Naming Experience
thusspakezuska | June 29, 2010Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren't? Some other gender, some other race - or some other social class?
skeptifem challenges the female STEM universe thus:
I am not working in some kind of grueling coursework, so I am not "most of us", I guess. What happened to me was that I never imagined I could be a college graduate or learn the sciences/maths (mostly because of being a woman in this culture), and I…
thusspakezuska | June 27, 2010Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions.
I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days." Because things are getting better all the time.
Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said:
Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you're "just going to have children"
and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said:
You are told that you won't…
thusspakezuska | June 18, 2010First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride's post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.
For starters, I do not agree with ScientistMother's interpretation of that quote. I have no idea what…
thusspakezuska | June 4, 2010I have put in (literally) decades of work acting on the assumption that folks are reasonable and well-intentioned, and trying to be effective and get messages across. Part of that time I was even paid to do so.
IRL, for the most part, I try to interact with people like that.
However, I'm sick to puking of seeing so much shit go down for so long and seeing so little change and seeing progress for women in engineering shudder and stall and hearing over and over and over and over again "we just have to wait for the old guard to die off and for spots to open up and for women to work their way up…
thusspakezuska | June 3, 2010Prodigal Academic comments over at Isis's place:
Everyone speaking English is no guarantee of safety.
That is true, but since the lab was in the US, everyone in it is supposed to have a minimal proficiency in English. In practice, the net result was that the standard procedure was to use English first (allowing others to maintain a good awareness of what was going on around them in the lab), then confirm understanding in another language if necessary.
As a purely safety consideration, it makes a lot of sense to have a lab language. My group right now has 2 PhD students and 3 undergrads, all…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2010As you know, it was just over a thousand years ago this past March that I defended my dissertation. As I recall, I picked up a dozen bagels and some cream cheese on the way to the defense, and the department secretaries administrative assistants brought in an urn of coffee. It was me and my committee. My advisor made some exceedingly brief introductory remarks and then the semi-bored, semi-hostile committee allowed me to launch into the show-and-tell of What Did You Do These Last Five Years. A few hours later it was all over but the revisions and shouting. Literally. Revisions completed…
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2010From the Philadelphia Daily News (the same paper which recently brought a Pulitzer Prize to Philadelphia for amazing investigative reporting by Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman):
HOW WELL can a family of four eat on just $68.88 a week? For more than 38 million Americans, it's more than a matter of conjecture...To find out how well you can eat on food stamps, we asked two chefs and a magazine food editor to plan seven days of meals for a family of four using that budget: $68.88.
I like best the solutions proposed by Jose Garces, who went 66 cents over budget, and explains his solutions thus:…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2010The other day, a male friend of mine was at the grocery store in the check out line. He was not feeling particularly happy, and, I guess, was frowning a little. A dude in line behind him tapped him on his shoulder to get his attention and when he turned around, the dude said, in a bright voice, "You dropped something," and was pointing to the floor. My male friend looked down and said, "I don't see anything." The dude then told him, "You dropped your smile." My male friend was not amused. He turned around going back to his business saying, "Oh, OK." The man proceeded to walk away mumbling…
thusspakezuska | March 26, 2010March is women's history month, but don't let that circumscribe your fun. You can get together with a posse of your like-minded women friends and mock mansplainers anytime. Now, I know many of you have just recently learned that there even existed a name you could attach to this annoying behavior plaguing your existence. Believe me, I know how important naming experience is - that's why I have a whole category assigned to the topic. But your joy need not begin and end with just knowing that the craptastic manifestations you've been subjected to are (1) not your fault, (2) part of a larger…
thusspakezuska | March 14, 2010Over at the mansplaining thread, you can read literally hundreds of hilarious, annoying, frustrating, heartbreaking stories of how women are constantly subjected to intrusive, incessant, insensitive, inane mansplaining. Interspersed you will also find comments from d00dly d00ds whinging away about how awful it is that women are talking so MEAN about men, and their mansplanations about how mansplaining doesn't exist. Then some douche tried to coin the phrase femsplaining.
Femsplaining, as best I can tell, is a phenomenon that arises in the following manner:
(1) A woman points out an…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010That mansplainer thread just won't quit - it is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, if you can call continuing recitations of the endless ways women are constantly mansplained by the d00dly mainsplainers of the world a "gift". Along with the mansplainer d00ds who show up to mansplain how mansplaining does not exist, should not be called mansplaining if it does exist, is a benign and non-sexist practice if it does exist, and anyway, I THOUGHT THIS WAS SCIENCEBLOGS WHAT ABOUT THE SCIENCE DEAR GOD WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE POOR SCIENCE????
Which brings us to Ace's most excellent and apropos…
thusspakezuska | February 23, 2010How did you celebrate George Washington's birthday this year? You didn't do anything? Well, it's not too late. Pour yourself a nice hot cup of coffee or tea, and sit down to read a pair of fascinating articles published this past Sunday and Monday in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hercules: Master of cuisine, slave of Washington
A birthday shock from Washington's chef
If you don't already know - and why would you, this stuff isn't in our history books - Hercules was a great chef, and one of nine slaves Washington kept at the first White House in Philadelphia. The history of slavery in the…
thusspakezuska | January 12, 2010I'm speaking from experience, people, having had most of these lobbed at me one time or another. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.
1. "When is the baby due?"
I'm not pregnant, you douchebag. I'm fat. If I were pregnant, I'd probably be prancing around telling everyone and her goddamn sister about it because that's what we do in our society. Or, if I were pregnant, and afraid I might lose the baby, maybe I wouldn't want to talk about it. In any case, if I were pregnant, and you haven't heard about it yet, wait for me to talk to you about it. Otherwise, STFU…
thusspakezuska | January 12, 2010Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has a fascinating post summarizing a recent research paper that shows how objectification silences women.
As Saguy [the lead researcher] explains, "When a woman believes that a man is focusing on her body, she narrows her presence... by spending less time talking." There are a few possible reasons for this. Saguy suspects that objectification prompts women to align their behaviour with what's expected of them - silent things devoid of other interesting traits. Treat someone like an object, and they'll behave like one. Alternatively, worries about their…
thusspakezuska | January 9, 2010My fitness program the last 3-4 months - or reasonable facsimile thereof...
Monday: go to gym, half hour on elliptical, half hour doing weights routine picked up at last stint at physical therapy for excruciating neck pain developed over several years due to chronic migraines.
Tuesday: spend day writing bills for mom, wrangling with health insurance company and/or health care providers over some mix-up regarding payment for service provided six months to a year ago.
Tuesday evening: receive phone call about new urgent health care crisis for mom. Spend rest of evening phone conferencing and…
thusspakezuska | January 7, 2010This evening Marketplace Report had a segment on " A push for Latinos to pursue education". It's a great segment, based on a report from the Southern Education Foundation. (Possibly this one; four page summary of the report, A New Diverse Majority: Students of Color in the South's Public Schools is here.)
The Hispanic College Fund started out funding college scholarships, but found that wasn't sufficient; now they are reaching out to the high school level, as early as ninth grade, to encourage young Latino kids to pursue a college education. Many of these kids are from low-income…
thusspakezuska | December 29, 2009Last time I checked, Erma Bombeck, when she was alive, was a hugely popular American humorist who wrote a newspaper column and published 15 books, most of which were best sellers. She came from the working class, and made quite a successful career for herself in publishing, at a time when women normally did not have careers.
But apparently, since she wrote about housewives and domestic issues, there's nothing to admire about what she did. And if you want to mock a woman writer these days, why, you just link her to Erma Bombeck and call it at day. See: "Erma-Bombeckian" (Steven Pinker…
thusspakezuska | November 11, 2009I spent part of today visiting with an elderly relative who fought in the Korean War. That time in his life was clearly on his mind, as, when I stopped in to see him, he had been looking over some old photos from that era, including some of him in uniform.
He recounted some of his experiences to me. One near-death experience came about as a result of him being assigned to be the driver for an officer, "the worst job in the world" according to him. He said that although he had been driving all sorts of vehicles all over the place ever since he'd been in the Army, including tanks, he was…
thusspakezuska | October 30, 2009The whole month of October has gone by, and none of the things I promised myself I would finally get around to writing about this month have appeared on my blog. They haven't even made it out of my cranium into rough draft form on my computer. I didn't even manage to get a post up exhorting you all to open your wallets for the good cause of DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge (though there's still one day left should you be so inspired!) I managed somehow to get my giving page set up (and a few of you stumbled across it and donated, with absolutely no help from me - bless your hearts…
thusspakezuska | August 21, 2009One of my daily pleasures is to spend some time reading the Philadelphia Inquirer with a nice cup of coffee. Some days I read thoroughly, other days I skim, but no matter what I always read the comics. I just can't get through a day without reading the comics. (And let me here digress to say that I have been reading the comics in the newspaper since I was a very little girl. I do not want my newspaper comics taken away from me. So all you evil forces conspiring to destroy the daily newspapers: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, for this and many other reasons. And please don't tell me…