What constitutes Misogyny?

[Plutonia]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/feminist_hypersensitivity_or_m.php

Thanks for that link morgan. These tips linked to that link are really great and I think been utilized in this discussion- at least to some extent:

Here’s what I’ve learned, both from my own experience and from talking to other local leaders. These suggestions aren’t just about being more accessible to anyone who isn’t a middle aged white man. Some of these are just good practices for running a group. Turns out running a more professional (wrong word) group brings in more people of all kinds.

* Be a leader. Take responsibility for the tone of your group. If potential new members are being made to feel uncomfortable and aren’t coming back, you’re doing it wrong. As a leader, it is your job to prioritize the comfort of your attendees in programs, group dynamics, and communications. Try to put yourself in other members’ shoes and also ask for feedback.

* Promote a sense of community. Take the time to socialize and get to know each other. If you’re group isn’t primarily a social group, thinking about adding some social time. Go to breakfast before the protest, compose your letters to the editor over coffee, or grab a pizza and beer after that lecture. When you know each other, you have each others backs. Being a jerk isn’t tolerated.

* Moderate discussions. Make sure everyone has the opportunity to participate- new people, quiet people, etc. Don’t let conversation be dominated by one or two people who must “win.”

* Embrace and accept different ways of communicating. Whether someone is an aggressive debater or not, make sure they’re still welcome. The other atheist in the room isn’t your enemy.

* Encourage subgroups. Every event your group hosts doesn’t need to appeal to your entire membership. Many women appreciate women-only space to express their nonbelief and to connect with other atheist women. Here at the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, we started a subgroup book club called Reasonable Women. When it grew to have about 25 regular members and was beginning to be a little too large and unwieldy to function as a book club, we created a second group, Heathen Chicks, which is just a social group that meets at a local cafe. It isn’t just about creating women only space, for us, this has been a way to draw more women into other events our group hosts.

* Foster women in leadership. Groups with women in leadership positions tend to have more women. Encourage women in your group to be visible in leadership.

Our movement is growing faster than ever, and we have more opportunities for growth and expansion than we have ever seen before. While hiccups like this can be frustrating, they’re also a great chance for us to make our groups, communities and movements even stronger. We encourage you to take a look at your group and see if there are ways you can reach out to women, younger adults, minorities, or other groups.

http://www.blaghag.com/2011/02/when-gen ... haped.html

[compared2what?]

Jeez! I'm sorry that I encouraged him.

I am interested in physiology and brain function, as it relates to misogyny and I was hoping he had something new to contribute. But I guess I just took the bait.

This is cutting edge science, just as Girard is cutting edge theory:

White people lack empathy for brown people, brain research shows.
May 4, 2010 — Restructure!

New research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks, and I’m not at all surprised. For years, I just assumed that this was true, and that someone just had to do a study to prove it....

[I edited the author's commentary about how he came to this conclusion himself]

Mirror neurons are a theoretical construct to explain this type of basic bodily empathy in terms of neurons (brain cells). In macaque monkeys, the neurons in the part of their brains that control bodily movement fire (or activate) when they perform bodily movements. However, neuroscientists discovered that these same monkey brain regions also fire when monkeys watch other monkeys perform the same actions. This discovery was revolutionary, because something that previously could not be explained by science—empathy—may be finally understood in terms of things happening in the brain. When a human empathizes with another human, it corresponds to her neural firing “mirroring” the neural firing of the other person, whose neurons would be firing because she would be performing the task itself.

You know, I'm not sure that "empathize" is really the right word for the response described. Seems to me those monkeys are doing something more like "identifying with" the other monkeys. To me, that's a major distinction. Because people (and possibly also monkeys) don't necessarily feel empathy either for those who are most like them temperamentally or those who are most similarly situated to them. Sometimes it's more like the reverse, in fact. Because it depends on how they feel about themselves. And also on how they perceive themselves, which isn't always accurately. For anybody, really.

Just a thought.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Jeez! I'm sorry that I encouraged him.

I am interested in physiology and brain function, as it relates to misogyny and I was hoping he had something new to contribute. But I guess I just took the bait.

This is cutting edge science, just as Girard is cutting edge theory:

White people lack empathy for brown people, brain research shows.
May 4, 2010 — Restructure!

New research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks, and I’m not at all surprised. For years, I just assumed that this was true, and that someone just had to do a study to prove it....

[I edited the author's commentary about how he came to this conclusion himself]

Mirror neurons are a theoretical construct to explain this type of basic bodily empathy in terms of neurons (brain cells). In macaque monkeys, the neurons in the part of their brains that control bodily movement fire (or activate) when they perform bodily movements. However, neuroscientists discovered that these same monkey brain regions also fire when monkeys watch other monkeys perform the same actions. This discovery was revolutionary, because something that previously could not be explained by science—empathy—may be finally understood in terms of things happening in the brain. When a human empathizes with another human, it corresponds to her neural firing “mirroring” the neural firing of the other person, whose neurons would be firing because she would be performing the task itself.

In the recent neuroscience study on racial empathy by Jennifer Gutsell and Michael Inzlicht, they simply found physical evidence that white people have difficulty empathizing with non-white people:

The participants – all white – watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen.

Note that nothing about this study suggests anything about racial empathy or lackthereof being hard-wired. The human brain is a living, dynamic organ made up of billions of living, changing neurons. An important concept in neuroscience is brain plasticity, which is the capacity of the brain to change with learning through the reorganization of neural connections. Studies on brain activity are about what the brain is doing, not about the brain being stuck or frozen in some permanent state. Brains don’t do that, unless they are dead.

The article also notes:

The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.

Obviously-racist white people have more difficulty empathizing with people of colour than less-racist white people. This is not surprising. Lack of empathy is linked to racism.

However, the team says cognitive perspective taking exercises, for example, can increase empathy and understanding, thereby offering hope to reduce prejudice. Gutsell and Inzlicht are now investigating if this form of perspective-taking can have measurable effects in the brain.

Or we can break down the white-centric media and education systems that use only white people as a model of humanity. Maybe the researchers should test if people of colour really dehumanize white people as much as white people dehumanize us.

http://restructure.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... rch-shows/

This study is sus as. It only used white people and now there are blogs saying - see told you "white people are by definition racist."

I'd like to see it done with much larger numbers of every "racial" group.

Also with people of the same ethnic group, but with different identifiers, say a particular sports team or political allegiance.

(And yes like many of the blogs I'm whinging about my first reaction was - "Well that makes perfect sense." Simultaneously tho I was also feeling sus for the reasons I mentioned. No doubt it could be done with males wrt to misogyny judging by the responses of some on this thread.)

Awesome find tho. I'm gonna use it to troll a couple of online characters I know who are white and not at all racist, nor do they have any embedded cultural biases. Thats why they're allowed to use the "N" word or something. But really it needs a lot more research.

EDIT - Just noticed what c2w said above.

Thats an important point.

Personally I think its a complicated thing, a relationship between identity and empathy and learning by observation (something that mirror neurons are fundamental imo, from personal experience learning motor tasks especially.)

[Joe Hillshoist]

Further to my sussness on the study - it is to do with the identification thing. With self and other and society. Thats the trouble with this stuff. So much of it is informed by peoples opinions at the moment, well not opinions but "beliefs" about the world.

Also identifying with people for themselves, or some weird ideals ... I think there is something in that dynamic that'll have some influence on the results of these sort of studies.

Its obviously a good study tho, simply cos of the myriad of questions its already raised (for me anyway).

[Plutonia]

Jeez! I'm sorry that I encouraged him.

I am interested in physiology and brain function, as it relates to misogyny and I was hoping he had something new to contribute. But I guess I just took the bait.

This is cutting edge science, just as Girard is cutting edge theory:

White people lack empathy for brown people, brain research shows.
May 4, 2010 — Restructure!

New research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks, and I’m not at all surprised. For years, I just assumed that this was true, and that someone just had to do a study to prove it....

[I edited the author's commentary about how he came to this conclusion himself]

Mirror neurons are a theoretical construct to explain this type of basic bodily empathy in terms of neurons (brain cells). In macaque monkeys, the neurons in the part of their brains that control bodily movement fire (or activate) when they perform bodily movements. However, neuroscientists discovered that these same monkey brain regions also fire when monkeys watch other monkeys perform the same actions. This discovery was revolutionary, because something that previously could not be explained by science—empathy—may be finally understood in terms of things happening in the brain. When a human empathizes with another human, it corresponds to her neural firing “mirroring” the neural firing of the other person, whose neurons would be firing because she would be performing the task itself.

You know, I'm not sure that "empathize" is really the right word for the response described. Seems to me those monkeys are doing something more like "identifying with" the other monkeys. To me, that's a major distinction. Because people (and possibly also monkeys) don't necessarily feel empathy either for those who are most like them temperamentally or those who are most similarly situated to them. Sometimes it's more like the reverse, in fact. Because it depends on how they feel about themselves. And also on how they perceive themselves, which isn't always accurately. For anybody, really.

Just a thought.

Oh that's a really good point!

So we may well be "hardwired for empathy" as Marco Iacoboni says, but that we can be socialized out of identifying with another. It fits perfectly!

Men are conditioned not to identify with women becoz in the schoolyard and even in adult life, they are tormented for girlish traits. So the imprint is, "if I identify with that woman, I'm going to get it." Therefore, their ability to empathize with women is compromised. So not only must women be seen as Other, they are a source of constant danger too.

I wonder... do you think that the ubiquitous of derision for "feminine" traits in men could be a measure of how strong the impulse to empathize is? I mean, if the pressure isn't kept up, they'll revert to being empathetic?

[Plutonia]

Jeez! I'm sorry that I encouraged him.

I am interested in physiology and brain function, as it relates to misogyny and I was hoping he had something new to contribute. But I guess I just took the bait.

This is cutting edge science, just as Girard is cutting edge theory:

White people lack empathy for brown people, brain research shows.
May 4, 2010 — Restructure!

New research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks, and I’m not at all surprised. For years, I just assumed that this was true, and that someone just had to do a study to prove it....

[I edited the author's commentary about how he came to this conclusion himself]

Mirror neurons are a theoretical construct to explain this type of basic bodily empathy in terms of neurons (brain cells). In macaque monkeys, the neurons in the part of their brains that control bodily movement fire (or activate) when they perform bodily movements. However, neuroscientists discovered that these same monkey brain regions also fire when monkeys watch other monkeys perform the same actions. This discovery was revolutionary, because something that previously could not be explained by science—empathy—may be finally understood in terms of things happening in the brain. When a human empathizes with another human, it corresponds to her neural firing “mirroring” the neural firing of the other person, whose neurons would be firing because she would be performing the task itself.

In the recent neuroscience study on racial empathy by Jennifer Gutsell and Michael Inzlicht, they simply found physical evidence that white people have difficulty empathizing with non-white people:

The participants – all white – watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen.

Note that nothing about this study suggests anything about racial empathy or lackthereof being hard-wired. The human brain is a living, dynamic organ made up of billions of living, changing neurons. An important concept in neuroscience is brain plasticity, which is the capacity of the brain to change with learning through the reorganization of neural connections. Studies on brain activity are about what the brain is doing, not about the brain being stuck or frozen in some permanent state. Brains don’t do that, unless they are dead.

The article also notes:

The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.

Obviously-racist white people have more difficulty empathizing with people of colour than less-racist white people. This is not surprising. Lack of empathy is linked to racism.

However, the team says cognitive perspective taking exercises, for example, can increase empathy and understanding, thereby offering hope to reduce prejudice. Gutsell and Inzlicht are now investigating if this form of perspective-taking can have measurable effects in the brain.

Or we can break down the white-centric media and education systems that use only white people as a model of humanity. Maybe the researchers should test if people of colour really dehumanize white people as much as white people dehumanize us.

http://restructure.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... rch-shows/

This study is sus as. It only used white people and now there are blogs saying - see told you "white people are by definition racist."

I'd like to see it done with much larger numbers of every "racial" group.

Also with people of the same ethnic group, but with different identifiers, say a particular sports team or political allegiance.

(And yes like many of the blogs I'm whinging about my first reaction was - "Well that makes perfect sense." Simultaneously tho I was also feeling sus for the reasons I mentioned. No doubt it could be done with males wrt to misogyny judging by the responses of some on this thread.)

Awesome find tho. I'm gonna use it to troll a couple of online characters I know who are white and not at all racist, nor do they have any embedded cultural biases. Thats why they're allowed to use the "N" word or something. But really it needs a lot more research.

EDIT - Just noticed what c2w said above.

Thats an important point.

Personally I think its a complicated thing, a relationship between identity and empathy and learning by observation (something that mirror neurons are fundamental imo, from personal experience learning motor tasks especially.)

I haven't found a study that deals with gender yet, but this is a new field and it's exploding. Mirror neurons are implicated in language learning and the conveyance of meaning, too, besides just learning motor tasks or empathy.

Here, take a look at this presentation by Marco Iacoboni and see what you think:

[Stephen Morgan]

Fascinating article here: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/08/porn_and_mirror_neurons.php, about pron and mirror neurons, as it says:

Mirror neurons are a classic illustration of a scientific idea that's so elegant and intriguing our theories get ahead of the facts. They're an anatomical quirk rumored to solve so many different cognitive problems that one almost has to be suspicious: how can the same relatively minor network of motor neurons be responsible for tool use, empathy, language and be a core feature of autism?

...

But how does porn work? Why do humans (especially men) get so excited by seeing someone else have sex? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: watching porn triggers an idea (we start thinking about sex), which then triggers a change in our behavior (we become sexually aroused). This is how most of us think about thinking: sensations cause thoughts which cause physical responses. Porn is a quintessential example of how such a thought process might work.

But this straightforward answer is probably wrong. Porn does not cause us to think about sex. Rather, porn causes to think we are having sex. From the perspective of the brain, the act of arousal is not preceded by a separate idea, which we absorb via the television or computer screen. The act itself is the idea. In other words, porn works by convincing us that we are not watching porn. We think we are inside the screen, doing the deed.

Mirror neurons facilitate this process by allowing the brain to automatically imitate the actions of somebody else. So if I see you smile, or lick an ice cream cone, or do something X-rated, then my mirror neurons light up as if I were smiling, or licking an ice cream cone, or doing something X-rated. We mirror each others movements, which allows us to make sense of all these flailing limbs and contorted muscles; the body is a pretty tough thing to read.

Obviously, this is all just idle speculation. Nobody has shown monkeys some primate sex tapes and recorded from their mirror neurons. (Sounds like a fun experiment to me!) But there is one paper, published in Neuroimage, that looked at the neuroanatomy of porn. The researchers flashed images of aroused genitalia to both men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals. As expected, brain activity correlated with sexual preference: the minds of homosexual men mirrored the minds of heterosexual women, and vice-versa. But what was really interesting was the pattern of activation itself. When subjects looked at porn in the fMRI machine (not a very erotic place), "the ventral premotor cortex which is a key structure for imitative (mirror neurons) and tool-related (canonical neurons) actions showed a bilateral sexual preference-specific activation, suggesting that viewing sexually aroused genitals of the preferred sex triggers action representations of sexual behavior." In other words, looking at still pictures of naked people triggered our mirror neurons into action, as the brain began pretending that it was actually having sex, and not just looking at smutty pictures in a science lab.

Obviously, a similar logic can be applied to a range of other actions that people love to watch, such as sports, which I've written about here.

___

Contrast with: http://www.scribd.com/doc/38609997/History-Science-Erototoxic-Images-Drive-Sex-Trafficking-Demand:

Modern pornographers are the most successful global crusaders in world history. They have captured the brains, minds and memories of people of every culture, race, class, religious leaning (including atheist and agnostic), age, and gender, and spawned an unprecedented traffic in reproductive organs as mere tools for orgiastic penetration. On point, a 2009 Princeton neuroimaging study of bikiniclad women’s images lit up the “premotor cortex, posterior middle temporal gyrus,” the areas for “tool-use or manipulable objects.” The research findings suggest sexy images change females “from people to interact with, to objects to act upon.”1 Newsflash! Science and history support this conclusion.

I imagine any findings related to mirror neurons won't be convincing this woman that porn actually encourages us to think of porn stars as people and identify with them on a human level. In fact, although as the above points out the results were obtained by showing people the genitals of the opposite sex (for heteros, anyway), this site says:

Summarizing mirror neuron data she reports: “[if] a man watches another man have sexual intercourse with a woman, the observer's mirror neurons spring into action.”

Which is to say, claiming that a man watching porn is identifying with the man. Must be why lesbianism is so unpopular with men watching porn.

I tell you, I've never watched porn with men in it. The last thing that's going to arouse me is an erect penis.

___

On a loosely related note, this, because I was inspired by the race-relations study there to look for some sexual equivalent, but apart from a few websites proclaiming that men are incapable of empathy I didn't really find anything:

With respect to the literature on trusting others, both survey
results and experimental findings show that, in general, men
trust more than do women. Several surveys found evidence
that women are less likely to believe that “most people can be
trusted” (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Glaeser et al. 2000;
Terrell and Barrett 1979). A number of investigations in
experimental economics support those findings, concluding
that men are more trusting than women. The determination is
based on results showing that men sent more money to their
opponents in economic games, thereby being more vulnerable
to the action of the other party (e.g., Buchan et al. 2008;
Snijders and Keren 1999).

In the literature investigating the concept of trusting others in
view of gender, empirical evidence shows that, in general,
women are more trusted than are men. A study of psycho-
logical attitudes, using Rotter’s (1967) interpersonal trust
scale, revealed greater trust toward women than toward men
(Wright and Sharp 1979). Moreover, in a study focused on
economic behavior, male clients were believed to be less
trustworthy than female clients (Shaub 1996).

I would argue that trust is an aspect of identification, if you identify with someone and empathise with them you will be more likely to trust.

___

http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/19/3/419.abstract

Effects of Women's Studies Courses on Gender-Related Attitudes of Women and Men

Abstract

Attitudes about feminism, gender equality, and gender differences were assessed for male and female students enrolled in three women's studies courses and four control courses at the beginning and end of an academic semester. Compared to control students, women's studies students agreed more with feminist and equality items, and disagreed more with gender difference items, at the beginning of the term. Nonetheless, belief in gender differences decreased among men, but not women, enrolled in women's studies courses. Additionally, women's studies courses produced increased feminist attitudes among women, but decreased feminist attitudes among the small sample of men in the study.

Tangentially related, I think.

___

And re provocations deferred: viewtopic.php?t=32082&p=402169#p402169

[Stephen Morgan]

So we may well be "hardwired for empathy" as Marco Iacoboni says, but that we can be socialized out of identifying with another. It fits perfectly!

Men are conditioned not to identify with women becoz in the schoolyard and even in adult life, they are tormented for girlish traits. So the imprint is, "if I identify with that woman, I'm going to get it." Therefore, their ability to empathize with women is compromised. So not only must women be seen as Other, they are a source of constant danger too.

I wonder... do you think that the ubiquitous of derision for "feminine" traits in men could be a measure of how strong the impulse to empathize is? I mean, if the pressure isn't kept up, they'll revert to being empathetic?

I think it's exactly the opposite. The greater concern for violence against women, for example, the greater trust shown to women as in the study in my other post, and so, indicates to me that men are far more likely to sympathise with women than other men, at least in situations where women are perceived as in danger or at a disadvantage, but probably all the time. It's the reason women are more likely to be hired, why women are used to advertise products more than men, and so on. Because both sexes are more likely to identify with a soft feminine face.

___

The closest thing to a gender study of this type, which isn't very close, is this:
this, which acts upon the belief that women are under constant threat from men.

[Plutonia]

So we may well be "hardwired for empathy" as Marco Iacoboni says, but that we can be socialized out of identifying with another. It fits perfectly!

Men are conditioned not to identify with women becoz in the schoolyard and even in adult life, they are tormented for girlish traits. So the imprint is, "if I identify with that woman, I'm going to get it." Therefore, their ability to empathize with women is compromised. So not only must women be seen as Other, they are a source of constant danger too.

I wonder... do you think that the ubiquitous of derision for "feminine" traits in men could be a measure of how strong the impulse to empathize is? I mean, if the pressure isn't kept up, they'll revert to being empathetic?

I think it's exactly the opposite. The greater concern for violence against women, for example, the greater trust shown to women as in the study in my other post, and so, indicates to me that men are far more likely to sympathise with women than other men, at least in situations where women are perceived as in danger or at a disadvantage, but probably all the time. It's the reason women are more likely to be hired, why women are used to advertise products more than men, and so on. Because both sexes are more likely to identify with a soft feminine face.

___

The closest thing to a gender study of this type, which isn't very close, is this:
this, which acts upon the belief that women are under constant threat from men.

Hmmm...

It might be more instructive to deconstruct that incident with the atheists, as reported by Blag Hag:

"When Gender Goes Pear-Shaped
http://www.blaghag.com/2011/02/when-gen ... haped.html

Guest Post by Sharon Moss, President of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio with Lyz Liddell, Director of Campus Organizing at the Secular Student Alliance

These are the views of individuals and do not represent the views of the Secular Student Alliance or the Humanist Community of Central Ohio.

If the freethought community doesn't have a problem with sexism, why did I just spend 20 minutes in the bathroom consoling a woman who was publicly insulted when she asked the panel a question about sexism in freethought communities? Note to dudes, it doesn't matter if it is sexism or biology, if you're making people who come to your group uncomfortable, you're doing it wrong. -- Facebook status, Sharon Moss, 1/30/11"

So the group's aim is inclusiveness (a practice of empathetic inter-relations?) and the outcome is alienation.

Consoling another person may be a human act, an empathetic act, but I warrant it's not gender neutral. If we reverse the genders, I think we'd be surprised to be reading of a man consoling another man in a bathroom, and the idea of a man consoling a woman (or vice versa) in a bathroom might connote a sexual innuendo.

So is that socialization overlayed on human empathy?

"I’m not one to post snarky facebook status updates. I generally view snarky facebook statuses as the realm of the powerless. And, damn, did I feel powerless."

Here she's attributing a snarky, uncharacteristic behavior with feeling powerless.

Is this a general rule, that when people are made to feel powerless, their capacity to empathize is diminished and they react with uncharacteristic harshness?

"Last weekend Lyz and I were at American Atheists’ Southeast Regional Atheist Meet in Huntsville, Alabama. This is the first regional conference America Atheists organized and the over the two prior days, it sold out with 200 atheists from as far away as North Carolina and Ohio. At a rough visual estimate, probably 30% of the attendees were women. When David Silverman polled the audience on Sunday afternoon, for about half of those in attendance, this was their first atheist conference of any kind. Clearly, American Atheists is on to something."

The author's position is that of supporter of this organization, so the context is not adversarial. She identifies with these people and what they are trying to do.

"Sunday morning’s first session was an “Attendees’ Choice” panel discussion, featuring five local group leaders. Attendees were asked to submit written questions ahead of time, and the most frequently asked questions were asked of this panel.

A panel of five guys and one woman discussed what an atheist group should do to attract more women. The all-too-common problem came up of a woman showing up to a meeting and every dude there hitting on her. First, the panelists grabbed a theme that had been floating around all weekend: that men hitting on women is just biological (therefore excusable), making it sound like a woman in that kind of situation should just STFU and get over it."

Ouch. A biggie. Does sexuality impede empathy between genders or is it just sexual attitudes?

"Then the moderator asked the women in the audience, as if it were a rewording of the same question, whether they would feel harassed or flattered if they showed up to an event and a few guys started flirting with them. We women in the audience, pressured to respond to the question at hand but feeling duped because we knew it wasn’t the same thing, gave an honest response. Sure, a few guys flirting with us is sexy. BUT!!! (we all screamed in our heads, even though the panel never let us say it out loud) 20 guys our father’s age blatantly staring at and talking to our cleavage is a totally different situation! It’s not sexy, it’s gross and creepy."

This is too big for me to parse out right now. Perhaps someone else could take over?

I'll just say this:
There is a line there between acceptable sexual expressions ie flirting and "gross and creepy" which has to do with "who" (too many of father's age) and "what" (breast fixation). I understand how there could be confusion, but the guys "breast talking" would notice the discomfort they're causing, if they were being empathetic.

"It was extremely frustrating. So I wasn’t surprised when the young woman who finally stood up and started challenging the panel snapped. First, despite her having her hand raised for most of the discussion, the panel never even acknowledged her or invited her opinion (despite soliciting the opinion of several guys both on and off the panel. Finally, she just stood up and started shouting to make her voice heard. Her question focused on the language the panel had been using - “female” instead of “woman,” and pointed out that it made us sound like livestock rather than people.

But did the panel address the question, perhaps looking for the point at which the discussion took on the word “female” so universally? Did they take the opportunity to discuss how things like language can make a group uncomfortable for women, and what we could do to make it better? No! The woman asking the question was viciously torn apart and ridiculed for even bringing it up. First, a combination of panelists and audience members tried to defend themselves by saying that feminists won’t let men use the word “women” off-limits because it has “men” in it. Then a commotion of everyone talking at once, which was cut off by one panelist’s definitive comment: “What do you want us to say, ‘the weaker sex?”

She got upset (and who wouldn’t be?) and left the room. I - a member of the audience, not one of the event organizers - went after her. While there were a few odd calls from the audience for the panelist to apologize, the moderator sort of awkwardly pushed the discussion on to a new topic, with an embarrassed air of “Sorry for the disturbance.” No apology, no discussing a better way it could have been handled. Not even a joking “This is how *not* to be welcoming” comment. Just “nothing to see here, move along.”

This wasn’t an isolated incident. In fact, almost the entire conference had a bizarre quality to it when it came to gender issues. If I had to point to when it started, I think it would have to have been in Sean Faircloth’s Saturday talk. This talk began well enough: a strong feminist position, an excoriation of Victorian moralist Anthony Comstock, mention of several areas in which the law imposes on women’s rights. But then it got weirdly uncomfortable. First, came the proposal of a new motto: “What Would Don Draper Do?” (Don Draper is your role model, seriously?)

Sean’s transition hinted strongly that men also face gender discrimination, which had huge potential to be really interesting (wow, a chance to talk about our society’s constraining, conflicting roles for men! *insert Greta fangirl here*).

[Jen's note: I've temporarily removed the section on the "Million Dollar Challenge" since there seems to be a lot of debate over whether it was depicted fairly. The Alabama Atheists are uploading the video of Sean's talk to make this situation clear. While I wouldn't let Sharon and Lyz do a guest post unless I trusted their judgement, I also don't want to misrepresent Sean Faircloth, so I'm waiting until I've seen the video.]

From there, the conversation wandered into a weird discussion about how men’s biology drives them to frequently (if not constantly) pursue sex, and since it’s biology, no one should get upset at, judge, or think less of men for any skirt-chasing they might engage in. (Because we never intellectually overcome our animal instincts in other areas of our biology, right?) The attitude in the room shifted: suddenly women were the bad guys for saying no to men’s propositions because it denies the men’s innate biology. Most of the guys in the room loved it, but as a woman in the audience - it was really uncomfortable. It was demeaning, frustrating, and not what you want to say to attract more women into this movement. And the attitude stuck around.

All these people got presented with a totally skewed perspective on our movement’s views on gender equality and sexuality. The message was loud and clear: it’s totally ok for guys to be assholes. Women should just STFU when men treat them like sex objects. The appropriate way to solve the problem of gender imbalance is to ask a bunch of guys about it (oh, and the entire problem is just because women won’t let men have sex with them whenever they want to). The way to handle women’s input is to ridicule them.

But there’s an even bigger problem here. Situations like this drive wedges between otherwise natural allies in our movement. That young woman is on our side - she came to this event at the cost of her time and money to get involved - and she was driven away. So are thousands of women across the country - for no other reason than because this movement can’t seem to figure out how to treat them like equal humans.

Why don’t we see more women in our groups? Maybe because when Jen McCreight showed up to an atheist meeting, guys in the group stood around comparing her to her photos from Boobquake. Why don’t we see more young people? Maybe because when a new parent shows up to a group event, other members make rude comments to her face about how her child is disrupting the meeting. Why are we so overwhelmingly Caucasian? Maybe because a black person shows up and hears a bunch of racial jokes.

We need to have these conversations, but there’s no reason to drive away people who are *on our side* by having them in completely the wrong way.

American Atheists created a real opportunity for members of local groups to come together, share ideas, get leadership training, and go home ready to take over the world. For many issues-- activism, law, supporting campus groups, the future of the atheist movement-- they were incredibly successful. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I haven’t seen this kind of enthusiasm for the grassroots outside the college level. Ever. But there is always room for improvement. We lost a real opportunity for local leaders to share their experiences, successes and failures. Creating a more inclusive movement needs to be a priority at both the national and local levels.

From my own experience as the former president of Students for Freethought at Ohio State and as the current president of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio and from talking to other local leaders, the grassroots gets it. We want to be more inclusive and we’re taking the steps to get there.

Here’s what I’ve learned, both from my own experience and from talking to other local leaders. These suggestions aren’t just about being more accessible to anyone who isn’t a middle aged white man. Some of these are just good practices for running a group. Turns out running a more professional (wrong word) group brings in more people of all kinds.

* Be a leader. Take responsibility for the tone of your group. If potential new members are being made to feel uncomfortable and aren’t coming back, you’re doing it wrong. As a leader, it is your job to prioritize the comfort of your attendees in programs, group dynamics, and communications. Try to put yourself in other members’ shoes and also ask for feedback.

* Promote a sense of community. Take the time to socialize and get to know each other. If you’re group isn’t primarily a social group, thinking about adding some social time. Go to breakfast before the protest, compose your letters to the editor over coffee, or grab a pizza and beer after that lecture. When you know each other, you have each others backs. Being a jerk isn’t tolerated.

* Moderate discussions. Make sure everyone has the opportunity to participate- new people, quiet people, etc. Don’t let conversation be dominated by one or two people who must “win.”

* Embrace and accept different ways of communicating. Whether someone is an aggressive debater or not, make sure they’re still welcome. The other atheist in the room isn’t your enemy.

* Encourage subgroups. Every event your group hosts doesn’t need to appeal to your entire membership. Many women appreciate women-only space to express their nonbelief and to connect with other atheist women. Here at the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, we started a subgroup book club called Reasonable Women. When it grew to have about 25 regular members and was beginning to be a little too large and unwieldy to function as a book club, we created a second group, Heathen Chicks, which is just a social group that meets at a local cafe. It isn’t just about creating women only space, for us, this has been a way to draw more women into other events our group hosts.

* Foster women in leadership. Groups with women in leadership positions tend to have more women. Encourage women in your group to be visible in leadership.

Our movement is growing faster than ever, and we have more opportunities for growth and expansion than we have ever seen before. While hiccups like this can be frustrating, they’re also a great chance for us to make our groups, communities and movements even stronger. We encourage you to take a look at your group and see if there are ways you can reach out to women, younger adults, minorities, or other groups."

[JackRiddler]

I think it's exactly the opposite. The greater concern for violence against women, for example, the greater trust shown to women as in the study in my other post, and so, indicates to me that men are far more likely to sympathise with women than other men, at least in situations where women are perceived as in danger or at a disadvantage, but probably all the time.

Are there other possibilities? Could it be related to actual experiences with men as opposed to women? Interestingly I can think of a number of men, but not women, who have initiated fights with me and beaten me up, refused to stop making physical sexual advances on me despite unmistakable rejection, threatened to kill or beat me with credible intent, bullied me physically, were provoked by my appearance or inoccuous mannerisms into calling me gay,* mugged me for money, projected physical dominance that brooked no opposition in various social situations, and spoke to me positively of their desire to rape the nearest drunk female. And that's just my own personal and I believe entirely typical experience, as a male. (It's true that I can think of a woman who spanked me on a few occasions as a child, so I suppose I should note that.)

* EDIT NOTE: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." But I mean with an undertone in which the categorization is a threat, not a compliment for my impeccable grooming and couture, as I usually take it.

.

[Stephen Morgan]

Yeah, maybe if they didn't dress so slutty, Jack.

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, maybe if they didn't dress so slutty, Jack.

My perception that the set of aggressive, violent brutes overlaps far more with that of male humans than with that of female humans could be the product of my conditioned feminist anti-male prejudice. Surely. Thanks.

.

[Stephen Morgan]

re: crying, emotion, that stuff:

I know some think that such emotional incontinence shows you care more, both in football and in life more generally. Tears, especially when publicly shed, somehow have become proof of your commitment and are worn as a badge of honour.

In this context, the non-cryer is apparently an inferior, cruel, heartless beast. the critic of the weeping fan is often seen as having no human empathy or understanding. It's their club, it means a lot to him/her, we are told. Yes, but why does this mean tears?

I just can't get with this programme at all. Tears of joy I can easily understand. But tears of, what, disappointment? No.

Oddly enough, I'm the last person who should really feel like this because growing up I was the sensitive, arty kid who didn't want to be like all my tough, unsympathetic relations. The world of my youth was full of grim-faced Yorkshire folk and so emotionally repressed that no-one would dream of crying about almost anything in front of anyone else. At a funeral perhaps, but even then, only the softer women. Men might shed a tear in private if their dad died or they lost a son, but the notion that you'd do it in public was genuinely horrific and embarrassing for everyone.

The idea that you might do it on television in front of millions, well, death would have been preferable. Emotional outbursts of any kind were not allowed for men - unless it was anger - and even then, you had to ration that out. Life was treated with stoicism. If things were good, bad times were just around the corner, if bad, things would improve. There was no sense of entitlement to happiness, success or indeed, anything at all.

In Yorkshire in the 1960s, crying was for little girls, the shell-shocked or soft southerners. We learned that from an early age.

But from an early age I thought it was ludicrous. What was the point in denying your feelings? It made people less human and more miserable if my relations were anything to go by. Where southerners really softer anyway? When West Ham came to town their fans seemed psychotically hard.

I thought this joyless attitude made people weaker, not stronger and that's why some of my generation actively wanted to change such attitudes, especially for men. It used to be called getting in touch with your feminine side but given most of the women in my extended family were thick-armed Yorkshire battleaxes who could punch you cold, this never seemed an appropriate definition to me.

But certainly, the idea that you could be sensitive and admit to having emotions and feelings was part of our agenda as perhaps self-consciously progressive blokes growing up in the late 70s and early 80s.

While I still think that's a good thing, it's just gone way too far now. Way too far.

...

This is the modern world though. On TV last week within a few minutes of each other I saw a poor fella weeping over the murder of his son, a bloke weeping over a soufflé that hadn't risen and a woman tearfully distraught after buying a dress that didn't fit. If you didn't know which was which, there was no way to tell. All seemed equally upset but only one had cause to be.

from here

[Stephen Morgan]

Yeah, maybe if they didn't dress so slutty, Jack.

My perception that the set of aggressive, violent brutes overlaps far more with that of male humans than with that of female humans could be the product of my conditioned feminist anti-male prejudice. Surely. Thanks.

Don't go blaming feminist anti-male prejudice. It is victim-blaming, through which one shifts one's sins onto another, a form of scape-goating. We are weak minded herd animals, but we have an individual responsibility to rise above that.

I accept that men commit the majority of violent crimes, although it's obviously massively overplayed for demonisation and fear-mongering, the same with black people, and the science is wholly inconclusive as to whether a woman dressing sluttily increases her individual chances of being raped. That's all irrelevant, though.

Whether a rapist is more likely to choose a woman skimpily dressed is irrelevant to the apportioning of blame, and whether a stranger punching you, if you're the sort of person to find that hurtful, is more likely to be male is irrelevant to the trustworthiness of men in general. Your lack of trust is authochthonous, its origins lay within you. Rationalisations merely seek to lay the responsibility for this belief elsewhere.

[Plutonia]

I found it!

This is why what Maya Angelou said about taking the time to say things in a way that people can hear, is so profound. Because there is Vulcan mind meld thing going on that is strangely intimate.

For "hearing" to take place the brains of the listeners have to synchronize with the speakers. Y'know, I've said for years that the body is a transmitter/receiver- that's been my personal experience, and it seems that it's so:

Of two minds: Listener brain patterns mirror those of the speaker

By R. Douglas Fields | Jul 27, 2010

A new study from Princeton University reports that a female student of lead investigator, Uri Hasson, can project her own brain activity onto another person, forcing the person's neural activity to closely mirror that in her own brain. The process is otherwise known as speech.

There have been many functional brain-imaging studies involving language, but never before have researchers examined both the speaker's and the listener's brains while they communicate to see what is happening inside each brain. The researchers found that when the two people communicate, neural activity over wide regions of their brains becomes almost synchronous, with the listener's brain activity patterns mirroring those sweeping through the speaker's brain, albeit with a short lag of about one second. If the listener, however, fails to comprehend what the speaker is trying to communicate, their brain patterns decouple.

Previously, most brain-imaging studies of language used repetition of simple sounds to stimulate a listener's brain to locate regions mediating listening or they involved a speaker repeating simple words to examine cerebral areas involved in speech production. This disjointed approach was necessary because analyzing fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) data requires repeating a stimulus many times during successive brain scans to average the responses and find regions exhibiting heightened or depressed activity. Also, the imaging machines are noisy, which makes it difficult to have a normal conversation. These past approaches, however, are not adequate studies of communication, which requires that the recipient is attentive and comprehends what the speaker is saying. If, for example, a teacher is lecturing and a student who is listening intently has become lost, there is a failure of communication.

In order to find out what happens in the brain when the speaker and listener communicate or fail to connect, Hasson, an assistant professor in Princeton's Department of Psychology, and his team had to first overcome both technical problems using new analytical methods as well as special nonmagnetic noise-canceling microphones. He asked his student to tell an unrehearsed simple story while imaging her brain. Then they played back that story to several listeners and found that the listener's brain patterns closely matched what was happening inside the speaker's head as she told the story.

The better matched the listener's brain patterns were with the speaker's, the better the listener's comprehension, as shown by a test given afterward. There was no mirroring of the speaker’s brain activity patterns if the listeners instead heard a different story recorded previously by the same speaker and played to them as a control experiment. English speakers listening to a story told in Russian did not show higher-level brain coupling. In other words, there is no mirroring of brain activity between two people's brains when there is no effective communication (except for some regions where elementary aspects of sound are detected. When there is communication, large areas of brain activity become coupled between speaker and listener, including cortical areas involved in understanding the meaning and social aspects of the story.).

Interestingly, in part of the prefrontal cortex in the listener's brain, the researchers found that neural activity preceded the activity that was about to occur in the speaker's brain. This only happened when the speaker was fully comprehending the story and anticipating what the speaker would say next.

"Communication is a joint action, by which two brains become coupled," Hasson explained in an e-mail. "It tells us that such coupling is extensive, [a property of the network seen across many brain areas]."

The team is interested in determining if nonverbal communication similarly causes mirrored brain activity in the recipient's brain, and whether communication in the animal world may have similar properties. "We are thinking about fly courtship song and bird songs. In a fly courtship song, only the male can sing. It was discovered however, that females have the capacity to sing, but it is inhibited," Hasson says. This fits with the new findings, because if the female's brain could not mirror activity in the male fly's brain they would not be able to communicate. Language binds brains together and in this melding of minds forms societies.

The results are detailed in the July 26 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2010-07-27