The International Olympic Committee, according to material on its own website, includes the following as part of its mission:
- To act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement;
- To encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women
My question is, why are countries that do not allow women to take part in the Olympics not barred from sending any team at all?
--mmy
The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.
The IOC is one of the most solidly money-focused organisations I have ever encountered. It makes the Giant Vampire Squid look like a bunch of hippies. Any question about its behaviour can be correctly answered with "it makes more money that way".
Posted by: Firedrake | Jun 11, 2012 at 05:34 PM
@Firedrake: Then why do we (the audience for the Olympics) tolerate this behaviour. Why are we willing to watch an event (in other words, why are we willing to let networks monetize our eyes) that is used to generate positive propaganda for regimes that we loathe and deplore?
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 11, 2012 at 05:45 PM
Or, to clarify my first response to Firedrake -- "why don't we make sure that the IOC does not make money pandering to misogynist regimes?"
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 11, 2012 at 05:46 PM
Part of it is lack of awareness. Until just now I had no idea that the Saudis fielded men's Olympic teams but not women's. (I suppose I could have guessed that if I'd thought about it, but it never occurred to me to think about it.)
Part of it is apathy. Now that I know this, what, other than not watch the Olympics (and I wasn't planning on watching the Olympics anyway, because seriously, sports contests, don't care), can I possibly do to fix it, and why should I care enough to try? It doesn't affect me, after all. (Yes, yes, bad feminist, I know.)
And part of it is, okay, yes, this is yet another entry on the list of Problematic Media. The trouble is, if I boycott everything on that list, there will be just about no media left for me to consume. And I really like consuming media.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Jun 11, 2012 at 06:14 PM
I think it's mostly apathy, combined with a certain feeling of "well, it's sports, so it's all about nations coming together and being nice to each other, let's not push too hard".
It's not as though the IOC advertises its venality; it does its best to shut down any mention of same, and until the Internet age it mostly succeeded. This year's Games are probably the first ones to have public protest that's being talked about outside the host country.
Posted by: Firedrake | Jun 11, 2012 at 06:33 PM
Mostly ignorance, I suspect. I know no one--including sports-interested friends and co-workers--who is watching the Olympics. If not for the two or three people who have mentioned it here on the Slacktivist, I'd have no idea it was an Olympics year at all--no one in meatspace or on any of the TV I watch or any of the other sites I frequent has so much as mentioned it in my presence.
However, I have no doubt that apathy would kick in for a lot of people if they were aware of the issue. To riff on Hanlon's razor, do not assume malice or incompetence where apathy will suffice.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 11, 2012 at 07:23 PM
The thing is, South Africa was barred from Olympic competition for something like thirty years after sending an all-white team to the 1960 competitions. They weren't allowed back into competition, or into membership of the IOC, until they'd changed their entire society to abolish apartheid, not merely to create unified sports leagues. The world approved the boycott.
What's happening in Saudi Arabia has been justifiably referred to as "gender apartheid." The world shrugs; women's rights just aren't the same thing as human rights, I guess. Leading us to ask, yet again, are women human?
And yes, I've been reading the news, from Sudan for example. Worse things are happening to women than not being allowed to compete in a ridiculously expensive, ridiculously hyped athletic competition. Nevertheless, the contrast between the treatment of South Africa then and Saudi Arabia now is instructive.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Jun 11, 2012 at 07:52 PM
@Amaryllis: EXACTLY!!!! Yes, not being able to compete at the Olympics is not the worse thing that is happening to women right now but the world's response to their exclusion is symptomatic of the underlying problem/issue.
Not only did the IOC bar the South African delegation people all over the world made it clear that they were willing to pay a price to show they would not tolerate apartheid. For example, I remember the faculty at the university I was going to voting to have bar any of their pension funds being invested in companies that did business in South Africa.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 11, 2012 at 08:16 PM
I wonder whether part of it is also anti-Islamic bigotry, viewing Muslim countries as a "lost cause", whereas South Africa was a "civilised" Christian country which might be expected to improve. Perhaps.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Jun 11, 2012 at 08:25 PM
@TRiG: Given the ways in which women's access to health care is being systematically whittled away in the US and given the fact that there have been push backs against the equal pay and anti-domestic violence laws in the US I don't think that anti-Islamic bigotry is the main reason for tolerating women's exclusion from some teams.
There are still sports women are not allowed to compete in and the uniform regulations in some sports are quite openly designed not to make the female athletes more competitive but rather more "visually pleasing." For example the International Volleyball Federation just recently decided not to make wearing bikinis mandatory (which it has been for some time.)
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 11, 2012 at 08:55 PM
...how would one play sports in a bikini without constantly worrying about whether the damn thing would fall off?
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Jun 11, 2012 at 09:11 PM
I suspect it has a heckuvalot more to do with South Africa not controlling a natural resource vital to the wellbeing of the world's economy.
Diamonds are pretty, but they don't make my car go. Nobody's going to p*ss off Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: hapax | Jun 11, 2012 at 09:12 PM
Diamonds are pretty, but they don't make my car go. Nobody's going to p*ss off Saudi Arabia.
Yes, there is that.
* sigh *
Posted by: Amaryllis | Jun 11, 2012 at 09:15 PM
The BBC article cited ends with this: No-one from the Saudi Olympic Committee was available for interview, but the International Olympic Committee is thought to be putting increasing pressure on them to include women in the future.
London 2012 may therefore see Saudi women Olympians for the first time. If not, it is conceivable the Kingdom may not be allowed to enter an all-male team.
So at least the partial answer to your question is that some people feel "diplomatic" pressure may be a better way of forcing the Saudi government to change its policy than Shock and Outrage and Immediate Boycott. You may not agree, as well-meaning people did not agree over how to confront South Africa over apartheid (see the recent documentary on Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording there), or how to confront Burma (Myanmar) over its disgraceful human rights records, etc. But don't just jump straight to the Uber-Righteous Nobody But Me (OK, Us) Cares position and assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a Male Chauvinist Pig or a greedy opportunist. Or both.
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 11, 2012 at 11:23 PM
@dr ngo: There is enough vagueness in that statement to make it functionally meaningless. Someone (unnamed) thinks that something may be conceivable. I read the other day that someone thought it was conceivable that some day a woman might become Pope. What is conceivable and what is likely are two different things.
And please -- who exactly called anyone else here a "male chauvinist pig?" And exactly who is being uber-righteous? In fact the question asked was why we are not acting in an uber-righteous manner?
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 12:21 AM
Personally, I'm exhausted. I'm being attacked on all fronts for being a woman in my own country. Many states are moving toward criminalizing miscarriage, thereby criminalizing having a female body. I don't have health care, there are no jobs, rape culture appears to be winning, and popular media deeply, deeply cares about whether or not a woman shaves her pubic hair.
It's not about not caring enough. It's about being attacked on all fronts in our own country. It's about having lost ground in the last 20 years, and being exhausted from a fight in which victories are rare and losses over fights we thought our great grandmothers had won are common.
And it's about very few people in the U.S. caring about the Olympics since our television stations basically stopped carrying the games and decided to show bland, uncomplicated "human interest stories" set to cheesy music instead. And of course very few people know about this in the first place. No one can know everything. So now the BBC has reported it, and more people know. Maybe someone will start a petition -- this is the kind of thing that petitions work pretty well for.
Posted by: Lliira | Jun 12, 2012 at 02:36 AM
TW Flame
dr ngo, you can go fuck off. Find somebody else to cry in your giant Beer O Privilege with. mmy asked a question. If you think the answer is "they're still trying diplomacy," well, that moves us to other questions, as mmy has pointed out. But in the meantime, go read Fred's latest about how you can't deny someone their rights nicely.
Posted by: Literata | Jun 12, 2012 at 08:34 AM
I think we have a number of things going on, the biggest one being a general sense of apathy and ignorance (not *bad* ignorance. Just merely being uninformed).
Back in the Days Before Cable, there were, what, five? channels. The Olympics came around every four years, not two, and the three major American stations ALL covered them. So that meant that you watched the Olympics, the Olympics, the Olympics, reruns, and maybe the Olympics in Spanish. Plus, it was a National Thing because the "entire" world came together in a sense of brotherhood and international good will, as long as America or someone from one of the "good" European states beat the Russians. So, it was a rare event, you couldn't get away from it, and there was a lot of national pride. Fast forward to to today and NBC is the main network to watch the Olympics on, and even then, it's not the continuous coverage, unless you have cable. So, your choices are more like the Olympics, House Hunters, Game of Thrones marathon, whatever nonsense TLC is showing, 16 and pregnant marathon, AND it comes every two years, AND Communism isn't the big threat now, so people are kind of awash in media, and the Olympics aren't the National Pride Event that they used to be (It's my personal belief that they could stop immediately, and large portions of America wouldn't notice).
None of this is *ideal* but I think does reflect the overstimulated and exhausted American population. I *think* a bit of this, too, comes from a sense of "I'm having a really hard time right now. Can't we just turn off our brains and enjoy something, instead of having everything be a polarizing event?" I'm not saying that that's a GOOD mentality to have. Just that I think of it as the entire country is in a state of clinical depression, that type where it's REALLY freakin' hard to get motivated to just get up out of bed and make breakfast.
On top of that, this doesn't *really* surprise me, because the the Gay Games are called that because the IOC had an issue with them being the Gay Olympics. I have a feeling they pick their battles, to put it mildly.
Posted by: Rowen | Jun 12, 2012 at 08:47 AM
I have mixed feelings about the Olympics. I like watching a couple of events a year, because the sheer athleticism just takes my breath away (although I swam competitively through high school, and I wonder why they televise the distance swimming events, because they're as exciting as watching grass grow). But I also get a little twitchy at the excess of the games and the treacliness (treacle? is that a word?) of it all. So, yeah.
Anyway, I wonder--the article's from 2008. Has there been any update on the Saudi teams since then?
Posted by: sarah | Jun 12, 2012 at 09:33 AM
Ah, yes, oil. Of course. That would be it. Also standard-issue misogyny. My Islam comment was probably a red herring.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Jun 12, 2012 at 09:49 AM
TRIGGER WARNING: SERIOUSLY SQUICKY STUFF ABOUT GENDER POLICING UP TO AND INCLUDING MEDICAL "INTERVENTIONS."
Right now entry to the Olympics is one of the areas where serious efforts are being made to "police femininity." Remember that it wasn't that long ago that women were barred from many Olympic sports. Now they are allowed to compete but only if they fall within the Olympic definition of femininity.
Warning, this stuff is indeed very disturbing. I was trying to edit the article Olympics struggle with "policing femininity" down to non copyright infringing size but there is just to much of it that is relevant for that to work. Click on the link and go read it. Women and people who don't neatly fit into the Olympic definitions for what is male and what female are being pressured to have surgery or take medications in order to "normalize" them. What clearly emerges from the literature about this is that one group of people are using their political/economic power in order to police the physical/mental condition of the rest of the people in the world.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 09:51 AM
@sarah: Has there been any update on the Saudi teams since then?
Yup. As of May 28 2012 the Saudi team still had no women among the athletes and the IOC was still in [t]alks aimed at resolving the situation.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 09:58 AM
This. Which leads to
Apathy and depression can be hard to distinguish. As I've mentioned before, I bounce between cheerful, productive despair and depressed, apathetic despair--but the former attitude gets harder and harder to maintain all the time.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 10:26 AM
@Froborr: After the connect problems last week just want to be sure you go our email over the weekend.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Jun 12, 2012 at 10:31 AM
Yes, sorry. I've been working on my proposal for another project, and then Sunday was the annual road trip with my brother, and I didn't have a chance to get back to you. I'll have my updated article to you either later today or tomorrow.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 10:55 AM
@Froborr: Thanks. Just worried a bit because you didn't get our first response until we resent it. Wanted to be sure we were connecting.
Good luck with your proposal.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Jun 12, 2012 at 10:59 AM
Thanks TBAT! It's going pretty well. The proposal is written, the only challenge remaining is finding a title for the paper I'm proposing to write... well, that and writing the actual paper, of course, but one thing at a time.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 11:16 AM
@Froborr: I think titles are the worst part of writing papers.
Posted by: sarah | Jun 12, 2012 at 11:25 AM
Titles are among the worst parts of writing papers unless you have a great idea.
Posted by: lonespark | Jun 12, 2012 at 12:19 PM
I really think the difference between this and apartheid is mostly or entirely garden-variety misogyny. Misogyny is more deeply rooted in the culture than racism, I think. It's both older and proving harder to root out at the (relatively easier to change) legal level, let alone the social and cultural level.
The other problem is, well, as Rowen points out, the Olympics are partially carried by one network in the U.S., and I can't imagine they get particularly great ratings. It's hard to organize a boycott of a product nobody's buying.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 12:37 PM
@Froborr: the Olympics are partially carried by one network in the U.S., and I can't imagine they get particularly great ratings. It's hard to organize a boycott of a product nobody's buying.
um....non USian here. As is true for most of the population of the world. The Olympics are being held this summer in London, England and are being sponsored by corporations/entities that sell/function in many countries other than the United States.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 12:44 PM
Very true, mmy, and I apologize. I should have asked first rather than assuming: Are the Olympics more popular in other media markets? Or have they experienced a similar decline in interest/increase in competition from other entertainment?
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 01:05 PM
I'd imagine that many of the events will be shown online, yes?
(As an aside, my roommate's friend from high school is on the US women's rowing team.)
Posted by: sarah | Jun 12, 2012 at 01:13 PM
@Froborr: Ratings from other countries/cultures are not really commensurate with American ratings. There are a number of other issues involved as well--for example issues of National Pride and even political censorship.
@sarah (and partially Froborr): I just looked up the legal Canadian coverage of the Olympics. In English four channels/networks are sharing over 1,100 hours of coverage. In French two different channels/networks are providing over 700 hours. Three channels are sharing to provide over 200 hours of coverage in languages other than French or English.
Over 3,500 hours of coverage will be available streaming/online--some in French and some in English.
I have access to all that coverage no matter what the language and I have found that it doesn't really matter that much what language the coverage is in since what I want to do is watch the athletes.
I know that four years ago many of my friends who lived in the US near enough to the Canadian border to get Canadian television signals enjoyed the Canadian coverage more than the American. I think that much of that has to do with the style of coverage. There are less "heartwarming" "up close and personal" stories and since Canada has far fewer athletes who are likely to win medals we are much more likely to just cover the events.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 01:36 PM
@Mmy: Fascinating.
I can see where national pride comes in (I think, unless it means something different when capitalized), but in what way does political censorship affect broadcasts of the Olympics? Do you mean censors block broadcasts of the Olympics? But the pairing with national pride suggests that you mean censorship would increase ratings... is there some reason I'm missing that political censorship would increase Olympics viewership?
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 01:43 PM
@Froborr: Sorry, I was yoking National Pride and political censorship as a pair -- but both have a lot to do with what coverage is available in particular countries and how the populace responds to that coverage. There was a lot of contestation about whether "both Chinas" would compete in the Olympics and under what name. Countries have boycotted the Olympics for political reasons. Athletes have used medal presentation ceremonies as an opportunity to have their political concerns heard. Some sports are not covered broadcast in some particular countries. Countries have been known to block coverage of the successes of cultures/countries they demonize.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 02:03 PM
Ah, okay. I thought you were referring to them influencing popularity, as opposed to availability. Makes much more sense now.
Since I am (clearly, given this thread) ignorant of such matters: is National Pride the name of a movement or organization of some sort, as distinct from the feeling of national pride?
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 03:06 PM
@Froborr:
Well, of course. Have two races live side by side long enough, there will be intermarriage and children who belong to both cultures. No amount of intermarriage and interbreeding is going to soften or minimize gender differences; people will likely continue to have gendered physical features in the same ratios. And, of course, the number of people who identify as mixed-gender or other-gender is likely to remain much smaller than the number of people identifying as either masculine or feminine. There's little room for biology to help culture here.
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 12, 2012 at 03:06 PM
@Kirala: Also, you need to have two races living side-by-side before you can have racism. That was not at all common (outside of a couple of cosmopolitan cities) prior to the advent of colonialism. Whereas we've always had (AFAIK--are there any genderless societies?) at least two genders.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 03:17 PM
you need to have two races living side-by-side before you can have racism.
Except there isn't really such as thing as "race" -- it is a social construct. Yes there are observable differences among people (hair colour, hair texture, typical height, body type, eye colour) but those differences are not, in any scientific sense, evidences of "race."
We are basically one large, argumentative family. We may look quite different from one another but under the skin we are amazingly similar. As Jorde et al put it, most human genetic diversity is found within, rather than between, populations.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 05:35 PM
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 12, 2012 at 06:02 PM
@Kirala: I partly agree (about saying it is invalid) but when you teach in the area the first thing you have to break down is the idea that human beings have these packages of abilities that are a) inbuilt, b) unchangeable and c) determinative.
"Race" does not exist biologically. To think that someone's apparent race indicates they intellectual or moral qualities is like thinking that the quality of the milk varies when one pours it from a pink container to a blue container.
Most/many of the differences between human beings are constructs of the geography, climate, nutritional, exercise and other outside factors. As for the rest -- as soon as you think that there is an empirical difference between "them" and "those" one almost immediately starts thinking one sees group based differences that are not value neutral.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 06:14 PM
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 12, 2012 at 06:21 PM
@Kirala: I think we got here from discussing why gender apartheid at the Olympics was dealt with differently than apartheid practices by South Africa. The question was why were so-called "racial" barriers dealt with differently than gender barriers.
One of the interesting things is the degree to which some people today are trying to use science to define what is "female" in much the way they once attempted to use science to define "race."
My own experience in the field is that institutionalized gender inequities almost always boil down to belief in biological essentialism "women folks are just naturally born that way" and thus I am highly nervous about any movement down the biological essentialism road.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 12, 2012 at 06:34 PM
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 12, 2012 at 07:07 PM
IIRC, there was a proposal put before the American Anthropological Association -- oh, maybe fifteen, twenty years ago -- to officially declare "race" an invalid research term.
All of the physical anthropologists were decisively, emphatically, for the proposal.
All of the cultural anthropologists were vehemently, passionately opposed.
(The measure failed, fwiw)
Posted by: hapax | Jun 12, 2012 at 08:55 PM
I can also understand that. But I have to admit that I would have dealt with one of my grad school classes a lot better if they had said something like "race is a social construct built on top of population variations in humans that are way more diverse, plastic, etc than we have previously understood," instead of saying "race doesn't exist!" For example, certain kinds of "heritage," for lack of a better term, do predispose one to certain medical conditions; we are one big, argumenttive family that might or might not have factions on any given physical situation. This doesn't mean race is "real" - but it might be a social construct built on top of minor differences much like gender tends to be built on top of sex.
This comparison depends on me actively citing that biological sex is deeply complex, which I am. I'm totally in agreement with "the gender binary doesn't exist independently, it's a social construct," and that a huge number of "effects" that we see w.r.t. gender are sociocultural artifacts, not genetically determined. I just wish they had ported that language to race/genetics.
tl;dr: "Wow, you have lighter skin!" is about as determinative/interesting as "wow, your genitals are an outie!"
Posted by: Literata | Jun 12, 2012 at 09:05 PM
Apologies again, I should have said "ethnicity" or "culture" rather than "race." Racism becomes a thing when you have people of different ethnicities or cultures regularly encountering or hearing about one another, is what I meant to say, but my brain jammed on the word "racism" and therefore spat out "race."
(I'm with Kirala, though--I used to (10+ years ago) use the fact that race is "made up" as a justification for being "color-blind." Then one of my college professors shut me down in a class discussion and pretty much explained privilege in a single sentence that took me a good couple years to fully process.)
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 12, 2012 at 11:30 PM
dr ngo (me) But don't just jump straight to the Uber-Righteous Nobody But Me (OK, Us) Cares position and assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a Male Chauvinist Pig or a greedy opportunist. Or both.
mmy And exactly who is being uber-righteous?
literata dr ngo, you can go fuck off. Find somebody else to cry in your giant Beer O Privilege with.
Res ipsa loquitur?
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 12, 2012 at 11:36 PM
I am sceptical of the idea that misogyny runs deeper than racism. Yes, racism towards this group or that can and does change over time, but the general human tendency to oppress and malign other groups of people? I don't think that goes away so easily. It just finds new targets.
I think that both rely on the human tendency to grab advantages and hoard power, and to cultivate ideologies that rationalise this. The opportunities to dominate this or that ethnic group change over time, so racism has to adapt. The opportunities to oppress women, though, remain constant, and the main one is that women are less able to walk away from children; pregnancy and nursing are female-only phenomena, and mean that men can simply afford to be less responsible parents and still have the baby survive. Which means that during pregnany and babyhood, men can effectively control women by deploying the baby as a hostage - accept your role or the baby dies because I'm not picking up the slack; a woman with a baby to preserve can be treated very badly and she can't just get up and leave - and once that role is set up in those critical few years, it can be built upon. Which is why there's so much fight against reproductive rights, I believe: motherhood is the absolute centre point of female oppression, and if women actually get reproductive control and proper support in having and raising our children, we'll be away.
@Froborr - what was the single sentence?
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 13, 2012 at 02:46 AM
dr ngo, nobody was being "uber righteous" until you came in and accused people of using ideas like Male Chauvinist Pigs to attack the poor widdle downtrodden IOC. If me flaming you in response to that is your definition of righteousness, fine. I couldn't be bothered to link to the relevant sections of Derailing for Dummies, and I was angry.
When even asking a question about women's rights is met with tone arguments and accusations of righteousness, I am saddened by how far feminism has yet to go.
Posted by: Literata | Jun 13, 2012 at 08:23 AM
Yeah, um, dr ngo, if your only example of someone doing what you accused people of is someone's response to the accusation, you appear to have a problem with the concept of time, in addition to the other problems your post implies.
Posted by: Beroli | Jun 13, 2012 at 11:54 AM
@Kit: Well, we were discussing race and race issues after reading a Toni Morrison story, and I, being a privileged white dude, said (with the implication that if everybody else just thought like me, the problem would be solved) that I just ignored race and everything to do with it. My professor (a black woman) answered, "You're very lucky to have the opportunity to think that way."
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 01:13 PM
@Froborr: When one teaches race/race issues one underlines that there is a big difference between saying / meaning "race is a social construct" and "race doesn't exist so I ignore it." Saying that it is a social construct is a way of underlining that there is no biological/scientific/empirical justification for constructs we have built about race.
That is something that has to be gotten out of the way before one can even begin to study/teach/understand the reality of racism.
In all the years I taught I never heard any say "I don't see race" or "I don't see gender" who wasn't a white man. I am sure your professor had had to deal with that well-meaning statement a lot.
So, am I the only woman who ever found herself wondering, while watching some adventure film, what the women did about their periods?
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 13, 2012 at 02:15 PM
Kit, your point about the ease of using mothering to institute oppression is perfect. It dovetails neatly with the cogent arguments in Why patriarchal men are utterly petrified of birth control, which I think is a brilliant piece.
mmy, yes, I have wondered that too. On the other hand, I also used to wonder what women did before contemporary period-related products were around, but now that I've used cloth pads for a while, it's surprisingly easy to cope with without disposables. Not so good for swimming with sharks, though, probably.
Posted by: Literata | Jun 13, 2012 at 02:29 PM
@Mmy: Yeah, that's a really important difference to underline. When I first learned that race has no biological basis, "social construct" meant "doesn't exist" as far as I was concerned. I've since learned better--the most obvious teacher on that front was marathoning the Discworld series a year or two ago,* but I'm sure there were other sources earlier.
Probably. On the other hand I suspect I was a particularly obnoxious student--I entered college with a lot of certainty and arrogance and left with significantly less.
*Gods and anthropomorphic personifications: Immensely powerful entities that only exist as long as they're believed in, and yet can (and frequently do) wreak immeasurable harm in callously pursuing their natures without regard to individuals. Yet, if they can be made to take notice of individuals, either of their own accord (Death) or by force (Om), they can be equally powerful forces for good. That's not a metaphor for anything, nope, no siree.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 02:49 PM
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I couldn't cope with THE HUNGER GAMES.
Not that there weren't lots of other problems, but that was the crack that shattered my suspension of disbelief.
Of course, I had a friend who always maintained that, when watching films set before 1900 or so, once the characters opened their mouths to display perfect dentistry, she knew that she was in "fantasy-land" and adjusted her expectations accordingly.
Posted by: hapax | Jun 13, 2012 at 02:54 PM
@hapax: Youthful Irregularity + Starvation = Handwave!
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 03:18 PM
In this environment, I should probably just “fuck off” (as Literata kindly suggested) rather than attempt a reasoned response, but I continue to hope against hope that some kind of dialogue is possible here. (Literata says she was angry when she wrote that. Maybe she can imagine how I felt when I read it. Maybe not. After all, I am among the Privileged, and thus unworthy of her empathy.)
Mmy's original question was “why are countries that do not allow women to take part in the Olympics not barred from sending any team at all?” It's a good question, and deserves a serious answer. Unlike many here (it appears), I have a lifelong interest in the Olympics and therefore not just the political history of the Games but the generally unsavory machinations of the International Olympic Committee. This would include the Berlin Olympics of 1936, where Jesse Owens et al. shed a little rain on Hitler's parade, but in the crunch the IOC backed the Nazis, to the point allowing Avery (“Slavery”) Brundage to kick two Jewish runners off of the USA's 4x100 relay team.
In 1964 South Africa was indeed banned from the Olympics, usually considered a telling tactic, because of the great public interest in sports in that country (unlike Saudi Arabia). This may have been a success in the long run, but it was a very long run, until 1992 in fact. During the intervening years there were unsuccessful boycotts of the Games in 1976 by the Kenyans and other Africans (because New Zealand, which had sent teams to South Africa in non-Olympic sports, was not banned), in 1980 by the US and its allies (because the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan), and in 1984 by the USSR and its allies (because of 1980). It is widely believed in the sporting community that all of these injections of politics into the Games were abject failures, detrimental to sports in general. Indeed in certain circles the great, almost unforgivable, crime of Jimmy Carter was denying American athletes the opportunity to compete in Moscow.
It is that perspective that was largely missing from the original posting and the comments that preceded mine (though on re-reading I see that Firedrake nicely noted in passing 'a certain feeling of "well, it's sports, so it's all about nations coming together and being nice to each other, let's not push too hard"'). Though the IOC is as full of crooks and twisters as any high-level unaccountable organization you can imagine, its members are not without their own values, and one of these tends to be The Games Must Go On, which casts considerable obstacles in the way of throwing anyone out except as an absolutely LAST resort. It's a reasonable view, IMHO, even if one disagrees with it. If this analysis counts as a defense of “the poor widdle downtrodden IOC” (thanks again, Literata), I'm clearly in the wrong forum, if not the wrong universe.
As for whether Saudi Arabia should be, and will be, banned if it fails to include women, I suspect I'm not really all that far from Mmy here. I, too, think they should be. I am also dubious that they will be, but – and here's where we differ - I wouldn't rule out that possibility entirely. (Note that South Africa was only barred from the 1964 Olympics about a month and a half before the Games.) One never looks for the IOC to be in the moral vanguard on any issue, but they can be, and perhaps are being, persuaded to move eventually on certain issues. Maybe this one, maybe now. We live in hope.
In the original posting and the early comments, there was little acknowledgment of this possibility, but rather an assumption that banning Saudi Arabia was a lost cause, and this for almost entirely venial reasons, leaving no room for legitimate differences of strategical opinion (with the exception of Firedrake's aside, noted above). I plead guilty here to responding the subtext as well as the text, in referring to the “Uber-Righteous” and “Male Chauvinist Pigs.” It was rhetorical overkill, which I clearly shouldn't have used here. In my defense, I would note that attacking the subtext is an extremely common, and generally accepted, tactic here in the Slacktiverse, and that the reactions to my comment suggest I didn't get the subtext of this particular argument far wrong.
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 13, 2012 at 03:34 PM
Content warning: birth, motherhood, mental health issues
Kit, your point about the ease of using mothering to institute oppression is perfect. It dovetails neatly with the cogent arguments in Why patriarchal men are utterly petrified of birth control, which I think is a brilliant piece.
Yes, I quite agree with it; thanks for the link.
It interests me that the debates so often focus around pregnancy. I wouldn't deny for a second the importance of pregnancy both as a personal and a political factor - I thought it was important before I ever experienced it, and having now been pregnant I think it's incredibly important - but actually I think support for mothers is at least as important.
For instance: at the time I had my son, 22% of women in the UK were abandoned during childbirth. Left alone. Isolated. Stuck in a hospital and sent the message that it was literally not very important whether or not they were screaming in pain. I know this because I was one of them.
During the last few weeks of pregnancy, when I had been more or less 'barefoot and in the kitchen' - my feet were too swollen to fit my shoes, I had ligament pain that stopped me walking more than a few slow steps (and this was a healthy, 'normal' pregnancy), I'd spent some time watching Rome on DVD, unable to do much else. It had some interesting historical notes, and one of them was this: Rome considered people to occupy two classes, the honestiores and the humiliores - that is, the aristocrats and everyone else. Rome was a culture where physical cruelty was common, and the humiliores could expect to be tortured if they ran afoul of the powers - but it was agreed that it was cruel to torture the honestiores.
When you want to see how we deal with female-only pain, look at how we deal with birth. And this is how we deal with it: women in labour get less attention, less interest in their pain, than a man having a filling in one of his teeth. When there's no possibility that a man could hurt, society just doesn't care. The reason women get abandoned is that there simply aren't enough staff to look after us, and that is because the government doesn't care to fund them. Because suffering doesn't matter when it happens to women.
Giving birth made me understand the origin of the word 'humiliate'.
And of course, this has repercussions. I had postnatal depression; so do a lot of women. A psychologically injured woman does not fight for herself - and even if she could, she has to spend that energy protecting the baby.
Which she has to do without much help. In the UK, paternity leave lasts two weeks: for a great many families, that's not even long enough for the woman to have recovered physically from the injuries of birth, never mind got her confidence together and learned how to look after a baby. Two weeks, and you're all on your own. You can't walk away, because if you did the baby would die, and you love the baby with a desperate anxiety that's unlike anything else in the world. And then society has got you. In most families, the woman is the one who cuts back on work, because even the most supportive man in the world doesn't lactate.
If you're lucky enough to have a partner at that. Every antenatal class has women in it who didn't plan their children; some of them got accidentally pregnant in a marriage and are muddling along, but some got pregnant from one-night-stands or relationships that have ended. Every antenatal class will have a woman there one her own, or with a female friend if she's lucky, because the father is a selfish deadbeat who's shrugged it off, because he can. These are the women society likes to beat on because they're too busy to fight back; in my experience, such women work like dogs to be good mothers, are broke and stressed all the time, have beautiful children and overpowered lives. They're an easy-to-abuse workforce: they desperately need the money and they're in no position to negotiate for better pay or treatment. They're enforcers of the law, because they're very anxious that their children grow up respectable despite the stigmatised start. They are, economically speaking, a very valuable asset to society: serf, values carrier, provider of a new generation of well-cared-for children, and scapegoat. And most of them can't defend themselves because they don't have time. They have children to look after.
It's apparently a common tactic with abusive men to get a woman pregnant when she threatens to leave. Once there are children, it's much harder for her to leave. According to Brent Jeffs, it was a common method in the FLDS to impregnate teenage brides in polygamous marriages as early as possible: with her own children to worry about, a girl very seldom runs away.
That, I think, is what the hardliners don't want to acknowledge. They love to talk about pregnant women who don't want their unborn 'children'. They don't want to blow the gaff by talking about the real weapon they have against us: we love our children, and our children need us - and with children's wellbeing to worry about, we just have less time, less freedom, less of us to spend fighting for ourselves.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 13, 2012 at 03:40 PM
Sorry Doctor, our scans detect no signs of intelligent life on this planet.
Drop us a line at citizenplatform (at) gmail (dot) com if you'd prefer intelligent conversation.
Posted by: PAGING DR NGO, DR NGO TO THE THREAD PLEASE | Jun 13, 2012 at 03:52 PM
In this environment, I should probably just “fuck off” (as Literata kindly suggested) rather than attempt a reasoned response, but I continue to hope against hope that some kind of dialogue is possible here. (Literata says she was angry when she wrote that. Maybe she can imagine how I felt when I read it. Maybe not. After all, I am among the Privileged, and thus unworthy of her empathy.)
Man, you've got this place pegged. It used to be a cool place to hang out and have discussions before it was taken over by the perpetually offended and humorless.
Posted by: Anon | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:02 PM
@ngo: Attacking subtext first requires demonstrating that subtext is present. Thus far no one but you has come forward as seeing that subtext in the OP or the comments preceding yours, and you have provided no evidence for or explanation of where you're seeing that subtext.
As for the substance of your most recent comment, since the previous comments had none: If there is hope of the IOC acting on this, good. But you describe them as seeing the continuation of the games as more important than recognizing women as people, and call that a reasonable view? If that's what you think is reasonable, then you deserve everything that's been said to and about you in this thread, and a lot more.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:09 PM
@Reminder: No sock puppetry.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:20 PM
Sock-puppet? Well that's just a bit rude. I don't go around comparing you to King Friday.
Simply chiming in to say that Kit is completely right- no group in the history of people has ever been so oppressed as mommies. It's not like everyone's expected to bend over backwards for mommies, or give up space on public transport for your doublewide strollers or put up with your wailing children no matter what. And people who don't want to have children at all? They certainly aren't treated as freaks who are incapable of love and shouldn't be dating.
Nope. It's a conspiracy against mommies. There's nothing people hate more than mothers.
Posted by: Anon | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:35 PM
Sock-puppet? Well that's just a bit rude. I don't go around comparing you to King Friday.
Pointing out a fact (you are not allowed to use multiple usernames) is not being "rude" it is a statement of board policy.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:48 PM
Aw, lookit! It's got a widdle strawman! That's adorable--it probably even thinks it's making an argument! And it's trying to use sarcasm--that's too precious for words.
Who's got a stwawman? Do you? Yes you do! You do! Gootchie-goo!
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 05:00 PM
I hope this isn’t too off-topic - Mmy posted about Caster Semenya earlier, and what happened to her was awful, but it seems to me that it’s going to be hard to get away from that kind of thing as long as we have a division between men’s and women’s sports. Some people are always going to have an incentive to question the eligibility of some women athletes.
IANA biologist or doctor, but would something like “hormone classes”, modeled after weight classes in boxing, help prevent what happened to Caster Semenya? I’m not sure how much overlap there is between male and female distributions of the relevant hormones, but with three or four classes one could guarantee that at least one class includes substantial numbers of both. It seems like that should work out and produce competitive events as long as there’s even a little overlap.
Posted by: Gotchaye | Jun 13, 2012 at 05:50 PM
I would like to point out that I was deliberately not engaging with Dr Ngo because I felt it would be unproductive. Being attacked by him is therefore, I consider, poor sportsmanship.
I can't be bothered to engage with what was actually said, except to say that anyone who'd write a post like that certainly shouldn't be dating or having children, and if people think he's an unloveable freak, it is probably for better reasons than he supposes.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 13, 2012 at 05:57 PM
@TBAT - I don't suppose there's some way to filter out the comments by one poster so as to make it easier to follow the conversation without that one poster? I prefer to stick to the posters arguing the topic at hand in good faith...
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 13, 2012 at 06:43 PM
Whoa! Things have gone sideways in the last short while. First, I am only "dr ngo" on this board (and most others). I am certainly not the "anon" that has been posting here (nor "PAGING DR NGO"). I have never sock-puppeted in my life, and hope never to do so.
Second (following on from the first, I think), I did not attack Kit Whitfield, whom I respect, in any way at all of which I am aware. If she feels attacked by anything "dr ngo" said, I apologize, and would ask her to point this out to me (offline if you prefer - you know my e-mail).
As for more substantive issues raised, I'll try to deal with them later. I only jumped in now to limit further misunderstandings.
FWIW Kit knows I'm a man; I've never made a great secret of that fact. And that makes me privileged, I well know, and have known for more than half a century now. Whether that makes any utterance of mine a fair target for gibes about the "Beer of Privilege" is another question. YMMV.
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 13, 2012 at 06:45 PM
Ngo: You have made previous comments which did not have that response. This comment did. Have you considered the outside possibility that *just maybe* the content of the comment might have something to do with it.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 13, 2012 at 06:56 PM
TBAT request.
Please do not use "anon" as a username. Over the last several years a score of different posters have used that same username which makes it confusing to readers.
If you like to modify your name to reflect your mood please use cjmr's and Deird's method--that is use your username followed by a comma. For example "TBAT, surprised that this post of all posts would create controversy."
If you want to post Anonymously because the content of the comment is something you don't want connected with your normal user name (for example, you don't want your employer / family to connect it with you) the usual practice is to use the username "Anonymous for this comment."
It is helpful to TBAT if you include your email or your url when you post a comment and are not logged in through TypePad, Facebook or Twitter. We never release that information to anyone else and have only used the email address in the past to verify that someone isn't trying to take over someone's else's identity or to verify someone was okay when the content of the comment indicated that they might be in trouble.
If you are suddenly posting from a different ip number (you have a new job, you have moved, you are on holiday) it is helpful if you drop a line to TBAT to let us know. Again, this is to protect you.
Finally, in case anyone wonders, TBAT is a three-headed beast and the head directing this particular comment is not Kit's.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Jun 13, 2012 at 07:13 PM
Those of you who appreciate irony (or slapstick) may rejoice to know that while posting my previous comment I let my bathwater run over. Now, clean, and having mopped the floor - literally - I return to substantive points. Let me begin with Froborr:
you describe them [the IOC} as seeing the continuation of the games as more important than recognizing women as people, and call that a reasonable view? If that's what you think is reasonable, then you deserve everything that's been said to and about you in this thread, and a lot more.
No. I describe them as seeing the continuation of the games as more important than expelling Saudi Arabia from the Olympic movement. You are the one who conflated "expelling Saudi Arabia from the Olympic movement" with "recognizing women as people," and these people, along with millions of others, would not accept your identification of the two phrases as equivalent. When Paul Simon recorded part of "Graceland" with (Black) Africans in South Africa, he was not refusing to "recognize Africans as people," even though the ANC disapproved of this tactic. When the UK refused to join the USA in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics, they were not refusing "recognize the Afghanis as people," though some Americans chose to see it this way. Confusing specific tactics in a political struggle with the object of the struggle itself is not logical, or helpful, and it is why I made my original comments. NOT EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOUR TACTICS IS IMPLACABLY, UNREASONABLY ON THE "OTHER" SIDE.
Having said this, I reiterate - if it were up to me, if by some freak of fate I were the Chairman of the IOC, I would say to Saudi Arabia "That's it - include women on your Olympic team or you're out!" But I would also not condemn automatically to the rings of Hades (*) everyone who disagreed with this tactics. (* or say "you deserve everything that's been said to or about you")
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 13, 2012 at 07:27 PM
dr ngo: The original post said nothing more than the IOC's action did not match up with their stated mission, and asked why.
Several people who commented (including myself) did speculate about the IOC's motives in unflattering ways. Blatant hypocrisy rarely invites assumptions of good faith, after all.
You were quite right to bring up the possibility of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, although there is little evidence of it. (No surprise; the IOC is notoriously secretive about its internal activities.) It wouldn't even have been out of order to point out the immediate assumption of bad faith was rather uncharitable and out of character for this community.
However, that is no longer possible once commenter immediately leaps to insulting assumptions of bad faith: to wit, But don't just jump straight to the Uber-Righteous Nobody But Me (OK, Us) Cares position and assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a Male Chauvinist Pig or a greedy opportunist. Or both., which I don't see ANYWHERE in the preceding comments.
I am certainly no expert on the Olympics or the IOC, and I would welcome any information or insight you could provide about their current activities on this matter.
However, saying "well, people disagreed about past activities, so it isn't worth debating current tactics" doesn't really add much to the discussion.
P.S. I would, by the way, avoid bringing up Paul Simon in this context. Despite my great admiration for his music, due to unfortunate personal experiences, I am somewhat of an expert now in his habit of sticking his nose into the internal politics of African countries on minimal information and throwing the weight of his international celebrity around like a cudgel. It isn't an example I would suggest anyone emulate.
Posted by: hapax | Jun 13, 2012 at 07:51 PM
@dr ngo: I am not Froborr (to whom you were responding above) but I found your tone to be contentious and inflammatory from your first comment. The OP stated a fact and asked a question. It accused no one of anything.
To whom were you speaking when you wrote: But don't just jump straight to the Uber-Righteous Nobody But Me (OK, Us) Cares position and assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a Male Chauvinist Pig or a greedy opportunist.
If it was me (and you seemed only to be speaking to me in your comment) then I found your response to be over the type and hyper-sensitive.
To quote you: When Paul Simon recorded part of "Graceland" with (Black) Africans in South Africa, he was not refusing to "recognize Africans as people," even though the ANC disapproved of this tactic.
Umm, who gets to decide that. You, Paul Simon or the people who were, quite literally, risking their lives to fight apartheid?
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 13, 2012 at 07:56 PM
I think this may be a point. You have to strike where it hurts. If Saudi Arabia does not have a great public interest in sport, other tactics matter more.
Now, sport is the only tactic the IOC has, so the IOC should still be using that tactic. But the fact that other tactics matter more would go some way to explaining the lack of public pressure on the IOC. The focus is elsewhere, on more relevant tactics.
Well, except that it isn't. I'm not aware of anyone putting pressure on Saudi Arabia in any way whatsoever.
Which is rather depressing.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Jun 13, 2012 at 09:40 PM
Several hours later, it seems that this thread (or at least sub-thread) is drawing to a close, which is perhaps for the best. We've said, I believe, most of what we had to say on both sides, and if we haven't managed to meet in the middle, at least we've glimpsed it at times. In the hopes of clarity, led me add a few (closing?) comments.
A couple of people queried my citing of Paul Simon in South Africa. Let me explain why I mentioned this. Just a week or two ago I happened to see a fascinating documentary about the original "Graceland" recording (25 years ago) and a recent follow-up tour, which included a very civil conversation between PS and the head of the ANC (who was also son of the former head, back in the day). Simon said he still thought he was right, and cited his support from a number of black South African musicians. (FWIW, the ANC were not the only ones who were "risking their lives to fight apartheid.") Tambo of the ANC disagreed, but politely, saying PS should have respected the boycott at the time, although they were delighted to welcome him back later. Neither accused the other of bad faith.
I don't know where I stand on this issue myself, and I'm certainly not saying that Simon was right, or that the British were right to participate in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, or anything like that. I repeat my original point: it is possible on such issues for people of good faith to take opposite tactical views without necessarily being terribly, terribly, WRONG on the principles. Now if you are yourself in a situation where you have to make a decision - to visit China or Myanmar or Cuba or Israel or not, to boycott country X or product Y, to vote on someone's admission to some organization - then you have to weather the uncertainty and decide one way or another, Yea or Nay, even if you still have some misgivings. But to look at these complex situations and decide that there is only ONE correct answer which any decent person should reach is to go farther than we are warranted, I believe.
On a different theme: "Subtext" by its nature cannot be proven. (If it could, it would be "text.") It is implied, it is deduced, it is sensed from context; I learned this from my wife's acting studies, if I didn't know it before. After reflection, I still believe I was correct in detecting certain subtexts in the early comments, though they were not as blatant as my overwrought rhetoric implied. Yet of course I cannot prove to others that they were/are there, any more than others can prove to me they were not. Literata's immediate and intemperate swipe at me only served to confirm to me that these views were out there, just below the surface, which is why I quoted it as (indirect) evidence of self-righteousness and distrust of male chauvinism. The fact that no one here seems to have taken exception to her remarks, while many bristle at mine, suggests a certain general Slacktiverse mindset that may be germane here.
Finally: @mmy - my original comment was prompted as much by the following comments as by your post, which I did not make clear. I'm sorry that caused offense; I did not mean to single you out for criticism. And your first rejoinder to me was very much to the point - you called me (rightly) on my rhetorical excesses. Unfortunately, I saw that at the same time as I saw Literata's telling me to "fuck off," which deflected my attention from a more measured initial response to you.
Posted by: dr ngo | Jun 14, 2012 at 12:29 AM
Literata: No, actually, because there is such a thing biologically as sex. There is no such thing biologically as race. There is, biologically speaking, no link between skin color and other things we think of as physical "racial characteristics" and anything else (except possibly skin cancer).
People often bring up sickle cell anemia, and how people with brown skin have it more often than people with light pink skin. But no, it is not linked in any way with brown skin. People with Greek heritage often have sickle cell anemia as well. It comes from having ancestors from the Mediterranean region. Skin color and other things we think of as "racial" markers don't enter into it.
Humans are among the most non-diverse species on the planet. It would be completely unsurprising if the person you are most genetically like in the world was born on the opposite side of the planet from you.
PBS' series on race, "The Power of an Illusion": http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm
Posted by: Lliira | Jun 14, 2012 at 02:45 AM
Frankly I think the anonymous I-hate-mommies-because-they-take-their-children-out-in-public post did as much to make my point as anything I wrote.
When women with children are getting that degree of viciousness directed at us because we continue to use public spaces rather than herding ourselves into a mothers-only ghetto, I think it's a pretty good measure of where women stand in society.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 03:01 AM
People often bring up sickle cell anemia, and how people with brown skin have it more often than people with light pink skin. But no, it is not linked in any way with brown skin. People with Greek heritage often have sickle cell anemia as well. It comes from having ancestors from the Mediterranean region. Skin color and other things we think of as "racial" markers don't enter into it.
And indeed, the non-African-specific nature of sickle cell is marked enough to influence medical policy. When I was pregnant, my first-trimester blood test had a standard set of problems that they tested everybody for: HIV, hepatitis, syphilis, anaemia, and sickle cell. The fact that I was a white woman pregnant by a white man didn't enter into it: there was still enough of a possibility that they tested everybody for it.
Personally I'm inclined to wonder whether there are other physical or medical conditions that tend to be commonest among white people. Does it always have to be the African guys who get brought up as an example of a deviation from the healthy norm? I bet you anything white people have our own quirks that nobody mentions.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 04:13 AM
I'm sorry that caused offense; I did not mean to single you out for criticism. And your first rejoinder to me was very much to the point - you called me (rightly) on my rhetorical excesses. Unfortunately, I saw that at the same time as I saw Literata's telling me to "fuck off," which deflected my attention from a more measured initial response to you.
Dr Ngo: here's the sequence of events:
1. A completely neutral post, followed by some opinions you may not have agreed with, but which were expressed with temperance and courtesy.
2. An incredibly aggressive post by you, throwing accusations of bad faith around like confetti.
3. Literata's response to you.
4. You acting outraged at her response.
The thing is, her response to you was pretty much exactly on the same level of aggression as your initial post. It escalated somewhat by the use of the phrase 'fuck off', but as a mitigating factor, her aggression was legitimately provoked by your rudeness while you had no such excuse for yours. It was a pretty textbook example of 'You get what you give.'
And yet you seem to expect that everyone should have responded to you in mild and moderate tones, despite the fact that you clearly felt no such obligation towards anyone else.
Forget social prejudices and privileges for a second. Just on an interpersonal level, that's expecting people to treat you much better than you treat them, simply because you're you. You really aren't entitled to that. Nobody's that special.
You leap into a conversation with unwarranted rudeness and disrespect, some people will probably tell you to fuck off, no matter what the subject of the conversation. Attributing it to political disagreement or board groupthink is just refusing to look at the basic events: you were rude, someone was equally rude back, and you think that your rudeness should have been soft-soaped instead of met head-on.
Well I, for one, am not about to ask anyone else here to abide by that unfair standard. If you don't want to take it, don't dish it out.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 06:46 AM
Hey, guys, off-topic question:
I am looking for a kickstarter or similar project for making a video game that takes place in the Mississippian civilization. So, in the area near Nashville, TN, (and its underworld) back like 600 years ago, American Indian folks have epic adventures.
I though I saw it on racialicious, but I couldn't find it there so I'm not sure. Gonna go googling, but if anyone here knows that would be awesome.
Posted by: lonespark | Jun 14, 2012 at 07:34 AM
Oh, never mind, I found it, here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1011296053/uktena
Uktena.
Looks awesome.
Posted by: lonespark | Jun 14, 2012 at 07:50 AM
When they did those tests on my wife, it was sort of vaguely intimated that the possibility they were concerned about wasn't Sickle cell manifesting outside the expected population, but that we were mistaken about the identity of the father.
Posted by: Ross | Jun 14, 2012 at 07:53 AM
@dr ngo: To be honest your response comes across (to me at least) as a mixture of "splaining" and tilting with strawpersons.
To explain:
1) "splaining". Why do you continue to discuss the rights and wrongs of Paul Simon's decision to break the boycott of South Africa purely on what you saw in a single documentary? [Note: you might have other sources of your information but you mention none.] Quite a few of us within the reading community here (the Slacktiverse) are old enough that we lived through at least part of the struggle of apartheid and have clear memories of exactly how fraught the circumstances of Simon's actions were. At least two (and I would gather more) of the readers of this community have training/experience/personal knowledge that gives them much more information about and insight Simon's actions than that which could be gathered by watching several, let alone one, documentaries.
Even comments such as (FWIW, the ANC were not the only ones who were "risking their lives to fight apartheid.") seem "splainy" since you were the person who brought up the ANC. I (and I am sure, many other people on this board) were well aware of the fact that the ANC were not alone in that fight.
2) tilting with a strawperson.
I repeat my original point: it is possible on such issues for people of good faith to take opposite tactical views without necessarily being terribly, terribly, WRONG on the principles.
Nothing in the original post suggested that there was only one way of responding to the Saudi situation neither did it call people out for bad faith. You were responding to accusations that had not been made.
However:
Now if you are yourself in a situation where you have to make a decision - to visit China or Myanmar or Cuba or Israel or not, to boycott country X or product Y, to vote on someone's admission to some organization - then you have to weather the uncertainty and decide one way or another, Yea or Nay, even if you still have some misgivings. But to look at these complex situations and decide that there is only ONE correct answer which any decent person should reach is to go farther than we are warranted, I believe.
Um, I have been in a situation where I had to make a decision whether to boycott or visit and I have had to go on dealing with other people who made different decisions and I have had to decide whether to keep sharing the dinner table with people who disagreed with me, or continue to work with them. In fact I would gather that many people on this board have been in exactly that situation. And yes, I think it is sometimes necessary and right to judge and act accordingly. To quote my father (who has played golf for many decades and on several continents):
Isn't it strange that a man who everyone knows beats his wife can still get a foursome together for a game of golf but a man who beats his dog cannot?
Final note: personally I think Paul Simon is talented musician who is also a serial cultural appropriator.
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 14, 2012 at 08:08 AM
@Ross: When they did those tests on my wife, it was sort of vaguely intimated that the possibility they were concerned about wasn't Sickle cell manifesting outside the expected population, but that we were mistaken about the identity of the father.
1) I think most hospitals in the UK and Canada now (I am not conversant with other parts of the world) just routinely test everyone for everything since there is no way to safely determine the "likelihood" of fatherhood without a bunch of other issues coming up. Why not just test.
2) There are lots of people who are themselves quite unaware of their own biological background (that is, they are wrong about their own parents/grandparents.)
3) There are lots of things that only emerge if both the mother and father are carriers and people would not be aware of them.
4) Sometimes things just sort of "crop up." (see mutations.)
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 14, 2012 at 08:31 AM
In the US (the parts of the US that I've lived in, at any rate) you can decline the first trimester HIV test, and they place a signed statement that you have done so in your medical record. Hepatitis testing is done much later in the pregnancy. Genetic marker-type blood testing was only done in the two OB practices I worked with if both parents answered 'yes' to the same questions in a 20+ question pre-screening survey. There is an STD screening but I think it is for chlamydia and genital herpes, not syphillis.
Posted by: cjmr | Jun 14, 2012 at 08:31 AM
I can't be bothered to engage with what was actually said, except to say that anyone who'd write a post like that certainly shouldn't be dating or having children, and if people think he's an unloveable freak, it is probably for better reasons than he supposes.
That's what I love about you, Kit. You're so damn classy! You always go for the high ground and respond to criticism with dignity and poise. You never, ever, ever go for a base personal attack and you never make assumptions or jump to conclusions about people.
Stay classy, Kit!
Posted by: A random person | Jun 14, 2012 at 08:46 AM
On topic:
Is this specifically about Saudi Arabia because their poor record on human rights for women is exemplified in their not allowing women to participate in Olympic sport? Because I can think of several countries I'd like to see join them on the sidelines due to bad records on human rights for women who DO let women participate in sport.
Posted by: cjmr | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:09 AM
You always go for the high ground and respond to criticism with dignity and poise.
I respond to criticism with dignity and poise. I respond to hate speech with anger and to trolls with mockery. See above re 'You get what you give'.
I never claimed to be classy; as long as I'm annoying you, I'm happier as I am, thanks.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:36 AM
Ignoring trolls. Sigh.
Also, can we please get past the mindset that swearing automatically makes a post less civil than one tossing around snide comments about uber-righteousness? It's very...Harper Valley PTA, that mindset, and it makes me want to pepper my posts with random cursing just to prove a point.
And yeah, you could've just quoted from the BBC and then said "So it looks like they're aware and trying a different tactic: that's what I associate with the IOC for reasons XYZ," as above. You were spoiling for a fight, ngo, so don't be a weasel about "meeting in the middle" blah blah subtext blah blah wife's acting classes I don't even.
You came in swinging. Don't act like a victim when someone swings back.
The fact that no one here seems to have taken exception to her remarks, while many bristle at mine, suggests a certain general Slacktiverse mindset that may be germane here.
...that we're okay with people responding harshly when provoked?
Good mindset to have, I'd say.
@cmjr: Yeah, I kind of agree. And poor human rights in general.
Of course, that could mean the US would be benched, but...also not having a giant issue with that, really.
So, am I the only woman who ever found herself wondering, while watching some adventure film, what the women did about their periods?
I don't, myself, but I like my stories to ignore both bodily functions and dental issues. RL has plenty of grossness to go around, in my view. ;)
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:40 AM
Also, I have no intention of having kids, and I've never had a problem getting dates.
Must be you, TrollBoy. So. Surprising.
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:41 AM
Also, I have no intention of having kids, and I've never had a problem getting dates.
I would imagine not; you don't have a tantrum at the thought that one day a mother might bring her child onto the same bus you're riding. That kind of thing tends to help. :-)
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:43 AM
@Kit: Ha! Thank you.
I mean, I ride the bus/train daily. Little kids are sometimes noisy; it happens; welcome to life in the city. I used to get grumpy about that. Then I, um, grew up. And also discovered that little kids are way less noisy, by and large, than the Rilly Rilly Shrill Girls OH MY GOD MONICA RILLY? or the WOO CELSOXPATS guys, and little kids are much less likely to be able to help their noise level, or to know it's an issue, or whatever.
Whereas, one of these days, I'm gonna start daring drunk sophomores to take a leak on the third rail.
Except that would probably make the trains late. Sigh.
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 14, 2012 at 09:51 AM
On the dating stuff, you fools were the one that brought that little chestnut up out of nowhere, not any of your critics.
Reference:
...They certainly aren't treated as freaks who are incapable of love and shouldn't be dating.
Posted by: Anon | Jun 13, 2012 at 04:35 PM
Whoops your reading. I will stipulate that the person who brought the subject up was bringing a foolish chestnut up out of nowhere, though.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 10:10 AM
Whereas, one of these days, I'm gonna start daring drunk sophomores to take a leak on the third rail.
Except that would probably make the trains late. Sigh.
Well hey, they just need to learn from the babies. Nappies would totally solve that problem. ;-)
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jun 14, 2012 at 10:11 AM
@cjmr: Is this specifically about Saudi Arabia because their poor record on human rights for women is exemplified in their not allowing women to participate in Olympic sport? Because I can think of several countries I'd like to see join them on the sidelines due to bad records on human rights for women who DO let women participate in sport.
From my point of view this isn't specifically about Saudi Arabia. It just hit me that countries can still openly and unashamedly limit women's rights/opportunities and other countries are NO willing to the least thing to confront them on it.
Personally I am waiting for Canadian travel agents to warn Canadian women about how dangerous it might be to their health to travel in the United States. I am stunned at the speed at which women's rights to things as basic as fair pay and emergency room health care are being eroded in the United States.
On the "let's share some good news" front I was thrilled to read this in my morning newspaper (from The Toronto Star) Ontario Human Rights Code amended to protect transgendered people:
Posted by: Mmy | Jun 14, 2012 at 10:12 AM
From my point of view this isn't specifically about Saudi Arabia. It just hit me that countries can still openly and unashamedly limit women's rights/opportunities and other countries are NO willing to the least thing to confront them on it.
*looks up to the top of the screen*
You know, it must be wonderful to have everything figured out perfectly. I mean, it's a huge, complicated world of seven billion people, but you- mmy- you done figured it out.
"It's (usually) more complicated than that."
Gee, you think this might be too?
So we put pressure on Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia doesn't like this. So Saudi Arabia does an "oil embargo." Given the pull they have with OPEC, and other OPECs countries opinion of us, OPEC probably joins the embargo. "SO WHAT!" you cry "GOOD FOR US! MORAL STANDS AND SO ON!"
Except that we use oil for things like, idk- power? And it’s gonna be a hot summer. And a whoooole bunch more old people, and people with babies, are gonna die from heat stress. I know this because whenever the price of oil spikes, there's always more people dying 'cause they couldn't afford oil. And if the embargo lasts long enough, old people in New England start freezing to death too!
And that's not all. Gas prices skyrocket- and trust me, it's not Bill Gates that’s feeling the pinch. It's all those inner-city single moms who already have a shitty beater and can barely afford gas already. It'll probably mean hikes in bus fares- and man, you want to talk about affecting the poor....
Also, Saudi Arabia has been making some motions towards increased women's rights: for example, as of last year, women can vote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15052030
Which, yes, we probably shouldn't applaud them for doing the basics. But-it’s Saudi Arabia, give ‘em some props anyway.
Of course, there's another factor- see, both Mecca AND Medina are on Saudi soil. That's why Saudi Arabia is more than just another Islamic country- to the radicals, it is the Islamic country. Which means every fundamentalist crazy from here to Jakarta watches them, and does things like try to blow up the royal family.
Which means that the Saudi king has to be very careful. And in a world where we make our points with words, and they make their points with bombs, he's gonna lean towards the side of the bombers.
So is it right that Saudi Arabia oppresses women? Of course not. COULD we protest, maybe even have an effect? Probably.
Would the costs of those protests be worth it? Well....that's the question, is it not? And I suspect- (not know, but suspect) that when your advisors told you, mmy- about the real, actual costs to YOUR real, actual citizens of making a protest...I doubt you'd find it such an easy moral choice. At least I hope not. Moral certainty makes shitty policy- just ask George Bush.
Actions have consequences. Even good actions. It's more complicated than that. Actually- I think you'll find it's ALWAYS more complicated than that.
Posted by: Used-to-be-anon-now-I'm-just-sexy | Jun 14, 2012 at 11:52 AM
...annd I'm almost certain there are ways to say "Yeah, but you have to pick your battles and oil is important," without coming off as an asshat.
Especially when the post you're referencing is only nominally about Saudi Arabia.
@mmy: Dude, I know. I don't even what the hell.
Meanwhile, you guys appear to have considerably more egalitarianism. And also dill pickle chips. I am full of envy.
Posted by: Izzy | Jun 14, 2012 at 12:01 PM