I alluded to at the beginning, that it’s criminal and immoral to be ugly. The pretties may well think, or half-think, or believe below the level of conscious awareness, that ugly people are bad people. There’s plenty of research that indicates we all believe that, and we uglies believe it just as much as anyone else. (Sad, isn’t it.) But we uglies also have the motivation to fight off the belief, while the pretties don’t.

    So…no, it may well not be a coincidence, but even if it’s not, that doesn’t necessarily equal simply “the uglies hate the pretties because the uglies are ugly” – which I think was the intended message.

     

  • The heroic standard is too high

    I’m thinking about the Romantic cult of the hero, and what a bad insidious idea it can be.

    Yesterday Sara Mayhew made a rather pointed remark on Twitter.

    If a retired US AirForce Col. who pioneered as one of the 1st female pilot and flight surgeons voices critique about your feminism, listen.

    Here again is what I quoted Harriet Hall saying in Shermer’s hit piece on me [update: with Shermer’s prefatory phrase added]

    As for why the sex ratio [among atheists and skeptics] isn’t perfectly fifty-fifty, Hall noted: “I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. Science has shown that real differences exist. We should level the playing field and ensure there are no preventable obstacles, then let the chips fall where they may.”

    I disagreed with that; Mayhew apparently thinks I should not disagree, on the grounds that Hall pioneered as one of the first female pilot and flight surgeons. She thinks I should instead “listen” and having listened, agree or obey. (I already had “listened,” obviously, or I wouldn’t have known what she said, and thus couldn’t have disagreed with it.)

    I do (as I have repeatedly said) admire Hall a lot for the pioneering. But it doesn’t follow that I have to agree with her “critique about my feminism.” I don’t agree with it, and that’s partly because I think she is making her own pioneering the standard for others, and that that’s a seriously bad idea. Here’s why.

    People shouldn’t have to overcome barriers that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

    That’s all. People who do overcome barriers are admirable, yes, but it doesn’t follow that everyone should be admirable in that way, if the barriers are human creations that are not necessary and are in fact retrograde and unjust.

    The Little Rock Nine were incredibly brave pioneers, and I admire them immensely. But they shouldn’t have had to be. It shouldn’t have required enormous courage for nine teenagers to go to school. Malala Yousufzai is brave beyond belief, but she shouldn’t have to be. Jessica Ahlquist bravely faced massive vicious harassment, but she shouldn’t have had to.

    Nobody should have to put up with a bunch of shit to go to school or get a Constitutional principle enforced or take up a profession.

    And most people don’t want to put up with a bunch of shit. The trouble with the cult of the hero is that it makes not wanting to put up with a bunch of shit seem cowardly or weak or self-indulgent – just less than what the heroic people do. That’s wrong.

    It’s wrong because not wanting to put up with a bunch of shit is basically a moral view. Distaste for the shit is because the shit is morally wrong. That of course does not mean that people who do put up with it are endorsing it! God no. But it does mean that they shouldn’t make it a reproach to everyone else, the way Harriet Hall apparently is, and the way Sara Mayhew explicitly is.

    No. Just no. Hall needs to be very wary of the idea that because she put up with a bunch of shit, other women should just shut up and take it. No, we shouldn’t. We should unite our voices in saying “remove the shit.” The shit is one of the preventable obstacles that Hall mentioned, and we need to get it out of the way. Women shouldn’t have to be hazed as a condition of entry into philosophy or math or computer science or gaming…or skepticism or atheism.

     

  • This shit is sexist, and feminism is the fight against sexism

    Soraya says hell yes she’s a feminist.

    Remember the woman who asked Romney about the wage gap?

    You know what she got for her efforts?  A good and proper Slutshaming 101 from conservatives who dug up her Facebook page and her Twitter account to reveal that she has in the past used alcohol and maybe suggested her interest in sex. Like Sandra Fluke, she’s a whiny, entitled trollop who should shut up and go home.  Now, Fenton might not have memorized the Slut Manifesto, but she sure as hell knows that a man asking this exact same question would not be treated this way. Just like Jim Lehrer’s weight hasn’t become an Internet discussion point, while Candy Crowley’s has.  As Chloe Angyal so succinctly put it earlier today in Feministing, “This shit is sexist, and feminism is the fight against sexism.”

    Furthermore, sexist shit is everywhere, so the fight against it is needed.

    When people say “I’m not a feminist” or “I’m a feminist, but…” they invariably imply that it’s undesirable error made by an unhinged fringe.  This is a testament to the success of at least 40 years of conservative backlash branding feminism the devilish work of man-hating, barren, aggressive, ugly (no greater sin), humorless, lesbian, she-devils.

    Fucking fools who call people like me and my colleagues and friends “radfems” for example. This? This isn’t radfem, you clueless goons. It’s just fem. You sound like people who scream that Obama is a communist. Obama! For crying out loud.

    …we don’t have one easily recognized national celebration or public marker of any kind testifying to the sacrifices made in the movement to secure women’s civil rights or to celebrate its achievements.  Instead this history is buried under a thick tome of historical denial. We’ve left an entire generation bereft of the knowledge of a powerful legacy and sedated by the idea that, as XOJane put it, “anti-feminist behaviors are feminist because feminism is about choice.”

    They think it’s all done and dusted. That’s so sad. They’ll learn better, but it will be sad.

  • Batman doesn’t need to seek help

    Laurie Penny and Martin Robbins were chatting about feminism one evening on Twitter. [interjection: I’ve been there! I’ve done a good deal of chatting about feminism on Twitter. Some of it with Laurie Penny and Martin Robbins, though not at the same time as far as I recall.] They decided to make it a non-Twitter conversation, with more room to swing the arms. They chose the spacious airy riverview Independent. It’s a very good conversation.

    Martin starts by saying that “Feminists are fighting a centuries-old system of power that benefits nobody but the elite.”

    Laurie: What you’re talking about is structural violence, and the difficulty people have in understanding that there’s more to sexism than individual men doing individually nasty things to individual woman. In a world where we’re encouraged to see ourselves purely as atomised individuals with no relationship to any sort of broader social context, that’s a tough distinction to make.

    So we get people – many many people – telling us to shut up, stop “playing victim,” toughen up, just Be Strong and get on with it – as if it were possible to overcome systemic obstacles by pure will.

    They talk about the way “patriarchy” (for want of a better word) is bad for women and men.

    Martin: This is where I think ‘male privilege’, while accurate, can be a distraction – because the privilege really in modern society is that men are held back maybe 10% while women are held back more. Nobody is ‘winning’ any contest aside from a shrinking elite at the top of the pyramid who have an uncanny knack of getting the proles to fight among themselves.

    They talk about sexist men and lonely men and male roles in popular culture.

    Martin: And I think that’s a function of how we’re raised. Look at male role models in popular culture – they tend to be lone wolves or alpha males in a group. Loneliness can be hard to define. You can be surrounded by people and be alone. The NHS have some good research on men my age, one of the biggest problems is not being able to discuss their feelings, and an inability to seek help.

    Laurie: Yes, although it wasn’t always like that. Again, the model of masculinity changes according to what success and power is supposed to look like. Sixty years ago it was being the head of a household, an important role in your organisation or company or union, a pillar of your community. Now success for men is far more likely to mean lonely entrepreneurism. Seeking help is seen as weak.

    Martin: Batman wouldn’t seek help.

    Laurie: Batman doesn’t need to seek help, he has a butler.

    Martin: And a billion dollars.

    Laurie: And an enormous tower with his name on it.

    Martin: Yes. No issues there at all.

    They talk about sex and power and sex-as-power.

    Laurie: I’ve had men tell me that actually it’s women who have all the power, because they have the power of sexual refusal. Women are also informed that this is the only power we have or are expected to want – and ironically, of course, when we do say ‘no’ we’re rarely believed. Sexual refusal is the battleground, and if that’s women’s main power, it’s a shit power to have – particularly as it mainly works for young, hot women. For a lot of men, though, it seems like ‘women who I want to have sex with’ are the only ones admitted into the category ‘woman’ in the first place. Sexual refusal as a limited, contingent form of control is double bullshit for women and girls, because it means that if we actually happen to like sex and seek it out, as most of us would were we free to do so, we’re judged harshly for it. We like to think we live in a hugely sexually free culture, but we don’t. We don’t.

    Martin: Well, that’s another point I wanted to hit. With men’s magazines, say, we’ve developed this weird lad culture that’s almost grown up in opposite to feminism – except it’s counter-productive and infantilising. And in a weird way a lot of examples of ‘rape culture’ – Brendan O’Neil’s “how can I help wolf-whistling at women” for example – are immensely infantilising. It’s like being told you’re a dribbling animal, so weak-willed that you’re guided by your penis. This weird clique of writers at magazines gradually fading out of fashion have an almost hysterical need to define what is and isn’t allowed to be sexy, and it seems not to bear much relationship to what people choose in real life. I remember, growing up,  a lot of pressure on finding the right type of woman attractive – namely FHM’s sexiest 100 women, which as an exercise is like asking all humanity what their favourite foods are and then blending all the results into a sort of bland gruel.

    Laurie: I like that. Ever thought about writing for a living?

    Martin: Not sure there’s any money in it!

    They talk about the difficulties of male feminism.

    Martin: …Feminism can be a daunting area for men. Feminism has its own language, codes, like any cliquey area of writing. I’m keenly aware of blundering in as a man and saying stupid things, it put me off writing about it for a long time until I had the confidence. I was nervous about this chat. I’m keenly aware that you could probably make mincemeat of me on this topic.

    Laurie: Unfortunately, it is true that there’s a small but serious risk of getting painfully jumped on if you get something wrong, particularly with the internet.

    Martin: You almost need a sort of training arena where you can say stupid things to feminists and not get shot down in public. When I was struggling to understand patriarchy, I found feminist blogs unhelpful. I was asking questions I now realise were a bit stupid, but out of naivety rather than anything else.

    Laurie: I’ve thought about this a lot and unfortunately, I do think female feminists are going to have to be a bit more forgiving and generous in our corrections from time to time, if we can do that without diluting the message – firm but fair. Which of course sucks balls, because we’ve spent our lives being told to be forgiving and generous and make men feel better.

    Yes. We want to be (ahem) assertive, but we get called cunts for being it.

    Martin: Why are more men not talking about this? Where are the spaces where men can stand up and say – actually, this is fucked up? I wish feminism was seen as a discipline in which we discussed men’s issues as much as women’s.

    Laurie: We need some more outspoken male feminists. Maybe you should be one. I’ll train you, we can be like Pai Mei and Beatrix. I’m Pai Mei.

    [Insert elaborate training montage where Martin is made to climb an enormous mountain of privilege-comprehension, dodge the tar-pits of in-fighting and finally destroy Rick Santorum in hand-to-hand combat armed only with a copy of The Dialectic of Sex ]

    Martin: *gasps* I…I know feminism.

    Laurie: Now you’re ready.

    He’s trained. Booya.

     

  • Claiming to speak for

    One strange meme that has turned up in the recent wars is the idea that feminists are “claiming to speak for all women” and that that’s why feminism is so bad and awful.

    That’s a ridiculous claim. All political and moral views do that; they all say this is better than that, and not just for me but for everyone in whatever the relevant group is, from the neighborhood to the species. Feminism has always made large claims about what women should be and do, and it has never had unanimous agreement from all women. Of course in some sense feminism claims to speak for all women, but it’s not unique or weird in doing that.

    Feminism has never meant “whatever all women agree on” or whatever the majority of women agree on. It’s never meant agreeing with all women because they’re women. It’s always been demanding – it’s always urged women to be more than they currently are, which is guaranteed to be annoying and irksome. Reformist movements are like that.

    The recent disturbance has triggered an astonishing amount of sneering and jeering at feminism and feminists, so much so that it has created a glaring example of the very problem it’s busy denying and sneering at: the sense that women are alien to “the atheist movement.”

  • This is totally alien to the spirit of Tahrir

    Well how sodding depressing.

    Women hoping to extend their rights in post-revolutionary Egypt were faced with a harsh reality Tuesday when a mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted marchers calling for political and social equality, witnesses said.

    …

    The demonstration on International Women’s Day drew a crowd only in the hundreds to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the popular revolt that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power. Gone, organizers said, was the spirit of equality and cooperation between the sexes that marked most of the historic mass gatherings in the square.

    As upwards of 300 marchers assembled late Tuesday afternoon, men began taunting them, insisting that a woman could never be president and objecting to women’s demands to have a role in drafting a new constitution, witnesses said.

    That’s no good.

    “People were saying that women were dividing the revolution and should be happy with the rights they have,” said Ebony Coletu, 36, an American who teaches at American University in Cairo and attended the march, as she put it, “in solidarity.”

    The men – their number estimated to be at least double that of the women’s – broke through a human chain that other men had formed to protect the marchers. Women said they attempted to stand their ground – until the physical aggression began.

    “I was grabbed in the crotch area at least six times. I was grabbed in the breasts; my throat was grabbed,” Coletu said…Egyptian women say that sexual harassment has long been rampant here and that they grow up expecting to be fondled in public by men with impunity.

    That’s no good that’s no good that’s no good.

    The “revolution” is worthless if that’s the kind of world it settles for. It’s worthless if it’s content with treating half of its people (or any of them, but especially half of them) as objects of contempt.

  • Seriously?

    Some more thoughts on tits and cleavage and the Cuddy Effect and reservations. First of all, to clarify again, I’m not criticizing Jen or her joke; I am expressing reservations about some of the reactions to some of the reservations about the joke.

    The overall yay-cleavage line is that women should be free to display cleavage (yes, of course, and are any of the critics really saying otherwise?), and that therefore displaying cleavage is an unqualified good. The second claim doesn’t follow. Displaying cleavage could be mixed, or it could be an unqualified bad. The fact that it shouldn’t be forbidden or illegal doesn’t mean it’s terrific. There are more than two stark possibilities.

    Okay so what’s my problem? Why am I such a grouch? What’s not to like?

    One thing not to like is the slavishness of it. Don’t shout; give me a minute. It’s the underdog’s move. It’s wheedling, it’s passive, it’s manipulative. It’s asking to be liked.

    Look at something Greta Christina said in her criticism of the critics of boobquake:

    I’ve written before about how we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men (specifically straight men) to express their sexual desires without automatically being treated as sexist, entitled louts and yahoos. This is the flip side of that issue. We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability without automatically being treated as dumb, exploited bimbos who don’t understand what men really think of us.

    See? We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men to express their sexual desires, and we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability. Those are two different things. Those are two different kinds of thing.

    The first is active, the second is passive. The first is what a subject does, the second is what an object does.

    I don’t want to play gotcha; that’s not my point. Greta’s cool. My point is that the resonances of these things just do differ, and we can’t wish that away by the power of thought, or even by the power of blogging. Maybe someday that will change, but it hasn’t yet. Desiring is not the same thing as being desirable.
    Hotty clothes signal a desire for sexual attention and admiration. In some situations that’s just the ticket! But is it just the ticket in all situations? No – not if you want to be taken seriously – not if you want to be seen as a judge or a doctor or a secretary of state.

    The idea is that we can do both (for a few years, that is, which is another can of worms); we can be both a judge and a hotty. Well that’s a male fantasy, that’s what that is. It pervades popular culture, and a lot of women seem to have bought into it, but it’s a fantasy. A judge who makes a point of displaying her tits is not doing both, she’s doing one at the expense of the other.

    This kind of thing is why some feminists have reservations about the “Oh be joyful, let a thousand tits bloom” line. No it’s not the same thing as the Taliban. The Taliban doesn’t want women to have more real power and authority and credibility as opposed to the bogus kind attached to sexual display. We do.

  • Scholarly Standards in Feminist Science Studies

    In September 2009 I submitted an article to the feminist journal Women’s Studies International Forum, and in February 2010 I was informed that the journal had decided against publication. Nothing unusual in that, of course. No doubt the great majority of articles submitted to journals are rejected, for a multitude of reasons. But when I enquired why no reason had been given, the Editor-in-Chief replied that the paper had not been sent out for review as she did not feel that it had sufficient evidence in terms of references or citations to back up some of the claims that were made.

    Now, whatever deficiencies there may have been in the article, insufficient citation was not one of them. In fact it was profusely referenced, with some sixty citations in an article of approximately 4000 words (Esterson 2009). The explanation was clearly spurious. Perhaps the subject matter, a critique of claims made in a Reader in Feminist Science Studies concerning the supposed contributions made by Einstein’s first wife to his celebrated 1905 papers, was inappropriate for the journal. Evidently not, as the journal previously published one of the most frequently cited articles on this very same subject: “Mileva Einstein-Marić: The Woman Who Did Einstein’s Mathematics” (Troemel-Ploetz 1990). I think we must look elsewhere for the explanation, which will perhaps emerge from an examination of the claims in question.

    Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies (Wyer 2000) contains a chapter by the feminist sociologist Hilary Rose, reprinted from her book Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences: Love, Power and Knowledge (1994). In a section under the subheading “A dangerous combination of love and science” (1994, pp. 143-144; Wyer 2000, pp. 56-57) Rose purports to demonstrate that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić, made substantial contributions to his early scientific achievements, and that the failure to give her work due recognition exemplifies “the unbridled patriarchal power of appropriation” in the “early twentieth century scientific labour market”.

    In the Introduction to the Reader in Feminist Science Studies, under the subheading “Scientific Behavior and the Scientific Method” the editors write: “In using the scientific method, it is assumed that scientists will adhere to a number of behavioral norms… They contain the essence, or spirit, of scientific enquiry…” (Wyer 2000, p. xix). Among five “scientific norms” the editors go on to list is that of “scepticism (all claims should be scrutinized for errors).” This should, of course, be an essential feature of all scholarly writings, and here I want to examine whether Rose’s historical contentions about Mileva Marić comply with to this exemplary precept.

    After a very brief introduction in which she cites a biography of Marić by the Serbian author Desanka Trbuhović-Gjurić (1993 [1988]), Rose writes that the marriage was initially happy and mutually appreciative, exemplified by Einstein’s “explain[ing] to a group of Zagreb intellectuals that he needed his wife as ‘she solves all the mathematical problems for me’.”

    Now one might have thought that the contention that Einstein’s first wife solved all his mathematical problems for him is something that required further investigation before endorsement. However, Rose is content to take the claim at face value. From her endnotes it is evident that she has not examined the biography she has cited, but relies on Troemel-Ploetz’s 1990 article for the information she is relaying (Rose 1994, p. 271, n.19; Wyer 2000, p. 66, n.9).

    Had Rose consulted Trbuhović-Gjurić’s book she would have found that the “Zagreb intellectuals” were actually young comrades and friends of Marić’s medical student brother Miloš (1993, p. 93). Moreover, she would have seen that Trbuhović-Gjurić provides no reference for the quotation, nor even a specific occasion, so we are left to take the assertion on trust, something only too characteristic of the biography. Trbuhović-Gjurić’s evidence for such statements comes mostly third hand from friends and acquaintances of the Maric family obtained some sixty years after the events in question. Hometown folklore gathered from interested parties in such circumstances hardly constitutes reliable testimony.

    One might have hoped that Rose would at least have made some attempt to ascertain whether the claim is tenable. Had she done so she would have found that whereas Einstein excelled in the mathematics he required in the early stages of his scientific career, it was Marić’s poor grade in the mathematical component (theory of functions) of her Zurich Polytechnic final teaching diploma examination (2.5 on a scale 1-6) that resulted in her failing the exam in 1900 (Albert Einstein Collected Papers, Vol. 1, 1987, doc. 67). Furthermore, the mathematics required for the 1905 papers to which Rose alludes in the following paragraph is not at a level that would have taxed Einstein’s mathematics abilities (Esterson 2006).

    Rose now goes on to describe what she calls “two key episodes” that “document the process by which [Marić’s] work, if not actively appropriated, was certainly lost to [Einstein]”. She reports that “Mileva, through the collaboration with a mutual friend, Paul Habicht, constructed an innovatory device for measuring electrical currents. Having built the device the two inventors left it to Einstein to describe and patent…”

    Here Rose is paraphrasing Troemel-Ploetz (p. 418), who in turn is quoting Trbuhović-Gjurić (1993, p. 83). But Trbuhović-Gjurić provides not a single reference to justify her assertions, and the only documents pertaining to this episode tell a very different story. There are around twenty letters exchanged between Einstein and one or other of the Habicht brothers (Conrad and Paul) in the years 1907-1911 in which the “little machine” (Maschinchen) is discussed, but there is no mention of any contribution from Marić (Collected Papers, Vol. 5, 1995). The development of the device for measuring small currents is well documented from the time Einstein reported his ideas for a new method of measuring very small quantities of electrical energy in a letter to Conrad and Paul Habicht dated 15 July 1907 (Fölsing 1997, pp. 239-241). (He had suggested the possibility of such a device in the final paragraph of a paper published in Annalen der Physik earlier that year [Collected Papers, Vol. 2, 1989, doc. 39].) Einstein and Conrad had become close friends since Einstein had moved to Bern in 1902, before his marriage the following year. Paul Habicht had started up a small instrument-making company in 1907, and used his laboratory for making and improving the device. There are nine letters from Paul to Einstein giving details of stages in the manufacture of the device, not one of which suggests that Marić was involved. At the end of three of these Paul adds conventional greetings to Einstein’s family, but he refers to “your wife”, not Mileva as one would expect if they had been working closely together in the way that Trbuhović-Gjurić claims. (In one letter to Einstein, dated 12 October 1908, Paul specifically refers to “your machine”.)[1]

    In summary, the documentary evidence shows that it was Einstein who supplied the scientific knowledge and basic ideas that enabled Paul Habicht to manufacture the Maschinchen. There is not a single piece of evidence to support Trbuhović-Gjurić’s account of Marić’s major role in collaboration with Paul, and she supplies no information to indicate on what basis her contentions rest. But no matter. For Rose, this supposed episode illustrates “that the price of her selfless love… was that her work had become his.” (In the next sentence Rose makes the preposterous assertion that Marić “also lost her personal health through trying to do the mathematical work to support his theorizing and simultaneously take care of their children”.)

    Rose next alludes is what she describes as “the even more disturbing episode of the articles published in 1905 in the Leipzig Annalen der Physik.” She continues:

    Of the five key papers, two of the originally submitted manuscripts were signed also by Mileva, but by the time of their publication, her name had been removed. These two articles, written in what was widely understood as Einstein’s golden age, included the theory of special relativity which was to change the nature of physics, and for which he alone received the Nobel prize…

    For this assertion Rose cites Troemel-Ploetz, who actually refers to three papers that “were written [by Einstein] together with his wife” – Rose has misread Troemel-Ploetz on this, and also when she erroneously writes that Einstein received the Nobel prize for his special relativity paper (Troemel-Ploetz 1990, p. 419; Trbuhović-Gjurić 1993, p. 97). However, the report by Trbuhović-Gjurić that is paraphrased by Troemel-Ploetz is an object lesson in how not to present an historical contention. She purports to provide the substance of a passage by the Soviet physicist Abraham Joffe in his article “In Remembrance of Albert Einstein”, published in 1955. Unfortunately she does not quote Joffe’s actual words, giving instead a paraphrase that includes the basic contention followed by supporting information that misleadingly reads as if it also came from Joffe. But the unreferenced supporting evidence is without foundation, as is her basic contention that Joffe stated that (in Troemel-Ploetz’s words) “the original manuscripts were signed Einstein-Marić”.

    It is impossible in a short space to fully document the errors in Trbuhović-Gjurić’s contentions about Joffe, but this has been done in meticulous detail by John Stachel in his Introduction to the 1905 edition of Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics (Stachel, 2005, pp. liv-lxxii). As Alberto Martínez also documents, “Joffe did not claim that Marić co-authored or collaborated in any of Einstein’s papers. And he did not claim that her name was on the original manuscripts…” (Martínez, 2005, pp. 51-52). Martínez notes that in multiple places throughout his career Joffe acknowledged Einstein as sole author of the three papers. More specifically, relevant passages in Joffe’s book Begegnungen Mit Physikern (“Meetings with Scientists”) are inconsistent with all of Trbuhović-Gjurić’s contentions in the section in question (Joffe 1967, pp. 23-24, 92-93).

    Rose claims that Stachel (whose name she gives as “Hackel”) “disturbingly… ignores the evidence” contained in Trbuhović-Gjurić’s biography, indicating that in this context she considers that “assertions” is a synonym for “evidence”. In fact Stachel had rebutted the main contentions at a session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 1990 (Stachel 2002, pp. 26-38). It is instructive to compare Rose’s cavalier attitude to what constitutes “evidence” with that of Stachel at that session: “I must emphasize that bare assertions, particularly by interested parties, do not constitute proof of such assertions, even when these assertions are repeated in print, even in a book” (Stachel 2002, p. 32).

    In relation to the claims that she has recycled, Rose contends that Trbuhović-Gjurić’s biography has “raised doubts in the scientific community”, and cites a letter in Physics Today by Evan Harris Walker (Walker 1989; Rose 1994, p. 271, n.21; Wyer 2000, p. 66, n.11). Now Walker (who died in 2006) had a Ph.D. in physics, but he was hardly representative of the scientific community, having for some time been president of the Walker Cancer Research Institute. Rose writes that Trbuhović-Gjurić indicates that “Einstein was the creative thinker”, but he “could not have realized his theoretical insights without Mileva’s mathematics”. Leaving aside that only someone ignorant of the subject matter in question could write such scientific nonsense, one is left wondering how Rose can reconcile this statement with Walker’s contention in relation to the 1905 special relativity paper that “the background material, and most importantly, those most basic capricious ideas…came from Mileva, while the mathematics and proofs came largely from Albert” (Walker 1989, p. 11). That two of the original proponents of the thesis that Marić collaborated with Einstein on his 1905 papers can arrive at such opposite conclusions is in itself a measure of the paucity of the evidence on which the claims are based.

    Contrary to Rose’s assertion about “doubts in the scientific community”, the historian of physics Gerald Holton and historian Robert Schulmann note that “All serious Einstein scholarship has shown that the scientific collaboration between the couple was slight and one-sided” (Holton and Schulmann 1995). (See Pais 1994, pp. 1-29; Holton 1996, pp. 170-93; Stachel 1996, pp. 207-219; Stachel 2002, pp. 26-38; Martínez 2005, pp. 49-56.) As for Walker’s contribution to the debate, Stachel stated in 1990: “I know nothing about cancer research, but if I had to judge Walker solely on the basis of his letter on Einstein, I would have to conclude that he is a fantasist, who judges reality on the basis of his own desires” (Stachel 2002, p. 26). (See also Esterson 2008.)

    Illustrating the poor level of scholarship to be found in the article on which Rose relies, Troemel-Ploetz asks: “Why did [Einstein] not acknowledge in public that it was [Marić] who came up with the idea to investigate ether and its importance (Trbuhović-Gjurić 1983, p. 76)?” The reference is to a passage in Trbuhović-Gjurić’s biography containing the following quotation purportedly from Einstein:

    Mileva believes in my abilities, she believes that I am able to perceive the truths in the processes of nature, regardless of the erroneous beliefs relating to them. It is she who first directed my attention to the significance of the ether presumed to exist throughout the universe. (Trbuhović-Gjurić 1993, p. 87 [my translation]).

    Trbuhović-Gjurić states that Einstein made this statement to Miloš Marić, Mileva’s brother, supposedly in 1905. However, she provides no reference for the quotation, which certainly didn’t come directly from Miloš himself, as he stayed in Russia (later the Soviet Union) after being taken prisoner during the First World War, and didn’t return home before his death in 1944 (Trbuhović-Gjurić 1993, p. 161). In any case, we know the assertion in the second sentence is erroneous, as Einstein wrote an essay on the ether when he was only sixteen, before he had even met Marić (Collected Papers, Vol. 1, 1987, doc. 5). Furthermore, while there is no evidence that Marić had any specific interest in the ether, it was Einstein who wrote to her in August 1899 that he was “convinced more and more that the electrodynamics of moving bodies as it is presented today doesn’t correspond to reality”, and that the introduction of the term “ether” had “led to the conception of a medium whose motion can be described, without, I believe, being able to ascribe physical meaning to it” (Renn and Schulmann 1992, p. 10). In another letter the following month, at a time when Marić was revising for examinations, Einstein reported that he had come up “a good idea for investigating a body’s relative motion with respect to the luminiferous ether”, adding: “But enough of this! Your poor little head is already crammed with other people’s hobby horses that you’ve had to ride” (p. 14). Evidently interest in the ether was Einstein’s hobby horse, not Marić’s. That the words that Trbuhović-Gjurić attributes to Einstein contain an assertion that is documentably false serves to illustrate the unreliability of several like claims to be found in her biography.

    Where does that leave us? A highly regarded feminist sociologist has uncritically reproduced claims about alleged contributions to Einstein’s celebrated 1905 papers by his first wife on the sole basis of an article which itself is almost entirely based on contentions in a book that fails to comply with the most fundamental scholarly standards. Trbuhović-Gjurić’s biography, containing no index or bibliography and almost entirely devoid of reference citations, is described, with justice, by the Einstein biographer Albrecht Fölsing as containing a combination of fictional invention and pseudo documentation (belletristischer Erfindung und Pseudodokumentation) (Fölsing 1990).

    It is disappointing to find claims based on such dubious historical evidence further disseminated in a Feminist Science Studies Reader in the Introduction to which the editors enunciate the principle that factual claims should be treated with caution and scrutinized for errors. That Hilary Rose is by no means alone among feminist academics in failing to comply with this exemplary dictum in regard to Mileva Marić’s alleged scientific contributions is illustrated by a similarly misleading account by Andrea Gabor, deprecated by Holton and Schulmann for its “flights of journalistic fantasy” (Gabor 1995, pp. 3-32; Holton and Schulmann 1995; see Esterson 2007). In their treatment of this subject matter both authors reveal a propensity to endorse claims that are in accord with their preconceptions regardless of the calibre of the purported evidence. It is perhaps unsurprising that the editors of Women’s Studies International Forum are reluctant to be a party to revealing information of a nature likely to be unpalatable to many of its readers.

    Note

    1 It should be noted that, while lending no support to the story of Marić’s supposed leading role in collaboration with Paul Habicht, the biographer Carl Seelig writes of Einstein’s and Habicht’s “attempts to perfect [the machine] with occasional help from Mileva” (Seelig 1956, p. 60).

    References

    Einstein, A. (1987-2009). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Vols. 1-12. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    Esterson, A. (2006). Who Did Einstein’s Mathematics?: A Response to Troemel-Ploetz.
    Esterson, A. (2007). Critique of Gabor (1995).
    Esterson, A. (2008). Critique of Evan Harris Walker’s Letter in Physics Today, February 1991.
    Esterson A. (2009). Maintaining Scholarly Standards in Feminist Literature: The Case of Hilary Rose and Mileva Marić.
    Fölsing, A. (1997). Albert Einstein. (Trans. from the German by E. Osers.) New York: Penguin Books.
    Fölsing, A. (1990). Keine ‘Mutter der Relativitätstheorie’. Die Zeit, 16 November 1990.
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    Allen Esterson

    April 2010