I’ve created this thread to collect what I call “quick hits” – short phrases and examples that put across just why a bigoted argument is wrong. It’s often hard to think of these things when you’re struggling to comprehend that yes, someone really did just say that incredibly bigoted or ignorant thing, so let’s put lots of them in this comment thread and maybe it will help us out in the future.
You can include clever remarks, scenes from fiction or absolutely anything that you believe might help in an argument.
Please keep one thing in mind, though. Some people just are not open-minded at all. Arguing with them is a waste of your time, and when I get the urge to argue with someone like that, I remind myself my energy is better spent on people who ARE willing to learn – and I go write a post here, usually. So don’t expect these “quick hits” to suddenly convert all the bigots in your life. They may make you feel better, or they may convince a more neutral third party that the bigot is wrong. Those are both good things, but the actual conversion of a hardcore bigot is not something you can do. It’s simply out of your control.
Let the quick hits begin!
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There’s a lot of useful bits and pieces I must have gleaned from Shakesville, ways of naming problems or behaviours, of radically reframing things, and of moving a discussion on to somewhere useful, but the two that spring to mind are “this [instance of something problematic/oppressive] doesn’t happen in a void”, and in response to anything that ends up along the lines of “what do you expect?” “I expect more”.
Can’t remember where I got this sorry but it’s very useful to remind people of this: “Emotional is not the opposite of rational”.
I’m in the middle of reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine (great book, I highly recommend it). Here’s some things for countering gender essentialism that cites studies about the brain:
- “foetal testosterone” – a burst of testosterone that a usually male foetus receives at about 8 weeks. Is apparently widely cited as somehow “organising” the brain in a male way. However, all we know for certain is that what this testosterone does is to grow the foetus a penis (regardless of its genetic sex). Links with “masculine” mental aptitudes etc are still hopelessly speculative
- if someone cites the book The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, which apparently has tons of authoritative-looking references, then they need to know that close fact-checking of Brizendine’s references shows that many simply do not support or say the things she claims they do. As well checking a bunch of references herself Cordelia Fine also refers to Mark Liberman at Language Log – here’s a couple off his (very detailed) critiques of what Brizendine claims:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003530.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003565.html
- neuroimaging looks pretty impressive to us laypeople but actually it’s still in its infancy and simply cannot tell us much detail about the brain’s workings, certainly not about individual neurons. “Using fMRI to spy on neurons is something like using Cold War-era satellites to spy on people: Only large-scale activity is visible.” (Science journalist Greg Miller, quoted on p.153 of Delusions of Gender)
- more generally what I’m picking up from Delusions of Gender is that conclusions drawn about sex differences from research on the brain are often the result of massive leaps of interpretation and unquestioned gendered assumptions. Whatever we can observe about physical structures of the brain or brain activity, which may or may not show differences by sex, we simply cannot leap from that to draw conclusions about human MINDS and what shapes people’s thoughts, beliefs, personalities or aptitudes (i.e. claims like “the nature of this bit of the brain in men means that men are bad at processing emotions” are simply not authoritative).
Fine does say that physical differences between the brains of men and women are found by some studies, but what that means psychologically we just do not know. As far as I can tell from reading so far these differences are very minor or their existence is contentious. The overall “quick hit” from citing Delusions of Gender is that there is no definitive “male brain” and “female brain” – and any argument that depends on that idea is hopelessly simplifying current scientific knowledge about the brain.
I personally am coming to detest hearing/reading the phrase “hardwired” when pronouncements are made about the brain in any context, particularly re gender of course. The mechanical/circuitboard-type metaphor of the brain is terribly limiting, and erroneous – the brain can sometimes very effectively “re-wire” itself and change in order to cope with damage and injury to it. I have yet to deploy this in a discussion, but my riposte would be something like “the only thing the brain is ‘hardwired’ to do is to learn and adapt” and go on to talk about brain plasticity. I did a quick google for that to find a handy go-to link, and here’s one : http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html
The appeal of gender essentialism is that that if one can show that social inequalities differences are biologically based, then there’s no point in trying to change anything, and feminism’s core struggle is to assert that people and society can and should change. Generally expressing the belief that people can change and things can get better could be a good “quick hit” in lots of situations, and similar to “I expect more”.
Again I can’t yet vouch for the effectiveness of this, but if talking critically about any aspect of the gender policing of children (often gingerly to parents, as a non-parent) I think I’d frame it as something like “I just think it’s very negative to set limits on children’s potential – we should be giving them the message that they are capable of all kinds of things, and encourage them to find out what things they as individuals especially enjoy/are good at”.
MariaS(Quote) (Reply)
MariaS,
OMG, so need to review Fine’s book, but not sure where to start. It’s just packed with awesome!
And you reminded me of one more quick hit from her work, just something I took away, not a quote: environment activates and deactivates genes. Environment determines which genes will get expressed. So even if we could prove that different things are coded into male and female brains, which we can’t, environment would still play a huge role.
For those who haven’t read it, she cites numerous studies in which girls or African American students are told that typically their demographic does BETTER than white boys on a particular test, and guess what happens? Even though that’s a lie, they outperform the white boys. Seriously, the results were just that stark. It was like flipping a switch. That’s not genes – that’s purely environment. Hell, it almost sounds like a magic trick, but if you study REAL neuroscience, this is the kind of thing it’s discovering.
Thanks for the stuff from Shakesville, too, Maria S!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Holidays are great for bringing out family arguments… *sigh*. My common-law-brother-in-law remarked at a holiday gathering that “immigrants should act like Canadians”. I retorted that the Anishnaabe, Cree, Kwakiutl and Inuit shared his sentiments, but no one was listening.
Dominique(Quote) (Reply)
Dominique,
Speaking of First Nations/Native peoples…my parents were watching a special about the polar bears up in…IDK, Alaska I guess and how they’re wandering into human towns and eating the trash and attacking people and my mom’s all like “Good for the polar bears!” That’s not what bugged me though, what DID bug me was her saying, “YANNO, THE ESKIMOS DIDN’T HAVE ANY OF THESE PROBLEMS WITH THE POLAR BEARS BEFORE! BUT NOW THEY’RE ALL A BUNCH OF ALCHIE DRUG ADDICTS LIKE THE INDIANS AND LIVE IN THEIR OWN FILTH!”
Gee, I wonder WHY they’re alcoholic drug addicts who live in their own filth? It certainly couldn’t be due to mass-genocide and being sloughed off to the shittiest parts of the country and being systematically treated like 5th-rate citizens for hundreds of years, now COULD it?!?!
No, they just turned into losers for no reason ‘cuz they’re lazy or something…right…sure…you keep thinking that.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
I’m planning to do an experiment with my daughter (that is, she is interested in psychology and would like to conduct the experiment for a school science fair), where we present students at her all-girl high school with one of two tests.
In the first one, you have to rearrange shapes, and it’s defined as a spatial intelligence test.
In the second one, you have to rearrange shapes that look like furniture, and it’s defined as a test of your aesthetics and skill at home design. However, aside from the Visio shapes being used being selected from the furniture wireframes, it will otherwise be exactly the same test.
My hypothesis: Girls will do significantly better on the second test, even though in terms of actual spatial intelligence, the exact same level of skill would be required for either test, since the shapes and the tasks are the same.
My second hypothesis: If I got those results, and tried to publish them in a paper, I might get a publication, but the mainstream media would not pick up and report on my research, even though they love to report on women’s supposed inferiority at spatial tasks.
A second test to do would be to go next door to the mixed gender high school, and redo the test. My hypothesis there would be that girls would do as well as boys or better at the furniture rearranging test, but the boys would do better at the one defined as a spatial intelligence test.
I just have to construct the right puzzles out of Visio shapes.
Alara Rogers(Quote) (Reply)
Alara Rogers,
That’s awesome! And from what I read in Cordelia Fine’s book, this test would be more revealing than quite a lot of the ones that get funded and reported. The press just loooooves confirming Ye Olde Worlde Gender Roles.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Please please let us know how it goes.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
Alara Rogers,
I had that thought before too. The whole women and girls do poorly at spatial reasoning tests thing is because those tests are designed with boys in mind. Not consciously of course, but by using blocks and geometric shapes, boys gain an advantage because of the years they spent playing with Legos, Lincoln Logs, Kinects, etc. Whereas girls typically would not have gotten nearly as much time with those sorts of toys, but they do learn spatial reasoning skills in other forms and we can see this quite clearly in many of the occupations women work in. For instance, hair stylists need to be able to see the shape of a hair cut, figure out how it will look on differently shaped faces, and create that haircut out of a movable, multi-layered sheath of hair. That ain’t easy I’m sure. Same goes for interior decorators, fashion designers, graphic artists, and plenty of others. But because these professions are all seen as highly feminine, the skills needed to preform these tasks well aren’t seen as what they really are: spatial reasoning.
I think y’alls experiment is a great idea and has the potential to really illuminate this concept. Also, it should totally get her 1st place in a science fair!
Zaewen(Quote) (Reply)
Zaewen,
Also sewing. You need a ridiculous amount of 3-D and 2-D spacial reasoning to be a competent seamstress (or seamster).
It’s kind of hilarious how we, as a culture, categorize masculine and feminine skills. For example, baking requires you to be calculating and precise, so it’s for women, and grilling and cooking allow you to be intuitive and creative, so that’s what men do.
Quib(Quote) (Reply)
Quib,
Mm hmm. I’ve been into crochet for a while and it is ridiculous how much math you need! Especially if you’re designing your own patterns. To crochet a doll, you need to be thinking about how increasing both vertically and horizontally will affect your results, plus the fact that if you’re changing horizontally you’re actually affecting the perimeter of a circle, not the diameter, so it doesn’t move as smoothly…. But oh, you know, crocheting is really just a hobby, not an art form or something that requires effort. *glare*
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Zaewen,
Sorry if this is a bit off topic but I saw a very interesting study recently (I’m sorry, I cannot find a link to it) on spacial reasoning. The researchers found that in a patriarchal society (Where property, etc. moves through the male line) boys outperformed girls on a spacial reasoning test, but in societies that were matriarchal, both genders performed equally. (I know correlation =/= causation, but I still think it’s a pretty interesting result. Plus it’s got the added bonus of blowing the whole “girl brain” thing out of the water)
Dingo(Quote) (Reply)
Dingo,
Also see this comment about studies showing that just TELLING a demographic group “Your people usually outscore the other people” even when that’s a complete lie causes them to OUTscore the others.
I’ve always intuitively resisted the idea of pandering to the lowest common denominator, and now I understand why scientifically. If you don’t expect much from someone, they have nothing to gain by surpassing your expectations – you might even resent them for proving you wrong. But if you do expect something from them, if you take a positive reinforcement tack of ensuring that they CAN do the work and then telling them you expect them to do it, most people will in order to gain the self-respect that comes from knowing you did well on something.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Dingo,
I remember seeing that study (tho I’m too don’t have a link to it). The thing that really struck me about the findings was not just that girls did better in the matrilineal* society, but that both genders did better than they did in the patrilineal one. If you ask me that heavily suggests that when the genders are treated as equals, everyone does better period. Proof that gender equality is not a zero-sum game, but a win-win all around.
*It’s important to note that the societies were divided by matrilineal v. patrilineal (inheritance running through the mother’s or father’s line) instead of matriarchal v. patriarchal (power being concentrated in the women or men) because the matrilineal society was most likely still patriarchal or egalitarian, not matriarchal.
Zaewen(Quote) (Reply)
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