Dear Decorum: Polite Feminism?

"Dear Decorum" is an attempt to answer some of life's most challenging questions concerning everyday etiquette and how to stay cool, calm, and collected even during those most trying social situations. Deadbeat friend never have cash on hand to pay their share? We have advice for you--Stop inviting said deadbeat; they'll take the hint. Busybody neighbors all in your grill? Maintain boundaries, but it's never a good idea to completely alienate a neighbor. And so on...

You are cordially invited to send us your questions and we'll do our best to help!

Dear Pearls,

How should one behave when a new acquaintance, or friend-of-a-friend, or friend's significant other makes an inappropriate (e.g., racist, sexist, otherwise offensive) comment? I ask because the rules of traditional decorum seem to indicate one should gloss over the incident and move merrily along, preventing the evening from descending into awkwardness for everyone. Meanwhile, the rules of feminism--or at least my feminism--seem to dictate one should put that person promptly in their place. I admire the stories of Snarky's Machine berating colleagues or her doctor for racist/size-ist comments, and of Choosing Raw's Gena firmly telling the receptionist at her gym that she would not accept unsolicited comments on her body. But those situations were, it seems to me, a bit different. In each, there was some element of a professional relationship, rather than a purely social one. In professional relationships, or online one, or to strangers, I haven't hesitated to state my aversion to even mildly -ist behaviors or statements. But what about when you meet a friend's friend, at a party at your friend's house, and she says something implying, let's say, immigrants are lazy? Or you go out with a group of girls, one of whom you've never met before, and she calls someone "So Jewish" (as in cheap)? Or you meet an old friend's significant other for the first time, and he/she says something sexist? I'm not talking outright* racist or discriminatory behavior, like them calling a friend of mine a name, in which case, you can believe I'd bring the whup-ass. But I've experienced variants on each of the situations listed above, and in each case, I tried to mildly make my disagreement known, while gently moving the conversation along. What's the right thing to do in these situations? When at a social gathering, where the feelings of people you care about are at stake, how can we still stand up for what we think is right? When decorum and feminism come into conflict, which one should rule the day? (Or is there--please--a happy medium?)

Love,

Coca Colo

*I know that term is loaded, so please understand I use it to distinguish between them being in my face, versus me needing to get in their face to make a correction

Dear Coca Colo,

This is indeed a challenge that I am all too familiar with as well. You know me, so you've seen the jaws drop, heads turn, and ignorant comments fly out of folks mouths when they discover I am not their stereotype of "southern black woman" and I've shared some of this experience with the readers before. I still haven't figured out why people feel it's acceptable to comment on a. how articulate I am and/or b. how I mix "black" speech (Negro dialect, anyone?) with "talking white"? This sort of situation has ruined many a lunch, dinner, first impression of a friend's significant other for me. None of it makes sense, but luckily we live in the age of the "Teachable Moment", oh yes. So, even when the situation is personal and hurt feelings may result, my suggestion to you is that you keep doing what you're doing--you've found the "happy medium", which I think is to use these situations as opportunities to gently nudge and enlighten our peers who may just not have had the same exposure to folks of different cultural backgrounds or skin colors and welcome them into the light of the 21st century.

I totally agree with your approach to calmly state your opposition and reasoning and move the conversation forward. It is both right and polite to do so. I don't think any offense can be taken so long as you aren't gearing up for a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, which really would ruin the party. I don't think you have to choose between being true to your convictions as a justice-seeking feminist or being "nice" for the sake of saving your party from an awkward social situation. I mean, certainly, by the time the offender has made the remark things have already turned rather awkward, no? And others have noticed, it's just most aren't going to speak up. So, unless you are truly at risk of making a large, dramatic scene and it's a public event, work function, someone's wedding, etc... (you'll know when discretion is advised), then continue to speak up, as you have been. Embrace the teachable moment. Honestly, if someone is surprised by the use of the term "off the chain", they should be encouraged to expand their circle.

I try to live my life by two totally unoriginal credos. The first my mother impressed upon me from an early age: When you LEARN better, you DO better. OK, so, she got this from Oprah (yes, we are drinking the Oprah Kool-Aid), who learned it from Dr. Maya Angelou. It's a simple, but true message. Breaking down these kinds of barriers requires time and patience and it requires us all to be teachers and students of life when we are called to be so. If you know the person, then gently, saying, "I think your remark may stem from how homogeneous your background and upbringing has been. Not all gay, black, Jewish, women, etc... people can be lumped into the same stereotype...." Is usually enough to embarrass an offender into checking themselves before they wreck themselves. If you don't know the person, it may simply be enough of a ball-buster to inquire, "Do you actually feel that way or were you trying to make a joke?"

My other motto is: Truth over Harmony (as an order of my values). This one I stole from a system of prep schools in the northeast geared towards character development (reform school?), not that a good southern belle like me ever needed to attend reform school, but the message has still had meaning in my life. I've found that even if being honest makes someone upset, in the end, it's appreciated and actually strengthens friendships and bonds.

So, keep it up Colo! We are all challenged by these situations and I appreciate you bringing them to light. Each one teach one.

xo,

Pearls

An American doctor in Paris (or why I want an apology from Jezebel)

I will not be visiting Jezebel until they apologize for publishing "Edward Pasteck's" ridiculous, rape-apologizing, harassment-defending garbage.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this steaming pile of rapey mansplaining dung masquerading as interesting content on a feminist website, it went a little something like this [TRIGGER WARNING--scroll to "end trigger"]:

Having just returned from living in Paris, I feel more convinced than ever that America gets many things wrong about sex. Right there near the top of the list is our attachment to the idea of consent.

In Paris, it seems as if the straight male attitude toward consent is that it doesn't exist. At clubs, bars, bistros, in the street or on the Metro, Parisian men lobby very aggressively for sex. At the clubs in the 8ème, off the Champs-Élysées, and all along Rue de Rivoli, it is fairly common to watch men literally grab and touch the girls who weave through the crowd. Men often draw a finger down an unknown girl's cheek or under her chin like a doting Uncle; they can be seen pinching girls' noses, throwing arms around shoulders and even stealing kisses. It's not for nothing that the French slang word for "kiss" or "make out" is choper, which literally means "to catch."

...One lesson from Paris is that sex shouldn't be an activity to which we need to consent if a decision will suffice.

A specific example from my time in France helps illustrate my point. I once fell madly in love with a woman named Madeleine. I thought she liked me too because she kept agreeing to see me and she once elegantly blew me a kiss as she descended into a Metro station. We were never intimate because the moment never seemed right to try to kiss her. Lovesick and unsure of what to do, I complained about Madeleine to a female French friend who said to me, "Have you tried getting her drunk?" Obviously my friend's recommendation was based on the assumption that after getting drunk Madeleine would be easier to seduce. This idea of plying a woman with alcohol (something that is applauded by American men in private) often enrages American women because they view it as an assault on their right to consent. Is this really a good thing?

That's right, Jezebel, you and I are over.  I will get my celebrity gossip from People, and my feminism from sites that have never defended sexual violence.  I originally wanted to use this space to talk about how I had personally been affected by the fragility of consent in American society.  To talk about walking the gauntlet in NYC bars with bile in the back of my throat as men exercised their assumed right to touch me however they pleased.  To talk about how, as a survivor of sexual abuse, I am terrified that society thinks "Well, it's not like she fought him off" is an admission of agreement.  I wanted to tear his ridiculous argument to shreds.  Then I had a different idea. [END TRIGGER]

Why not try to apply Pasteck's logic to another situation in which consent is required to avoid legal action?  Medicine.  The below follows the exact same structure and argumentation of Pastek's piece, with almost all taken verbatim (including the parts that make no sense and say nothing), although edited for length.  With apologies to the French, who did nothing to deserve this, here goes:

A feminist capitalist's manifesto

In a recent piece titled "Feminism and anti-Capitalism, a love story" on Feministe and Girldrive, Nona argues that because structural sexism is built into a capitalistic economy, fiscal conservatism and feminism are inherently incompatible, and in fact in conflict with one another.  In fact, she seems to single out fiscally conservative beliefs above even socially conservative ones for exclusion from the feminist paradigm.  While it is "[effed] up to leave conservative women out of the conversation, especially if they felt torn between their family’s traditions and their own reality," fiscal conservatism is a different issue because "capitalism needs to be humanized" and "business [needs] to be regulated."

And yet, here I am.  I am a feminist and I am a capitalist.  I am a feminist because I believe in expanding the choice set for women everywhere.  I am a feminist because I work to challenge systematic oppressions.  I am a feminist because my life's work is women, and I have never felt satisfied doing anything else.  And yet, I am a capitalist.  I am a capitalist because I believe in making the pie bigger, and then trying to divide it as equitably as possible.  I am a capitalist because I am an economist, and I believe that markets tend to offer more efficient solutions to problems (and in fact, often more equitable) than governments, although I also believe that sometimes they don't.  I am a capitalist for reasons that have nothing to do with ideology, because my ideology is that none of us have any moral claim to the endowments of our birth, and thus a good life is one that serves others.  I am a capitalist because I think it works. 

I am not a capitalist because I think the interests of business should come before the interests of women.  Far from it. I have seen big government oppress women, and business and free markets help them.  I believe systematic oppression is every bit as entrenched in government forces as it is in market ones, and that both can be tools to either rectify or reinforce the hierarchies of the past.  I believe there is a role for government in correcting inequalities, but I also believe that government helped to put them there in the first place, both in the US and the world over.  In places where governments continue to oppress, I have seen the remarkable effect of freedom, both market and personal, in improving the quality of life for people in need.  I believe that women's right to vote in this country, a fundamental accomplishment of feminism, is also integrally tied to immigrant and otherwise under-privileged women's participation in the labor force, even under sub-human conditions--sheer, brutal, ugly capitalism. 

Owen Gleiberman thinks Twilight love represents a backlash against feminism

EW's movie critic, Owen Gleiberman, has decided that the popularity of Twilight represents "an unambiguous embrace, by women, of the male gaze," and thus some kind of backlash against feminism. I usually like Owen's reviews a lot (and met him back in college, and he was very kind to my then-aspiring-journalist self), and I've admired the feminism of his counterpart Lisa Schwarzbaum, but I can't help comparing this nonsensical rant to the urge of many-a-previous threatened male to declare feminism "over," "wrong," "passe," etc:

To recap: Either you’re a hater or you’re a Twihard. Either you identify with Bella Swan as a fresh and noble ordinary girl who has a small touch of the extraordinary about her — a lovely wallflower who blooms under the gaze of her courtly vampire beau — or you think that she’s a drippy, passive doormat in thrall to the kind of male-centric romanticism that should have died out around the time of Gone With the Wind.
...What fascinates me, listening to the noisy battle of Team Rapture and Team I Can’t Stand This Garbage, is that the war of opinion over the Twilight saga isn’t just a disagreement about books and movies. It touches something deeper, something that pop culture has always touched and even defined: key questions of what love and sex and romance should look like and feel like, of what they should be. A movie like Eclipse may be a far cry from art, but it’s increasingly clear, at least to me, that the movie hits a nerve, even in people who say they hate it, because it embodies a paradigm shift: a swooning re-embrace of traditional, damsel-meets-caveman values by a new generation of young women who are hearkening back, quite consciously, to the romantic-erotic myths of the past. The Bella Swan view of the world may, on the surface, be the opposite of “rebellious,” but the reason her story sets so many hearts aflame is that it is, in a way, a rebellion — against the authority represented by a generation of women’s-studies classes. Bella’s story is, by nature, a meditative, even meandering one because it’s the story of how she wants to be acted upon, to be loved, desired, coveted, fought over, protected. A movie like Eclipse represents nothing less than a new and unambiguous embrace, by women, of the male gaze.

OK. Remind me again how fantasizing about being desired is a rejection of women's studies classes? Don't men also fantasize about being "acted upon" and being desired and being an all-consuming object of affection? But Gleiberman isn't done:

In many ways, the debate over these movies reminds me of the kinds of arguments that first coalesced 20 years ago around the Susan Faludi book Backlash, in which the author argued that a widespread retreat from many of the mores of traditional feminism was, in effect, a kind of cultural conspiracy, one that reached from corporate boardrooms to the cosmetics industry. I think it’s become clearer in hindsight that what Faludi regarded as a coercive step backward to the dark ages was a lot more complicated than that — that what she viewed as a back-lash was, in reality, a back-swing of the pendulum. With the Twilight saga, that pendulum swing may finally be complete — and some women, let’s be honest, are horrified at that.

First of all, the pendulum never swung. We never had a generation of women who believed in their own sexual power, independence, and right to equality, and were fed a diet of media that affirmed their right to those things. The "feminist generation" is a myth, a myth used to create a handy narrative for imaginary backlashes that also don't exist. Yes, culture changes and things come in and out of fashion. But all women never believed in the "feminist ideal" (whatever that is), and certainly not all of them swoon for Edward or Jacob now. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that teenage girls are mostly the same over the past few decades, and that most of them had a lust object they sometimes dreamed of being dominated by. But I'm willing to bet more of a few have equally as many fantasies about dominating. And none of that makes this generation any less feminist than the rest. Twilight is just that--a fantasy. In reality, most of us women still want equality. Now.

The Daily Show meets feminists; feminists meet the internet

It all started when the Daily Show hired Olivia Munn, someone who was established as a TV host, but not necessarily a comedian.  With all the great female comedians out there, Jezebel writer Irin Carmon couldn't help but wonder, did the Daily Show have a woman problem?  Although her investigation started with Munn, it didn't end there:

Given its politics and the near-universal adoration with which it's met, the current iteration of The Daily Show is held to a different standard by the viewing public. But behind the scenes, numerous former female staffers tell us that working there was often a frustrating and alienating experience.
"What I was told when I was hired is that they have a very hard time finding and keeping women, and that I was lucky to get a one year contract," says Lauren Weedman, a comedian and writer who worked on the show as an on-air correspondent from 2001-2002.
...Stacey Grenrock Woods was on Stewart's show from 1999-2003, longer than any other correspondent besides Bee. (She later chronicled the experience in her book, I, California.) She told me, "Did I feel like there was a boy's club there? Yeah, sure. Did I want to be part of it? Not necessarily. So it kind of goes both ways."

Unfortunately, the piece of it that was about Munn led Emily Gould to wonder if frustration with The Daily Show was really about jealousy over (the very pretty) Munn's success, and if Jezebel was feeding on women's insecurities by throwing Munn to the wolves.  Gould's piece is somewhat thought-provoking.  She discusses the way feminist blogs encouraging "outrage" can really just be another form of the snark and self-loathing fed by traditional women's magazines.  But, I wish Munn had been left out of the whole thing, since the issue with the Daily Show isn't really about Munn, it's about whether there can be a progressive news source that nonetheless has a "boys club" attitude backstage.  And the issue that Gould brings up with feminist blogs isn't really about Munn either.  But the missed-connections back-and-forth didn't stop there.

Feminist classic on women's household burden: Hochschild's "The Second Shift"

I picked up Arlie Hochschild's The Second Shift this past week on vacation, a book I'd been meaning to read because it was "a classic" but which I also dreaded would be a dry screed on hopeless inequities that didn't really affect me. But I kept picking it up, in every bit of downtime I had, and now I can't stop talking about it with everyone I know. (Unlike The Quants, which I have to finish for my work bookclub next week but can't get into - is that because it's a Man Book?)

Hochschild, a professor at UC Berkeley, first published this book in 1989, after extensive fieldwork interviewing and observing two-career couples in the greater Bay area. She compiled case studies of exemplar families, detailing the breakdown of childcare and housework as well as the relations between the two. Hochschild also documented the participant's family background, feelings and ideology regarding gender roles, and opinions about how work was being divided (which often conflicted with her observations). Her conclusion was that in the vast majority (~80%) of households, women carried a disproportionate share of the load, in essence working a "second shift" after they got home from work. The case studies are presented objectively, but are nevertheless incendiary, both for the story they tell and the clarity they draw to unfair breakdowns of household labor many readers have seen or experienced personally.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: cool women on the internet edition

Feminist Philosophers has an appalling story of a woman who was told she would be rescinded admission to an academic seminar if she couldn't "demonstrate" that she had full-time childcare arrangements "to the satisfaction of the Institute directors" throughout the duration of her stay.  Says Edge of the American West: "I can’t figure out why there are so few women in this discipline. It must be because logic is hard."  Anyway, the Feminist Philosophers blog looks cool, and worth checking out for us women in academia.

But don't worry, non-feminists, I have something for you, too.  [NSFW alert!] The cheeky blog Feminisnt, written by a woman who describes herself thusly: "I'm a pornographer, sex worker, atheist, and former 'sex-positive feminist' who grew tired of trying to shoehorn my life into a feminist analysis."  In a recent post, she addresses the assertion that men who pay for sex hate women.  It's an interesting blog to scan for sex-positive feminists or sex-positive feminist-skeptics.  Like I said, when you're not at work!

Speaking of sex-positive feminism, Natalia Antonova has a great response to a piece at Femonade claiming it's impossible for "just sex" to be feminist.  I get Femonade's point, that when people say "just sex" they're often talking about the type of sex that most benefits men (PIV), but often they're not.  I know lots of women who have very satisfying "just sex" relationships (And, let's also remember to consider non-hetero and non-cis pairings, where PIV is not necessarily the order of the day).  For some of them, these relationships will become less satisfying over time, and they'll realize they want something more.  But as Antonova says, let's trust women to make that call for themselves. [Edit: it should be noted that Femonade has exhibited rampant transphobia in the past, so be careful on her site]

This interview with Emma Thompson gives me hope.  Excerpt:

Two years ago she went ballistic when she heard it had been suggested that a young actress on the set of Brideshead Revisited lose a stone in weight. Did she really threaten to quit?

'Absolutely! I would have broken my contract and taken the story to the press.
I am a bit of a fundamentalist about all that size zero stuff - I would have made a big, fat fuss. That was no joke. I would have walked off the set.'

Ask what can be done about such attitudes and she doesn't shrug, like most actresses of her calibre would.  'Put on weight and say F*** off,' she retorts. 'Demand bigger sizes. Go into places where you can't get a 38D bra and say, "I want a 38D bra and give me one. If you can't, I am never coming here again."'

On race and feminism: A primer on feminist white privilege on the internet, and how we'll try to do better

"Be careful when you are dealing with white folks, because one day they wake up and realize they’re white and you ain’t." 

--Tiffany in Houston, on Feministe

Renee Martin of Womanist Musings recently wrote in the Guardian about why she doesn't consider herself a feminist: feminism doesn't seem to have a place for women of color or their issues.  I'm not what I would call an institutional feminist (I mean absolutely no disrespect in that term, just that I have never formally studied feminist theory or women's studies--I formed my feminist beliefs by reading Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg), so I at first didn't see the relevance of her piece to my brand of feminism.  Maybe academic feminists had excluded women of color, but I was part of a personal, inclusive breed of feminists, right?  Then, I read this piece in Jezebel where Megan Carpentier bristles at the fact that Martin states mainstream feminist blogs such as Feministe, Feministing, and Pandagon are dominated by white women.  Carpentier points to the multiple women of color on each of the blogs mastheads

Feministing, which remains an explicit collective, has a new executive editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who has been there for five years. Of the four people on the masthead at Pandagon, two are people of color. Of the two people I know personally at BitchPhD, one is a woman of color. At least two of the bloggers at Feministe — Holly and Chally — identify in their bios as non-white.

The commenters at Jezebel pointed out that Carpentier was guilty of tokenism: having a black kid on the debate team does not a race revolution make.   They also pointed me down a rabbit hole I've been exploring for the past two days--the frequent instances of white bloggers on mainstream feminist sites being racially insensitive and then surprised by the offense they caused.

Erykah Badu Strips to Make a Statement Which is Largely Unheard

In her recent video Window Seat, Erykah Badu shed her clothes on a busy street in Texas, and sparked debate across the blogosphere. The dominant reaction has been outward criticism of her public nudity and her mock assassination near the location John F. Kennedy was killed.

I first watched the video to try to figure out why she had chosen to strip naked for this song. I watched Badu’s discussion of the video posted at the WSJ, and felt at the end that a major problem was that Badu had a great message about conformity, but I wasn’t sure that nudity served a real purpose or that the exact topic was of sufficient gravity to justify the imagery of JFK’s assassination. However, I also noticed that not many people seemed willing to listen to her explanation because they decided they were offended after their initial viewing of the video.

My impression is that people were mostly upset with the nudity because they did not believe it was essential to communicate her artistic message. However, I think this controversy creates a great opportunity to open the discussion of the way women are portrayed in music videos. Women are often filmed semi-nude and portrayed in ways that are truly exploitative. I wonder why this video, which did not (in my opinion) overly sexualize her naked body, has sparked such outrage while there are numerous music videos, advertisements, and shows that portray women in a demeaning way and are only a blip in the public consciousness. Why is nudity/semi-nudity in these cases not met with equal outrage?

Basically, I found the nudity inoffensive but sadly did not feel it successfully strengthened her message. If this video discussed the implications of the way women are represented in pop culture, I would have felt the assassination imagery was more warranted. But either way, Badu is an interesting artist, and I'm glad she's willing to take risks and express herself in different, sometimes controversial, ways.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: women in politics and the sciences, Passover, AT&T, and more!

This report shows that women are less likely to be recruited by political operatives to run for office, even at equal levels of experience and political connectedness.  This might be a major reason for the under-representation of women in elected office.
 
Elsewhere, women are making strides in representation in the sciences, but are still anemically present at top levels.  Nick Kristof is worrying about the boys for a change, and how to keep them engaged early on in school.  This issue has been brought up many times before, but Kristof handles it well, acknowledging that men still disproportionately dominate most arenas of society, but cogently arguing that we're doing a disservice if we let this fact blind us to the educational difficulties of young boys.
 
The march of bad science continues, with Louann Brizendine offering up some insane theories of how men are "hard-wired" to ogle our breasts in the workplace.
 
Happy Passover!  This year, President Obama will be hosting a seder, as he and his staff have done for the past two years, first on the campaign trail and then in the White House.  It's a sweet story, and I think gets at the nice thing about Passover: the universalism of the message that freedom is worth enough to risk a lot.
 
There's a new iPhone ap that let's you avoid AT&T...except not. It just lets you make calls through WiFi instead of through your AT&T minutes. But you still need that dern AT&T contract.
 
Feminist Review offers up women-penned reviews of things women are interested in watching, listening to, eating, and using. It's a worthy goal, and they're currently in the middle of a major fundraising drive, so I thought I'd draw attention to it here.
 
In this amusing interview, the author of Yes Means Yes!, Jaclyn Friedman, offers up the following handy test to see if the guy you're dating is feminist-compatible:

Right now my basic litmus test is this: Is he interested in feminist issues when I bring them up? And can he talk about them in ways that express curiosity and engagement and respect, instead of defensiveness or dismissiveness or attachment to stereotypes? If we can talk about this stuff in ways that are interesting and productive, I can work with it most of the time.

 [hat tips Larry, Katherine]

Health Care Reform Passed the House of Representatives (again)… Now what?

Image Credit: ThomasThomas

Last night, the House Democrats voted to pass the Senate’s comprehensive health care reform bill. In the end the vote was 219-212. The vote, as expected, was pretty much along party lines. The Republicans all voted Nay and all Yea votes were from Democrats. However, 34 Democrats went against their party and voted Nay. Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo put together a spreadsheet looking at how their districts and political ambitions may have affected their vote. The chart showed that 26 of the Representatives came from districts that voted for McCain in 2008.

The House then voted by a similar margin, 220-211, to pass a companion bill making several changes to Senate bill that were needed to gain enough support from the Democrats.

What Is Next?

xkcd and pornography (and feminism?)

I heart xkcd and today’s comic made me literally laugh out loud.

Click through for NSFW awesomeness.

Feministing writer takes to the WaPo op-eds to declare equality an illusion--what do you think?

The founder of feministing, Jessica Valenti, writes in the Washington Post that women are deluding ourselves into thinking we have more equality than we do.  She writes:

We're suffering under the mass delusion that women in America have achieved equality. ...We're basking in a "girl power" moment that doesn't exist -- it's a mirage of equality that we've been duped into believing is the real thing.
Because despite the indisputable gains over the years, women are still being raped, trafficked, violated and discriminated against -- not just in the rest of the world, but here in the United States. And though feminists continue to fight gender injustices, most people seem to think that outside of a few lingering battles, the work of the women's movement is done.

On women and math...What do you think?

I read this interesting article about the debate over women and math, which, like most debates over women and things that they may or may not be good at, focuses on whether gender differences are inherent or learned, in this case, mathematical ability.  The article references a study that shows, among other things, that gender performance in mathematics is highly sensitive to changes in other socio-cultural factors, particularly gender parity.  From Daniel Hawes:

Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz manage to show a significant correlation between the percentage of girls on a country's International Mathematical Olympiad Team, and that country's World Development Indicator Gender Gap Index. The emerging pattern is quite clear: The greater the gender parity in a country, the more girls go to the Math Olympiad; thus indicating a significant role - who could have doubted it - of social equality in girl's performance on this (and other) indicators of mathematical achievement.

This fits into the broader discussion of genotype versus phenotype that plays out elsewhere in economics.  A person's phenotype is what we observe, but too often we attribute this observable characteristic to the underlying genotype, or inherited characteristics.  In reality, not only can social forces during one's lifetime change one's achievement, but also tiny changes in utero can impact gene expression.  For example, this article on iodine deficiency in Tanzania shows that correcting maternal iodine deficiency in the first trimester of pregnancy led to large cognitive gains for daughters of affected mothers.

While it's certainly possible that there are differences in the way male and female brains process numerical information, or develop with regard to this ability (some people say girls simply learn math later), I would say attributing the bulk of observed differences to genotype when we know so many social differences exist is just lazy.

[Hat tip Larry]

What is dry sex, and why do you need to know about it?

Two events occurred this summer that introduced me to one of the few kinky sexual practices I'd rather not hear about.  First, I spent three months in Zambia, one of the countries where dry sex is regularly practiced.  Second, I read Elizabeth Pisani's incredible book on AIDS and the AIDS industry, The Wisdom of Whores.  Because some of the language in this post is necessarily graphic, and because the content here makes me feel somewhat ill and you might be eating lunch while reading, click through if you would like to learn more.

It's the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Here are three interesting links:

Jezebel: Ready for Primetime: TV dramas tackle unplanned pregnancy
NYMag: The Abortion Distortion: Just how pro-choice is America, really?
Joan Malin (of Planned Parenthood): Abortion is Healthcare

Please share your own links, as well as your thoughts on what Roe means to you, women, and society.  I know I'm opening up to this by introducing a controversial topic, but please keep it clean and polite. 

Jezebel on why women shouldn't just try to be like men

I liked this.  It turns out, trying to "act like a man" in the workplace only works if a) our bosses will respond to us the same way as they do to men (which we know they don't) and b) if we're willing to accept that the only positive traits to have in one's career are those associated with the "male" gender, (which I'm not).
What do you think about women trying to--or needing to--act like "men" to get ahead?

Jezebel: 3 reasons why women can't be more like men

Womenomics from the Economist--is leading "like a woman" really so bad?

Hat tip to Woodstock.

Womenomics: Feminist management theorists are flirting with some dangerous arguments (The Economist)

The article opens by quoting some famous female leaders who supposedly represent a traditional meritocracy--Margaret Thatcher, who always ordered steak; Hilary Clinton who's not afraid to answer the phone at 3 a.m., and Dong Mingzhu, who says, “I never miss. I never admit mistakes and I am always correct.”

It then goes on to talk about new ideas about women in the workplace, suggesting that maybe women need not be men to get ahead (the horror):

But some of today’s most influential feminists contend that women will never fulfil their potential if they play by men’s rules... The new feminism contends that women are wired differently from men, and not just in trivial ways. They are less aggressive and more consensus-seeking, less competitive and more collaborative, less power-obsessed and more group-oriented. Judy Rosener, of the University of California, Irvine, argues that women excel at “transformational” and “interactive” management. Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, the authors of “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom”, assert that women are “better lateral thinkers than men” and “more idealistic” into the bargain...

Femonomics is here!

Welcome to our new blog, femonomics!  The name isn't because this is a blog about economics (although since two of the contributors are economists you'll be hearing some about that), but rather because this blog is about the business of being a woman.  It's a tricky, maddening, frequently unrewarding, and certainly under-appreciated business.  But too often, the companies who are supposed to be in that business seem to have no idea what it's all about!  They think all we want is to be younger, thinner, better-smelling, and have whiter clothes.  And while many of us do want all those things, there's something else we want more: to be treated like human beings.  That's right, women are people, too.  We have opinions.  We take issue with congress's handling of the healthcare bill (or we don't).  We have a problem with the war in Afghanistan (or we don't).  We voted for Obama (or we didn't).  We want to make money, learn things, travel the world.  And all these things coexist with our desire to shop, read about celebrities, perfect the smoky eye, and cook a delicious meal.  We're tired of women's magazines that speak to only one small part of us--the "female" part--as though that can be separated out from the rest of who we are.

That brings us to the other part of the title, the fem part.  Yes, this is partly a blog about feminism, written by feminists (although not all of our contributors would identify themselves that way). But don't be scared.  Just like women themselves, feminists are far from homogeneous.  To me, being a feminist has always meant embracing just that: supporting that women all across the world will make different choices than me, and defending their right to make those choices.  Our brand of feminism is about embracing women everywhere wholeheartedly, and accepting them for who they are.  Career gal, single mom, single lady on the prowl, femme de foyer--however you choose to label yourself, we'll only call you one thing here: welcome. (And don't worry, guys, we're happy to have you, too!)

The last thing I want to tell you about our blog before we dive in is that our philosophy of recognizing that all women are different means we'd be remiss if we didn't tell you that we're different, too.  We're different from you and different from each other.  Each post will represent the unique point of view of the person who posted it.  We don't claim to be objective observers of the world.  Although we will try to represent a variety of opinions, at the end of the day the one we bring to the table first is our own.  That means you should take what we say with a grain of salt, recognize the distinct personality of each blogger when you read her posts, and add plenty of comments to set us straight when you feel we're being unfair to the other side.  So please, join the conversation!  Help us make femonomics the women's magazine we all wish existed.