Naming Experience
thusspakezuska | August 5, 2009Dear Zuskateers, I feel I am letting you down by taking so long to bring you the next Gender Knot post. Personal life has just been immensely chaotic. (I actually intend to blog about a recent piece of that shortly.) I just haven't had the concentration it takes to produce a Gender Knot post. I'm going to give you a few smaller tidbits in the next day or so and, god willing and the creek don't rise, back to the Gender Knot next week.
thusspakezuska | August 5, 2009UPDATE: Pat Campbell has asked that if you did take the survey initially when it was returning 404 errors, and you subsequently re-took it, drop her an email and she will send you cookies! She has promised to send cookies to the first 10 of my readers who had to retake the survey, if you let her know by email. I've had her cookies. They are great! If you got the 404 error this is a nice incentive to retake - just do so and then drop Pat an email :
campbell AT campbell-kibler DOT com
UPDATE: If you took this survey right after I first posted this entry and got a 404 error when you tried…
thusspakezuska | July 15, 2009Via the WEPAN listserv, I just learned about a new book about African American women in science:
Temple University is proud to announce the publication of Swimming Against the Tide: African American Girls and Science Education by Sandra L. Hanson. In her book, Hanson uses Department of Education data as well as a recent survey of young African American women to examine the experiences in families, communities, and peer-groups that help young African American women "swim against the tide" of the white, male science education system. Sandra L. Hanson is Professor of Sociology and Research…
thusspakezuska | June 15, 2009Kim at All of My Faults Are Stress Related asks:
I've got a question for women readers, especially those in the geosciences, environmental sciences, or field sciences: what do you get out of reading blogs? And if you have a blog yourself, what do you get out of writing it?
I'm asking because there's a session at this year's Geological Society of America meeting on "Techniques and Tools for Effective Recruitment, Retention and Promotion of Women and Minorities in the Geosciences" (and that's in the applied geosciences as well as in academia), and I wondered whether blogs (whether geo-blogs or…
thusspakezuska | June 4, 2009I'm visiting with mom this week, taking her to a number of doctor appointments and dealing with some minor medical issues. No time for stuff I promised you like the second post on Chapter 1 of The Gender Knot.
So what I want you to do, to pass the time while you wait for me to show up again, especially those of you who consider yourselves to be white, is go and read this: Shinin' the Lite on White Privilege. I promise it will shake up your thinking. It sure made me look differently on my experience as a beneficiary of the land-grant university system. See if you can figure out why,…
thusspakezuska | June 1, 2009By now perhaps you have heard of the Silence Is The Enemy project started by Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection with help from Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. From Sheril's post:
Today begins a very important initiative called Silence Is The Enemy to help a generation of young women half a world away.Why? Because they are our sisters and children-the victims of sexual abuse who don't have the means to ask for help. We have power in our words and influence. Along with our audience, we're able to speak for them. I'm asking all of you-bloggers, writers, teachers,…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2009In response to my recent post on being mauled by the PA at my annual gyn exam, reader Danimal was moved by my saying this
I say if it hurts, you should feel free to yelp. And no doctor or PA should be shushing you. I am ashamed to say that when my PA shushed me, I let her make me feel embarrassed, and I actually apologized to her. That is just messed up.
to comment thusly:
You disappoint me Zuska. On the bloggesphere you have no problem barfing over someones shoes, usually when appropriate, including mine. Yet here it was entirely appropriate, yet you did not. Come on, you can do better.…
thusspakezuska | May 21, 2009It can't be avoided. Once a year you make the trek to the gynecologist's office for the annual exam. For various reasons, the whole experience is extremely unpleasant for me, and yet I go, because I try to take care of my health. And hey, I have health insurance! And it pays for the annual exam. Lucky me, I don't even need a referral to see my gynecologist. Though I do get to pay the higher copay for "specialists". This is especially maddening as my primary care physician, a woman I respect and dearly love, could do the exam for me - and does, for many of her other patients - but my…
thusspakezuska | May 5, 2009Every manly man of means these days has gotta have a man-cave, right? Every man gotta be a caveman, right?
Wrong. D00ds, step away from your caves! You must read The Caveman Mystique, and if you cannot, as a self-respecting caveman, be bothered to read a whole freakin' book, at least read this post over at The World's Fair. Fab interview with Caveman Mystique author Martha McCaughey.
Maybe if you read the book in a techno-geeky way, say, on Kindle, you could preserve your caveman status even as you are deconstructing it????
Image from Flickr, posted by VonMurr http://www.flickr.com/…
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2009What's a good citizen to do if he or she thinks that cough and sneeze is swine flu? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends:
Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
This afternoon I've been reading Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich - which is ever so more relevant now, if that were possible, than when it was originally released. Near the end she notes:
It is common, among the nonpoor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition -…
thusspakezuska | March 30, 2009A few days ago I wrote about The Problem of the Problem of Motherhood in Science, a post inspired by Meg Urry's book review of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory by Emily Monosson. A vigorous discussion ensued in the comments - thank you all for participating! It turns out the author of the book was paying attention, and she contacted me by email. Emily Monosson told me she feels her book was misrepresented in Meg Urry's review. I agreed to post here the contents of her email to me.
Here's the email:
I am writing, as editor of Motherhood the Elephant in the Laboratory, in…
thusspakezuska | March 23, 2009Yeah, I should be asleep, restoring strength for spending another day with mom. But I'm catching up on email and blogs and preparing for the upcoming Diversity in Science Carnival WHICH YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE WRITING SOMETHING FOR - GET BUSY, NOW!
And in the course of all that I read this post by Stephanie Z which led me to Sheril Kirshenbaum's post (Goodbye, Sheril, we will totally miss you here at Scienceblogs) Where Are The Women With BIG Ideas?
I'd like to point readers to a recent piece from The Guardian asking 'Where are the books by women with big ideas?'
Books like Freakonomics,…
thusspakezuska | March 21, 2009Over at Fairer Science, at the end of an excellent rant about the uselessness of one-shot workshops, Pat Campbell writes:
One other thing, if I see one more article about why there aren't more women in science that concludes "it's the children" I am going to run amuck. This one says "Women don't choose careers in math-intensive fields, such as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry, and higher mathematics, because they want the flexibility to raise children..."
Say what? Good to know that it's only the math intensive fields; so friends if you want a science career and a…
thusspakezuska | March 1, 2009Reader JC left a comment on a recent post about sexual harassment that led me to a Feminist Law Professor post on a sexual harassment lawsuit against Brigham & Women's Hospital. It is a post well worth reading, if you have ever wondered why more women don't sue over sexual harassment, or why women don't just speak up immediately and complain at the first sign of harassing behavior. Maybe you have been secretly suspecting that women who file sexual harassment charges or lawsuits just have some ax to grind and/or are trying to ruin some Nice Man's career because they are bitter pre-/post-…
thusspakezuska | March 1, 2009Well, February has come and gone, Black History Month is over for another year, and we've had the first round of the Diversity in Science carnival. I am sure some of you who blog may have thought about contributing to this carnival but didn't for a variety of reasons. Maybe, like me, you had family issues and/or health issues going on; I almost didn't make it to contribute to the carnival myself. Maybe your job was making you crazy. Or maybe you thought to yourself, "I am not an expert on diversity. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't really know how to go about writing on this topic…
thusspakezuska | February 23, 2009The Feb. 20th Chronicle Review has a set of articles about grad school life. The statistics on how grad school cultivates and enhances depression and mental illness are, well, depressing. But if you are or ever have been a graduate student, you knew that already.
Studies have found that graduate school is not a particularly healthy place. At the University of California at Berkeley, 67 percent of graduate students said they had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54 percent felt so depressed they had a hard time functioning; and nearly 10 percent said they had considered suicide…
thusspakezuska | February 8, 2009Here's the story:
Samia was hacked off about something.
I know I recommended white science bloggers link to other bloggers in a show of link-lovin, but some of the stuff I see just seems tokenizing/LOOK AT ME I'M OPENMINDED! Ew. Fuck a bunch of wannabes.
This kinda got Isis hacked off.
What the fuck??? No, I mean seriously. What the fuck?...
...So what has you upset Samia? Is it a particular incident or the blogosphere in general. Either way, you've got to offer more guidance than today's brief blog-lashing. You've established yourself as an advocate for diversity and as someone who is…
thusspakezuska | December 23, 2008Last winter it was not uncommon for me to go to bed wearing two flannel nightgowns. I would hunker down under our thickest comforter, pressed up against Mr. Zuska for warmth. Mr. Zuska, like many men, is an astonishing heat source, for which I have been grateful on many a chilly night.
This winter, things are different. I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts to bed. We haven't broken out the heavy comforter. Sometimes I can't tolerate being too close to Mr. Zuska's blast furnace body.
What changed? It's menopause!
The mid-forties seem a little young to me for…
thusspakezuska | November 25, 2008Mr. Z and I went to see "Quantum of Solace" last Friday night. The cineplex was packed and teeming with Twi-hards. I went into the bathroom and found three of them before the mirror, primping and fixing their carefully coiffed hairdos.
And what hair they had! Long hair, thick hair, shiny hair, healthy hair. It was almost painful for me to watch them, knowing full well how they must take for granted their luxurious heads of hair. Because it never occurred to me in the past that my hair would change in any substantive manner - at least not until I got really old and gray.
When I was…
thusspakezuska | November 14, 2008Though university administrators seem to be widely reviled among faculty members, one of the best jobs I ever had was in administration. Many wonderful opportunities came my way; possibly the most mind-stretching, exhilarating, and rewarding of these was the chance to spend four weeks attending the Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, held at Bryn Mawr College. Just imagine spending four weeks with several dozen intelligent, interesting women from colleges and universities all over the U.S., from a range of administrative areas (including faculty members looking to…