From The Duh Files: Women who use ‘pull out’ birth control method at greater risk of unintended pregnancy

The link is here.  The "duh" doesn't mean that the topic isn't worth studying, by the way.  What if the study had found the reverse?  Then it would be plastered over everything! 

Thus, if we are going to want all research properly discussed, it's really important to also cover the studies which support the null hypothesis (a fancy way of saying that the new treatment was no better, that nothing exciting was established and so on).

So I'm glad to see the results, however "duh" they are, published in the popular media.

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Today's Weird Dream

This is one of the costs that come from writing on the topics I do, I guess:  My unconsciousness giving me this dream instead of one ones about flying airplanes just above people's heads:

I'm standing as accused in a court.  I'm not quite sure what the jury consists of, but perhaps of angels or of devils.  I'm asked this question:

If you could give the world five minutes of complete peace by relinquishing both your life and any hope of a life-after-death,  would you do it?  Four minutes?  Three minutes?....

Probably should add that this was  a fever dream.  Sorta how prophets are created?

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Speed Blogging August 13, 2013. From Moscow Olympics via Iran, Internet Harassment to Left-Handedness.

I promise that not all my future posts will be of this sort. 

First, the question about Moscow Olympics and the Russian anti-gay laws.  There's much to be said about all this, and better-informed people have done so.  The small bit I wanted to add is that different countries can indeed have different average public sentiments about human rights, the proper place of women or LGTB and different views about race and racism. 

I know that sounds obvious but the political treatment of those differences in the US can be quite tricky, what with religion and culture and economics entering the fray.  When do we refrain from criticizing the traditions or views of another culture or country and when do we criticize them?  What determines the difference?  I struggle with this myself. 

Second,  this is an informative article on the question of Internet harassment and its possible relationship to free speech, especially when the harassment is gender-based.

Third, Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani,  nominates a female vice president, Elham Aminzadeh.  Assuming that the nomination will be approved, she will serve as the Vice President for Legal Affairs.  I don't know how meaningful this nomination is, as a gauge of Rouhani's view on women's proper place.

Fourth, this study about white Californians' reactions to various ways of determining who gets into college is interesting.  I haven't looked at the study in any detail, however.  But it's probably true that we humans are often good at thinking that fairness is the same as the likely success of people not unlike ourselves.  The wider point is, of course, that there is no one perfectly objective way of deciding who gets into college.   Meritocracy, completely untainted by any other consideration, is probably impossible, not to mention the difficulty of defining by what we mean by it.  And so on

Finally, today is the international day of the left-handed. 

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Speed Blogging, Monday August 12, 20013: On Media, Fracking, Gender and Death Panels.

Today's funny cartoon.  As you may note, I'm still frustrated about the collapsed anthill aspect of public debate.

But it's better than the alternative, which appears to be one future possibility:  A world where a few very rich men decide what we are to learn, what news we will get and what facts we will not obtain.  I hope that is a science-fiction nightmare and not the actual world in a few generations.  Let's keep it that way, please.

Fracking.  I don't know enough of it to write about its desirability in general (though I doubt mother nature likes it much), but this example highlights the blindness of free marketeers and the profit motive when it comes to externalities.  Things are interconnected.  We live in a giant web, and someone cannot just go and madly snip all threads in one corner, expecting nothing else to be affected.

Or put in other ways, those in power should use that round ball thing which serves to keep their ears apart for something more than that.  And no, it's not just a hatstand, either.

Cordelia Fine has put together some criticisms about the popular culture fad of viewing our brains as pink or blue.

Finally,  death panels.  For the innocent and serene among us, death panels (by Democrats)  are part of the mythology of the American political right, to be filed under the same heading as the arguments that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president because he supposedly was born abroad (Hawaii, though it's not abroad) or that Obama is a communist (rather than a politer version of most former Republican presidents) and so on.  The weird nightmarish ideas about what a country run by Democrats might look like.

The idea behind the death panels is a simple one:  The conservatives argue that the new healthcare system will have panels which decide who will die.  Paul Krugman wrote about a recent example of this argument.

The argument is deliciously muddled!  It's horrid to limit Medicaid spending!  But we MUST limit Medicaid spending.  The latter is what the Republicans usually do.  So they are for death panels, except when they are against them.

That whole idea deserves a much longer post, but the gist of it is that care will always be "rationed" by something, either by price or by more direct restrictions on access.  Every day the health care markets "ration" care, both because insurers refuse coverage for something or because the patients or their families no longer have enough funds to cover care out-of-pocket.  Inability to pay for care can also be a death panel.   Or at least an odd sort of triage.

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Speed Blogging August 9, 2013. On Acid Attacks, Climate Change, US Politics and the Financial Markets. Sorta.

Acid attacks tend to have female victims.  The numbers quoted in this article suggest that 75-80% of the victims are female. 

Why that is the case might be worth thinking about.  I'm not convinced with the argument made  by a surgeon in the article that the aim is to destroy someone's identity alone, because then it would have larger numbers of male victims.  My guess is that the aim is to destroy the public existence of the person or to destroy what the attacker feels is most important in women:  their looks.

Crooks and Liars writes about the seniors leaving the Republican Party.  Seems fascinating, though I have not looked into the data at all.  Also on their site, a story about the starved polar bear, perhaps as a cause of global climate change.  Warning:  the link leads to a picture.

This is a weird story about a Russian man writing in his own amendments to a credit card agreement.  It's kinda funny, except that you can guess who will ultimately pay the costs of it.   Or would pay the costs in the US.  I don't know if Russia is different, but the more we have rich oligarchies ruling the world the less likely it is that the members of those same oligarchies will bear the costs of much anything.  Says she, bitterly.

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Fox and Friends on Feminism As Unnecessary

In case you like a bitter laugh to complete your day:


In that video Stossel tells us that there is nothing that remains undone for feminism.  Indeed, the clip begins by showing girls playing princess, in a caring way, and boys turning triangles into guns to play war.

Now that we have shown clearly and decisively that the sexes ARE different, the rest of the piece argues why equality already exists.   And that we shouldn't try for it because the sexes ARE different.

We are fed a list of myths, some of which Stossel convincingly proves false by not having any economics training or any understanding about how labor markets work, some of which he proves false by determining that they are false based on the outcomes.  For an example of the latter, public schools discriminate against boys because fewer boys than girls go to college.  Yet a similar difference, women earning less, on average, is interpreted as not discriminatory at all.

In other words, different outcomes are sometimes quite fear and natural (women earning less) and sometimes discriminatory (boys not going to college as often).

Then there's the myth about Title IX.  Stossel argues that boys are keener to do college sports than girls and that this means we should abolish Title IX (which, by the way, bans sex discrimination in higher education in academics as well) but continue funding an activity which is not part of academics and only really liked by one gender.

As a conclusion, then, difference are natural when they seem to benefit men, unnatural when they seem to benefit women.  Got it?

I have written on much of Stossel's supposed myths list many times, on much higher level of analysis, so I won't repeat myself here.  But I'd like to pick just one of his comments for closer scrutiny:

Doocy and Stossel first attempted to tackle the gender pay gap. While admitting that it is true women are paid 77 cents for each dollar men make, Stossel claimed the discrepancy is because, "we don't work the same jobs." The reason, according to him, is that "women have their priorities in order. They often choose jobs that are less time-consuming, not so far away, and not as dangerous." He concluded that if a true pay gap existed, the market would have sorted it out.

On the market sorting the gap out:  He refers to one very simplistic economic theory there, and more realistic theories (which add uncertainty, lack of information, asymmetric information and possible co-worker and customer biases into the model as well as imperfect market conditions) do not prove that the market would have "sorted it out."  Note, also, that if markets sort stuff out so efficiently the collapse of the housing and financial markets should make Mr. Stossel eat his tie.

On women "choosing" jobs which are less time-consuming, not so far away, and not as dangerous:  First, this is not really "choice," in the sense of you choosing coffee and me choosing tea.  If women are responsible for childcare, laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping at home they will find working longer hours harder than otherwise completely identical men do.   Whether women tend to work closer to their homes is something I have never seen studied, but if that is the case the reason for it is also likely to be in the need to be able to pick up the kids from daycare and then get the food for the evening dinner and to pick up the dry-cleaning etc.

Also, the "choices" men and women make are not independent of each other.  A full-time breadwinner helps a stay-at-home spouse to stay at home, the latter helps the former to focus on career.  When both spouses work the division of household chores may not fall equally.  One solution to the disagreements this might cause is for the lower-paid spouse to cut back on her or his hours.

Second, dangerous jobs are not common enough to explain average earnings differences between men and women, and most of the highest-paying male-dominated jobs are not dangerous.  Some female-dominated jobs (prostitution) are very dangerous.

And how dangerous a job is often depends on one's gender.  Consider driving a taxi in a large urban area.  Women can do that job but are uncommon among taxi drivers.  I believe that this is mostly because a woman driving a taxicab late at night faces higher risks than a man.  Both can be robbed, mugged or killed but she can also be raped and abducted for that purpose, and she is much more likely to face sexual harassment from her customers.  In short, we need to view the concept of "danger" without gender-blinders on.

Third, studies do NOT show that once we DECIDE the gender differences in earning are just by choice, all differences vanish in a mildly sour-smelling puff of bad air.  The studies that come up with that conclusion do not control for all relevant variables, look at only some sub-groups, such as young adults and fail to deal with the problem that men and women being in different kinds of jobs, on average, does NOT PROVE that those different types of jobs were picked without any pressure or outside discrimination or the impact of traditional gender expectations and so on.  Indeed, the easiest way to discriminate against some member of a defined group is to keep that person in a job which cannot be easily compared with the jobs people of other groups hold.  For example, a bigot might not promote women or members of a minority etc, mostly because she or he truly believes that those workers are not as good or that they are more likely to quit or more likely to take time off.

It's much, much more complicated than Mr. Stossel wants us to believe.

It is still true that our job expectations are gendered.  Jobs which are coded as suitable for women tend to be lower-paying and sometimes (but not always or even usually) offer greater flexibility for childcare duties. 

There's a sense in which deciding on one's job on the basis of gendered expectations IS a choice.  If a young man believes or anticipates that he is going to be responsible for supporting a family financially one day, he is less likely to choose education which doesn't lead to well-paid jobs.  In reverse, if a young woman believes or anticipates that she is going to be responsible for all childcare one day, she might be less likely to choose education which leads to  well-paying but rigidly defined and time-intensive jobs.*  Once these early choices are made, they, in turn, will affect future choices.

I don't know.  I get hot-and-bothered on people telling untruths or telling their own opinions as truths.  Only us goddesses are allowed to do the latter and nobody is allowed to do the first.
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*There are also obvious rewards for both of the traditional paths.  Having a home-team to take care of everything else is great for an ambitious and career-directed person, having a full-time source of funding is great if it allows for a less hectic space, more time with one's children and perhaps even time for doing something one wants to do but can't get paid for.  At the same time, the negative consequences of these choices are real and painful. My interest in this is ultimately linked to the question which roles have which societal consequences, how the society changes or adapts or does not, and what this all means in fields such as misogynistic views about women's abilities to lead, the dependence of women on possibly dysfunctional family setups and also what fathers lose when their traditional roles in the family are to be the wallet or the guy with the whip.

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More Media Quicksand: The "Opt-Out Revolution" Cancelled?

This bit of quicksand has to do with my frustration with so much of the debate on various political issues including feminism.  The more sand someone brings into the debate in that blue or pink plastic pail, the more we all sink.

The point is that the debates don't increase clarity after a point and if they continue long enough they  increase confusion.  That's partly because people make emotional arguments while insisting that they are not emotional arguments.

That needs clarifying (Echidne sitting on the beach shifting sand).  I don't mean that emotional arguments don't have a place, that who-wins-and-who-loses isn't important.  All those are crucial aspects of many debates.  But the debates I follow are mostly tugs-of-war, not attempts to find out what happened and why, and often the fight is about whose emotions matter the most.  Because that depends on the eye of the beholder the discussions get nowhere very fast.  Or rather, people get angry.

OK.  That was a bit quicksandish, too.  My thinking on this isn't clear.  I just noticed that I seemed more informed during my vacation than after I started following the Twitter and the blogs more intensely, and that's because of all the side roads the debates take and the way powerful personalities or strong guilt buttons etc. are employed in them.

The example I have for today isn't strictly on these topics but it shares some similarities.  It's a New York Times article titled  "The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In," by Judith Warner.

The article is interesting, discussing several individual cases of highly educated women who stayed at home with children during some periods of the last decade or so.  Warner's points are nuanced, and she dexterously steps around the usual bad-mother/good-mother setup the media so loves.  She also avoids the usual treatment of the husbands/fathers as the neutral bystanders in these types of stories and she also points out that the whole opt-out conversation was about pretty rich couples.

So I feel bad that reading the piece made me angry.  Which it did, and the reasons are dry-and-boring and immensely important.

Here's a sample of those reasons:

First, nobody has really shown me the data which proved that there ever WAS such an opt-out revolution.  Or rather, some women have always opted out.  Did that number greatly increase during the era when the term "opt-out revolution" was coined?

This matters.  False trend stories about women are the bread-and-butter of popular media, and this has been the case for decades.  The most common zombie trends (probably dead ones but shuffling out of the graves at regular intervals, slobbering bodily fluids all over the magazine and newspaper pages) are to do with a) Women Returning Home After Realizing The Horrible Error Of Working For Money,  b) Educated Women Not Being Able To Find Husbands and c) The Death of Feminism.

Even during my lifetime those three have cycled in pretty reliably.  By the way, the reverse stories never seem to be in fashion.  Thus, during the era when women's labor market participation rates dramatically increased the magazines and newspapers did not write about Women Leaving Home fires For Employment, After Realizing What An Error They Had Earlier Made.  The stories may have asked who was minding those home fires, of course.

So the first reason for my anger is that the trend of women dropping out of labor force smells so very bad to me, without good evidence, that I look for the zombie parade.

Second, and related to the first point, discussing three or four individual cases does not make a trend. ANYTHING can be made to look like a trend if all we use is anecdotal evidence.  I'm sure that I could find three women who prefer to wear their clothes inside-out, if I search hard enough.  I could probably find some anecdotal evidence for any faux trend you can name.

Third, even this article fails to light the background of these highly educated couples and their "choices."  It doesn't say much anything about the lack of paternal leave in the US, it's pretty silent about the idea that fathers could also stay at home if one parent is necessary and it stays mum about the general assumption that Women Are Responsible For Childcare.

That keeps the problem clearly and precisely in the women's camp.  It's women who have to balance work and family, it's women who "choose" something, and so on.  That the society chooses not to help at all is invisible.

Fourth, Warner notes that the discussion is always about high-flyers and often about educated white women in the US.  That's an important criticism.  But in a bizarre way I'm not sure if we want this discussion about all women.  How are poor women going to defend themselves from the bad-mother accusations because they can't stay at home?

Or in other terms:  This is a true problem but there are false solutions to fixing it.  The solutions that would work are federally funded parental leave, subsidized daycare and more father involvement on all levels.

Fifth, and related to the fourth point, all the zombie trends are about women who are almost in a position to grab real power.  That's why the trends are about educated women, about women who have well-paid husbands and so on.  If those women can be controlled then controlling other women is much, much easier.  It's women-and-power and who-minds-the-kids which are the real building blocks of the zombie stories, and the reason for the popularity of these stories is real anxiety about powerful women and about the power over fertility and the future generations.

I guess my anger has to do with a certain kind of belittling of these issues which the faux trend stories create.  They also direct the conversation into those familiar mommy war channels:  Am I a bad mother for "choosing" one thing over the other?  Is my whole life wasted or wrong?  And so on.

Then we get lots of anger and lots of defenses for one choice or the other, without any of the underlying problems changing. And lots of pieces about how all this is totally up to the individual woman.  Which it is, of course, in one sense, if we stay within the frames of the picture.  But if we step back and see the picture and its frames and then the wall it hangs on and then the room it's in, well, the crucial take-home messages change.
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I want to stress that I don't think of Warner's article as part of the parade of zombies.  She gets several important points, including the frustration of many of the men with the traditional gender division of labor.  But I want to stretch everything much more.

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