So if you spend any time reading the semi-popular scientific press, listen to NPR or are exposed to the skeptical community you will eventually run into the claim that (human) races don’t exist. Sometimes it’s phrased as a scientific discovery other times the idea that there are different races like Caucasian, oriental etc.. is ‘debunked’ but almost always there is a pretty transparent underlying motivation to scold those bad racist people who make claims about comparative racial abilities or at least to demonstrate just how different we mature objective scientists types are from the people who try and link race and ability. The recent debate over a racist sounding (without context) personal email by a Harvard law student has triggered another round of these supposedly scientific absolution.

Now if one was really looking to be scientific or skeptical rather than merely seeking to affirm membership in a certain social/political group this claim should set off two sets of alarm bells. The first set because it’s such a convenient thing to be true. After all if science has proven their aren’t really races then you don’t have to worry about troubling questions like the relationship between race and intelligence so you can go on thinking of yourself both as a good liberal¹ and a critical thinker. Indeed, as soon as one acknowledges the notion of race then the sheer number of correlations between racial background and various gene sequences makes it downright absurd to insist that there isn’t some statistical difference in genetic predisposition to intelligence between different races². Of course we have good evidence that any such correlation will be small compared to environmental effects and individual differences and (to my knowledge) have no particular reason to suspect that the result won’t be ‘favorable’ for traditionally disadvantaged groups but subtle qualifications like this won’t eliminate the suspicion the admission draws. So like belief in an afterlife, trust in homeopathic remedies, or credence in the Loch Less monster there are obvious reasons people would believe the claim regardless of it’s truth giving us cause to be suspicious.

The other alarm bell is the fact that this claim contradicts what we see so plainly with our eyes. People from difference regions of the world look different. People with an African background have a different skin color than those from a European or Oriental background. Kenyan runners seem to do disproportionately well in marathon races³ and hair color/type highly correlates with what part of the world your family comes from. These differences are too obvious for the people claiming that scientifically race doesn’t exist to simply brush off so they try to explain it by saying that there is indeed a socially constructed notion of race it’s simply the genetic notion that doesn’t exist.

This response can’t possibly fly. The differences in skin, eye and hair color aren’t socially constructed. They are determined (largely) by your genetics. It’s a simple and obvious fact that there are substantial correlations between one’s genetic makeup and where your ancestors come from and these genetic differences are surely not only superficial. A child’s risk of sickle cell anemia is highly dependent on the parent’s racial background and we are slowly discovering that race significantly alters one’s susceptibility to many other afflictions and the probable effectiveness of various drugs. In light of this facially compelling proof of the existence of racial genetic variation what kind of scientific result could possibly be described as showing that there is no such thing as race?

Well the true scientific claim in the background is that the boundaries we draw between various racial groups are arbitrary and purely a matter of social construction. In other words if we analyzed everyone’s genes they wouldn’t group into a small number of tidy piles and certainly not ones that match our (culturally) standard categories like black, white, oriental, Indian, etc.. Instead of black/white/oriental/Indian/Native American it might make just as much sense to have Native American & Oriental/White & Indian/Northern African/South African instead. These racial categories might not be as useful in describing the social and cultural fault lines in American society but they (or some alternative like them) would be no less correlated with various genetic risks and just as useful in medical recommendations.

While it’s important to point out that we draw racial boundaries in (genetically) arbitrary places this no more shows that scientifically speaking race doesn’t exist than the fact that light comes in a continuous spectrum shows that scientifically speaking color doesn’t exist. Indeed, we know that different cultures break apart the visible spectrum in different ways but that doesn’t mean that science disproves the fact that blue and green are distinct colors. To illustrate just how much this claim distorts the truth just imagine someone insisting that scientifically speaking baldness didn’t exist because just how few hairs you need to qualify as bald is culturally determined.

It’s bad enough when scientists advance this claim but I understand that they may be trying to balance accuracy with other concerns such as their career, combating racist distortions of the truth in soundbites, and keeping the trust of various political and social coalitions. I still think that in the long run the failure of scientists to reign in this kind of political pandering risks compromising the public’s trust in their objectivity but at least I have some sympathy with their misrepresentation. However, it particularly galls me when skeptical groups participate in this kind of distortion while claiming to exist primarily to oppose just this kind of wishful thinking.

Does anyone really take this kind of article purporting to analyze why women often conflict with other women in the workplace to be a serious attempt to discern the truth? I know one can’t go very deep in 3 pages but it seems totally transparent to me that the author choose to tell an alarming then comforting sequence of little myths rather than engage in even the most cursory analysis of the issue. Sure, this is low hanging fruit as far as bad arguments go but this article managed to combine thoughtless emotional sloganism about gender interaction with total disregard for the truth and used them as a vehicle to foist her traditional stereotypes about the need for women to be nurturing and supportive on the reader. Frankly it’s one of the most sexist things I’ve ever read on the internet.

The article begins inauspisciously by hanging the whole premise of the article on a blatant fallacy. Do women preferentially bully other women? I don’t know but the study quoted in the article sure as hell doesn’t say so. What it actually says is that women report being bullied by women and men about equally often, and at about the same rate as men report being bullied by men but men report being bullied by women much less. Of course, this is exactly what one would expect to see if men were simply reluctant to admit being bullied by women. So the entire effect could be nothing more then men feeling embarrassed to admit being bullied by a woman.

As if to further refute her own hypothesis the author then informs us that women are taught they should be supporting and nurturing to each other so they feel bad treatment from other women particularly disturbing. But, hmm, wouldn’t that suggest that women are holding women up to a higher standard? Of course the author doesn’t seem to realize this would inflate the women on women bullying numbers nor that, this expectation itself might cause women to retaliate against each other for perceived failures to live up to this higher standard.

After pointlessly observing she knows some women who feel they are bullied more by women the author suddenly jumps tracks to ask why women are less likely to be perceived as leaders. Drawing up the dark cloud of discriminatory/unfair treatment she tells us that women are perceived negatively if they behave as aggressively as the men but can’t get promoted if they don’t. That, indeed, is a worthwhile question to ask but instead we get a heartwarming story about a group of female executives getting together to role-play scenarios and help them discover their political blind spots.

I’m sure that plays well to the majority of readers who (as I often am myself) are more interested in the emotional journey than thinking hard about the right answer but it should also set off a giant flashing red “DANGER” sign in anyone who has been paying attention. I mean at least skip a paragraph or two after observing how unfair it is that women can’t display the aggression men do before telling them you expect them to be more supporting and cooperative. I mean she might as well have suggested women get together every month to bake and let each other know if any of the guys aren’t getting enough of their cooking. Besides, if you are worried, as the author is, about women picking on each other because they see themselves as competing for the same female slots in the cooperation you might want to hesitate before encouraging women to see themselves as female employees. Indeed, the results on stereotype threat would seem to suggest that thinking of themselves as women encourages them to behave more like the traditional gender stereotype. So no, it may not be necessary or desirable for women to be “aware of their shared identity as women.”

As if to make sure she hammered home the point that women had better be cooperative and supportive as their gender dictates the author approvingly includes this view before the end of the article.

Televerde reversed that attitude in Perryville, Ms. Cirocco said, by encouraging women to work for a common cause, much like the environment envisioned by the Canadian researchers. “It becomes a very nurturing environment,” Ms. Cirocco said. “You have all these women who become your friends, and you are personally invested in their success. Everyone wants everyone to get out, to go on to have a good healthy life.” If the level of support found at Televerde were found elsewhere, Ms. Klaus said, it would solve a lot of problems.

I mean this stuff is right up there with (actually far worse since it’s more respectable) the worst of the perversions of evolutionary psychology used to assure the author they were inferior. It masquerades as science and analysis despite lacking anything of the kind while using hackneyed emotional ploys to convince the reader that women need to try even harder to play their traditional supportive and nurturing gender role and worst of all do so subtly enough to be reasonably successful. If people aren’t going to get outrage by this sort of piece they should stop pretending they are fighting gender stereotypes and want to move beyond traditional gender roles and just admit it’s just all about group pride. If your really worried about the culture pushing gender stereotypes onto women here you go. Outrage over this kind of article might actually accomplish something. So if you aren’t going to make a big deal about this kind of article just drop the pose. It’s in the New York Times for crying out loud.

I know I’m beating this issue to death so I will try to keep this post short but reading slashdot today I ran across this awful article from the Wall Street Journal Blogs saying women write better code than men. Now in and of itself the idea that statistically women write better code than men is neither absurd nor offensive but this article might as well have been ripped out of a 1950s era stereotype about women’s inferiority at math¹.

Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres–and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers–insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code–those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs–with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.

This remark is shortly followed by an equally over broad statement to the effect that men are too interested in showing off how clever they are to write readable code. Now while it’s certainly possible that (of the people who program) women are somewhat more likely to write better code (though I know of no evidence to this effect) this article adopts the sweeping tones of stereotype and bias to suggest that individual hiring decisions should favor women on these grounds. It is exactly this sort of unwarranted assumption that group characteristics make a difference even after individual factors (like say looking at previous code they have written, interviewing them) that distinguishes outright prejudice and discrimination from mere scientific hypothesizing. Well that plus the tendency to offer totally unsupported explanations that play into gender stereotypes (women are more touchy-feely).

If the conclusion had been the other way around and suggested that women were too touchy-feely to program well this vice-presidenty would probably quickly find themselves out of a job. This is why I blame faux feminism for this sort of attitude. It is exactly the confusion of feminism with the idea that we should cheer on women like they were a sports team that creates the impression this kind of harmful remark is reasonable. Despite obviously validating the idea that we should hire people based on unproven stereotyped generalizations about their gender instead of individual accomplishment this remark is seen as ‘ok’ because it favors hiring women. Another good example of this effect is how acceptable it has become to advocate for single sex education when coached in terms of helping women, even when the underlying theory would make Larry Summers cringe.

Now if the only harm these attitudes inflicted was a bit of discrimination against men you might reasonably think it wasn’t a huge deal². However, you simply can’t train people to accept traditional gender stereotypes and discriminate based on those only when it gives a certain kind of result. If you convince people to hire women for coding jobs because they are more touchy-feely you can’t avoid the fact that they are going to turn around and favor men for jobs in math, physics or the military where being touchy-feely is perceived as a negative (perhaps with some justification). Hell, even being good team players and leaving clear directions are going to be negatives for some job.

In fact I think what we are seeing right now is the harm of being touchy-feely about gender equality. The point is that deciding what views/people are good based on who sounds like they are on your side might have been fine when discrimination was primarily overt but when the primary concern is the affect of societal gender roles and semi-conscious stereotypes the greatest danger comes from the people encouraging that type of thinking and behavior, especially if they do so while claiming the `feminist’ moral high ground.

So in a recent post I argued that we really shouldn’t care at all if there are innate gender differences because such differences would be irrelevant to our judgments about any individual’s ability. In that post I simply took it for granted that the presence of innate gender differences really shouldn’t affect our judgment of people’s ability but now I see this is a point I need to explore at greater length. In particular I think there are three major fallacies that people fall into which leads them to assume that the question of whether there are innate statistical differences in men and women’s proclivity for math and science makes a difference in people’s daily lives. These fallacies lead people to think that the existence of innate gender differences would somehow justify gender discrimination and bigoted stereotypes. Of course not liking the consequences of a theory is no reason to reject it but in this case it’s certainly worthwhile to repudiate the fallacious thinking that makes people care so much about this issue.

The three fallacies that I’ve noticed are the following.

1. The confusion of small statistical differences with our intuitive notion of a valid generalization.
2. The belief that innate factors are somehow set in stone while cultural or social effects are temporary and thus justify different inferences.
3. Failure to appreciate the power of conditionalization.

The first fallacy is pretty obvious but very hard to correct. Most people don’t have good quantitative skills, much less experience with statistics so tend to translate claims about small statistical differences into simple stereotypes. Even people who should know better often don’t apply their quantitative training to this domain. This is why you see people respond to claims about innate statistical differences as if someone had claimed that women simply couldn’t do math and science. Once you get beyond this point you tend to run into the second fallacy.

Unfortunately both sides in the nature vs. nurture debate encourage the notion that innate differences are simple matters of ability and social effects are easily overcome issues of confidence. This leads to the fallacious conclusion that somehow innate differences call for a policy of denying women positions in math/science while nurture effects simply call for more encouragement. This couldn’t be further from the truth. One of the largest determiners of math/science achievement is interest and any possible innate differences could just as easily be differences in interest as they are differences in ‘ability.’ Moreover, it’s totally unclear to what extent differences in experience and exposure at young ages make. Thus it’s easily possible that the current gender gap could be the result of some innate difference that makes girls less interested in science as currently presented but small tweaks in science education could grab their attention. Alternatively it’s surely possible that the gender gap is the result of deep cultural forces that are nearly impossible to change and can’t be compensated for by our educational system, e.g., the type of behavior that attracts male romantic interest biases girls away from math and science. Quite simply there is no simple moral or effect on our judgment that one answer to the nature/nurture debate should have as opposed to the other.

The third and last fallacy is perhaps the most problematic, particularly in light of the second fallacy. People tend to assume that if women statistically tend to be worse at task X this is reason to lower their estimate of some particular woman’s (perhaps themselves) ability at task X. Counterintuitively this just isn’t the case. Conditionalizing on the standard information we gather about virtually anyone we meet can eliminate or even reverse the effect that gender should have on our estimation of someone’s ability. If you’ve taken any probability courses you’ve probably seen this point made using the example of the famous berkeley discrimination case. If you haven’t let me give you a simple example.

It’s undoubtedly true that statistically men are worse at nursing than women. This isn’t a claim about innate ability just a simple observation following from the fact that more women than men are nurses hence fewer men have received nursing training. Thus if you know nothing about someone other than their gender you should expect men to have a lower nursing ability. However, this doesn’t entail that you should trust male nurses less than female ones. Nor does it entail that men who aren’t nurses are somehow worse at nursing than women who aren’t nurses. It could even be that men who choose to become nurses despite the stereotypes have particular talent for it and thus conditionalizing on profession reverses the effect gender should have on your expectation of someone’s nursing ability.

The same could very well be true for skill at math/science. Even if there is some innate factor that makes women statistically worse at math/science it’s quite possible that those women who do pursue math/science tend to be more skilled than their male counterparts. In other words once you know that someone is interested in pursuing math/science finding out that individual is a woman might increase the expectation of her ability despite the fact that statistically women were worse than men at math/science. Since we tend to gather all sorts of information about someone we meet or consider for a job it’s totally unjustified to use statistical facts about men vs. women in the general population to reach conclusions about a particular individual.

The issue of nature vs. nurture really, really doesn’t matter that much. It’s almost never justified to use weak group characteristics like this to judge an individual and it’s equally unjustified to take mere statistical differences in a profession as proof of discrimination. So aside from pure scientific curiosity we should forget about nature vs. nurture and concentrate on applied questions like: Does science education unnecessarily make girls feel marginalized or less able? Would greater exposure to female role models in science make more women satisfied with their choice of career? Does rote memorization at the middle school level create barriers that discourage more studious individuals from pursuing math and physics?

In the post before last I pointed out that despite the spin a recent study in science was actually better evidence for biological effects in mathematics ability than it was for the environmental hypothesis. In short showing that girls get better at both math and reading as gender equality increases without shrinking the gap between their math and reading scores is most of the hypothesis that girls simply gain some general academic advantage over boys (for instance they study more) in cultures that don’t oppress them. If this was straightforwardly a matter of discrimination or stereotyping we would expect women’s math and reading scores to equalize as gender equality increased.

Now it was bad enough when some random science summaries spun the study in this fashion but it’s even worse to see ars technica running stories saying things like this about the study:

But a new study suggests that, when it comes to math, we can forget biology, as social equality seems to play a dominant role in test scores.

Ughh, what is it about this topic that causes people to check their reasoning ability at the door? I mean I can understand that the general public might think the suggestion of a statistical difference amounted to a claim that women were incapable of doing math/science but people with a science background should know better. There is no serious doubt that the variation inside the genders is vastly larger than any possible difference in averages. Moreover, once you actually have some evidence about a person’s mathematical/scientific ability (like you’ve talked to them) their gender isn’t relevant. That is we should expect conditioning on actual evidence about someone’s ability should screen off any impact of their gender.

I write about this topic for the same reason I write about other topics. I find fallacious reasoning to be infuriating, especially when it seems to be motivated by a desire to reach certain comforting beliefs. However, it really should be a minor scientific curiosity. It doesn’t matter one jot what the cause of observed differences in gender performance might be. What matters is the effect these differences have on society and what actions we can take to minimize any harms that result from them.

I mean (hypothetically) suppose it turns out that the gender gap in math/science is caused entirely by social conditioning that makes women prefer some disciplines and men others but that those women who do choose to do math/science face no discouragement and those who don’t are made genuinely happy by their choices. In that case there is no compelling reason to force a change to the gender ratio in the sciences, especially if that change could only be brought about by painful social reorganization and reeducation (say by actively punishing women who pursue stereotypical careers to stop them from being role models for next generation).

On the other hand (hypothetically) suppose that the gender gap is the result of some innate difference in cognition but a simple change in the way science is conducted or taught would let many women who want to be scientists contribute productively to the field instead of having their dreams frustrated. Then obviously we should make that change regardless of the fact that the an innate difference was underneath the gender gap.

In short this issue really doesn’t fucking matter but it really really bothers me when I see people, especially scientists, spinning studies so heavily to reach the conclusions they find pleasant to believe. The roots of the gender gap are clearly complicated and almost certainly result from some complex interplay of innate and environmental factors but just think about how differently we would approach this problem if we were studying another species. Instead of prematurely trying to announce the death of either theory we would say the issue was still murky, explain the competing evidence and leave it at that. Why can’t we do that here too?

In a recent post I talked about the sad state feminism in the public consciousness. In that post I merely sought to establish that much of what passes for ‘feminism’ these days isn’t a serious attempt to restructure society in a more fair fashion but merely emotional feelings of sympathy and identification with women. This was something of a joke without a punchline since I didn’t really explain why this was bad. After all almost most people’s political views are more the result of emotions than rational judgment so who cares why people support these ‘feminist’ policies? Well partly you should care because resources distributed out of sympathy for women will at best be hit or miss in bringing about structural change¹. More importantly this attitude actually perpetuates gender stereotypes and reinforces gender roles.

It’s well known to parents that to raise a child correctly sometimes you must suppress your sympathy for your children and punish them or make them deal with the consequences of their actions. Often if we want children to learn to deal with a situation we have to suppress our instincts for sympathy and let them bear responsibility. While I don’t think the affect of female sympathy is quite like that of the over-indulgent parent it has many similar features. A good example is the issue of crying.

It’s a frequent (and likely valid) complaint that women’s tendency to cry more than men holds them back in the workplace. As primates you can’t avoid the fact that we will parse tears as a sign of weakness while swears or more aggressive seeming behavior send a more threatening message². However, speaking as a guy who cries more than most of my female friends I’m pretty sure that our upbringing has a massive effect on our inclination towards tears³. Indeed if we gave girls the same degree of shit we give boys for crying the crying gap would shrink radically if not disappear all together. Of course I do support being less hard on boys for crying but so long as we are inclined to help crying girls (crying guys on the street are ignored) the intrinsic harms of appearing vulnerable will encourage men to cry less⁴.

Crying is really a minor point in the larger picture. A much more worrying instance of this kind of sympathetic sexism is the way we we tend to treat men and women in arguments. Intellectual arguments are the lifeblood of many disciplines and they are especially important to understanding science and math where challenging your friend who got a different answer is often the best way to learn the material but unfortunately the women who come into my office hours for math are way less likely to be engaged in any sort of argument (by other female or male peers) than the guys. If we wanted a more equitable society we would be teaching girls to give as good as they got in an argument and suck it up if they lose like we do boys. However, instead of sending girls the message that they should hold their own like boys the people who feel strongly about women’s issues today are the most likely to attack any man who upsets a woman by arguing with her.

In short ‘feminism’ has decayed into the same kind of ‘respect for women’ mentality that the Victorians used to put women on a pedestal while keeping them from achieving equality. Intuitively we all understand that if people see someone as needing of protection or requiring special gentle treatment they will also see that person as weaker and less capable. Thus if we truly want girls to succeed in the rough and tumble intellectual world of mathematics and physics we have to stop treating them like they were fragile dolls requiring special protections. If we want true gender equality we need to go a lot further. We need to congratulate girls on being competitive and argumentative like we do with guys but we also need to discourage them from asking for help, breaking down or appearing helpless like we do with guys.

I would like to live in such a world (and to some extent do) but I think it’s quite clear that most of society, including most of those who would identify as feminists have no such desire. What most people desire is an updated version of the Victorian pedestal where we tell women they can do whatever they want and write off any statistical differences to unnamed discrimination while at the same time continuing to treat women as fragile objects to be protected. Most people would rather live in a society where ditching your boyfriend beside the road is less bad than ditching your girlfriend no matter who has the black belt. Most women would rather date men who can help them with their homework when they break down rather than men who sob when they can’t get a math problem. ‘Feminists’ especially seem to prefer a society where men get shit for making a girl cry in an argument and the girl receives sympathy even if the guy did nothing but frustrate her by being stridently correct. Ultimately the problem is that most people, ‘feminists’ included like gender roles a great deal but also want perfect (statistical) professional parity. However, you can’t just take gender roles on and off the way you do with hats. The stereotypes and attitudes people form as young children will follow them into the laboratory as well as the living room and bedroom. People need to make a choice about whether they want gender equality of not and if not stop pretending.

So my procrastination tonight started early with this interesting article about the proclivities of infants for racial and cultural bias. It’s a good article but I take a bit of an issue with this paragraph.

Spelke’s studies found baby boys and girls have similar mathematical ability, an incidental finding that was at the forefront of her mind in January 2005 when the former Harvard president Larry Summers suggested that the relative lack of female engineers and scientists was down to innate gender differences. ‘When it comes to the basic modules we are born with, they are pretty much the same,’ says Spelke, who was in the thick of the verbal fisticuffs that followed (Summers was ‘wrong, point for point’). Summers resigned as controversy raged. Spelke does not deny that there are differences in the way men and women think but most of this, she believes, is learnt over time, and down to prejudice and the expectations of society.

Of course it’s always easier to repudiate someone’s remarks when you simply assume they said whatever you are itching to reject. But besides mischaracterizing Summers this paragraph also buys into widespread but fallacious assumption that basic computational skills (adding, subtracting etc..) are the skills needed by scientists and engineers; calculation is easy it is the ability to reason abstractly and construct proofs that is hard. I would normally have simply dismissed this as another instance of sloppy journalism but a few minutes later I found the same errors being made in a respectable summary of an article published in the current edition of science, errors seemingly encouraged by the paper itself and it’s lead author.

Tipping off their hand early the summary begins with it’s own (IMO unethical) misquotation of Summers¹ but quickly moves on to reading the result they want to see into this recent study. The study basically plotted gender differences on math tests in a country versus that country’s level of gender equity and concluded that the more equitable the country the smaller the advantage boys enjoyed on math tests. The message the summary takes from this, with support from the study’s lead author, is that gender differences in mathematics are largely a result of enviornmental effects. Of course latter we are given the following qualification.

Having linked social structures to the math gender gap from country to country, Sapienza wonders whether this result rules out biological influences entirely. The answer is no. The biological hypothesis suggests that an average boy would score higher in mathematics than in reading, while for girls the reverse is true. This pattern does not change in more gender equal societies hinting that some aspects of academic performance may be innately different between boys and girls.
Sapienza and colleagues found that boys, regardless of the country and social environment in which they live, typically do better in math than in reading. Similarly, girls are usually better in reading than in math, regardless of the degree of gender equality in their society. As a result, in more gender equal societies, girls will gain an absolute advantage relative to boys.

In short an uncritical reading of either the paper in science or the summary would leave the reader with the impression that we now have even stronger evidence that boys don’t have an innate advantage at mathematics but there are still a few issues that need to be worked out about reading ability. Except the study really shows exactly the opposite. Ignoring for a moment the implicit (but false) assumption that these math tests are good measures of the skills needed to enter math and science professions just try and think about what theory would best explain the fact that cross-culturally boys are better at math than they are at reading while girls are better at reading than they are at math? Seems pretty clear to me that this evidence best supports the idea that their is an innate gender based attraction to math or reading and that in societies with greater gender equity women just perform better in school generally.

Now I don’t actually endorse that theory. It overly simplifies the complex interactions of culture and innate traits and it would be silly to just rely on this evidence while ignoring other evidence supporting larger cultural effects. However, the point remains that the evidence provided actually points in the exact opposite direction of the spin that is provided. Ultimately the point that I take from this is that if you want to have any idea about what’s plausible in this area you really can’t trust anyone’s (except mine of course :-) ) interpretation, even that of the scientists doing the study. You really have to go read the actual papers with a skeptical eye to get something other than spin. In short I worry that their is a bias in the spin given to papers and opinions on this stuff because you get a lot more flak for strident support of one side than the other.

My recent post about feminism and Hillary Clinton was probably a bit obscure. Certainly I think it’s sad that the public accepts the claim that Clinton’s female supporters whining about her loss is feminism but the reason I think it’s worthy of attention is that it’s part of a larger trend: the confusion of (simplistic) emotional sympathy for women with feminism. Now in a certain sense one might be able to identify feminism with concern for women as a class but it’s the confusion of feminism with sympathy for individuals as women that I think is so sad and misguided. In the abstract this distinction may seem quite subtle, even pointless, but a few quick examples should make it clear that there is an important difference between the two attitudes.

Whether or not US women are blocked or discouraged from achieving high political office is certainly a valid feminist concern. After all the existence of a systemic bias against voting for a woman to be president is a harm to woman as a class. On the other hand strong support of a particular candidate because she is a woman and as such you identify/sympathize with her is not a feminist issue. It’s just another example of the same type of sexism women fought so hard to eliminate in the workplace¹. This isn’t to say there is no acceptable reason to vote for a female candidate because of her gender; you might think this was the only/best way to overcome anti-female bias. However, it’s pretty clear that most of the women trying to suggest Hillary’s loss is the result of rampant gender discrimination² aren’t doing so because they thought out the issue in the abstract and came to the conclusion that this was the most effective way to advance the cause of equality. After all if this was the result of that kind of strategic thinking about the aims of women as a group you would think they would find plenty of reasons not to publicly tie gender equity to Hillary Clinton³ or even decide that the interests of racial equality outweighed those of gender equality here. Rather, these women are driven by their empathetic sympathy for Hillary as another woman (enhanced by the perception of gender based slights in the campaign) and have let that distract them from any interest they may have had in really achieving equity for women as a class.

Another good example is the attitude of women in various graduate programs toward the admission of women and affirmative action for women. Now one might be able to put together some pretty reasonable arguments justifying offering women special incentives to enter math and science programs but I suspect the best such arguments would all direct our resources toward the college years and below where the gender gap gets created. Yet the strongest support is often for programs that offer female graduate students priority in admissions, cash incentives or special mentoring programs despite the fact that the primary effect of these expenditures is probably on the choice of school of female graduate students. If the support for these programs really resulted from a desire to achieve gender equity you would at least expect the question of efficacy to be of supreme interest and any support of these programs to be openly conditioned on empirical support for their efficacy. However, it is quite evident that these programs enjoy strong emotional support prior to any thought or analysis about their larger effects on society’s attitude toward women.

It seems evident that the real psychological motivation behind the support for these programs is simple sympathy and identification. No one sat down and decided to support these programs because they thought they would accomplish some goal. They supported them because they felt emotional empathy towards women so they want to support women. In other words it’s the emotional pull of group allegiance/support that motivates these policies not rational analysis of their likely effect. If you are still skeptical consider the different way we treat the (assumed) subtle social pressure discouraging women from entering certain fields from that pressuring them into entering other fields. In other words why don’t we take measures to counteract the social forces pushing women into a traditional field like teaching or nursing. If our interest was in undoing the sexist stereotypes that society has packed into girls then we should be equally diligent in discouraging women from being nurses, teachers or primary care givers as we are in encouraging them to enter traditionally male fields. On the other hand if people were really just reacting to a vague feeling of sympathy it makes perfect sense why they would only offer women encouragements.

Maybe I’m mistaken but my strong sense is that feminism used to be something much more noble, even if sometimes silly and misguided. People would be genuinely troubled about engaging in traditional feminine roles since they saw that encouragement could perpetuate stereotypes just as much as discouragement. However, women (and men) eventually decided they weren’t really interested in rejecting most of our gender stereotypes and assumptions and the visible aspects of feminism decayed into mere group affinity and sympathy for women. In a future post I will explain why I think this decayed version of feminism does so much harm to the cause of gender equity but enough blogging for today.

In the 19th and 20th century courageous women like Susan B. Anthony struggled against vehement opposition to secure women the right to vote. In the 70s and 80s feminists fought against pervasive discrimination and struggled to live up to their notions of gender equity (even when misguided). But now that we have a woman losing the democratic nomination by hair’s breadth Hillary Clinton and some of her supporters are trying to lay claim to this legacy to complain about Hillary”s loss. Has feminism really descended this low? Gone from a noble struggle for equal treatment to an excuse to complain when a candidate you identified with based on gender losses.

Now the video from the women’s media center certainly succeeds in convincing me that Chris Matthews is a sexist jerk but aside from that it’s fallacious confusion of the media’s constant microanalysis of electability and likability with sexism. Asking whether Hillary will succeed in appealing to men is no more sexist than asking if Barack will succeed in winning white votes. Anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the past 12 years has seen the stupid discussions on cable news channels of whether candidate X has an appealing enough smile, will suffer for being short or has appropriate choice in ties. Sadly, not subjecting Hillary to this ridiculous microanalyses would be sexist response to her candidate.

Of course if you try hard enough you can read sexism into anything but `likability’ isn’t some minor issues that’s only trotted out as an excuse not to vote for a woman, likability is the essence of electoral politics. As we were endlessly reminded by the pundits the voters in ’04 would have rather had a beer with Bush than Kerry. If it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that Kerry was a man this would be another perfect example of the sexist media. Of course if you just change the channel you can get an equally compelling account of how the racist media has been biased against Obama.

Listening to the recent complaints about sexism that have flooded the media over the last few days one would think that Hillary’s likability problem was a penalty she was paying for behaving too masculine but that’s a load of crap. Hillary played best with the electorate when she highlighted her strength, resolve and experience (3am phone). She alienated voters in the debates not with her confident aggressive stances but with her passive aggressive whining. If anything Hillary was given more leeway than a man would have been given when she ‘observed’ that she seemed to be getting the harder questions instead of angrily lecturing the questioner or keeping a dignified silence. Some people just come across better than others on TV (supposedly Hillary is much more likable in person).

Now this sort of poor sportsmanship from Clinton supporters is bad enough but trying to claim the moral high ground in the fight against sexism is particularly galling and hypocritical. Most of these women complaining about Clinton’s sexist treatment support her (partially) because of they identify with her over gender. These aren’t the rightful inheritors of the struggle for gender equity but rather (for the most part) a group that is happy to impose different expectations on men and women when it suits their purposes and complain about it when it doesn’t. The noble feminist crusaders of earlier generations understood that gender equity would come with a cost. Now, instead, we see casual complainers who seem to think that gender equity means nothing but indulging their feelings of sympathy for other women.

No one could reasonably deny that our society still holds men and women to different standards. I certainly would prefer a culture that treated men and women more similarly but far from working towards gender equity this sort of feminism as sympathy for/indentification with other women is one of the greatest forces holding back equality. When women reward other women with sympathy and support when they are subject to aggressive verbal/intellectual attacks but tells men to toughen up it sends a message about how it’s appropriate for women to act and men to act towards them. If these women were really interested in equality they should be working to eliminate the double standard that says it’s okay to be aggressive and critical of another man but unacceptable and mean to do so to a woman. So long as society sends the message that women are fragile and need to be treated with special delicacy it will also view men as more strong and capable.

Admittedly these last comments have limited direct applicability to the Hillary campaign but they are an indictment of the modern conception of feminism as sympathy for other women that underlies this supposed feminist cause for Hillary. Not only are their complaints largely unjustified it is people like them, not Chris Matthews who make sure that men and women continue to be treated differently in our society. Maybe as a society we simply don’t want real gender equity but what we would need to do to achieve it is to stop treating women as if they needed special sympathy and protection.

Today KQED (NPR affiliate) ran a program entitled Secret Asian Woman about the perceived racial inequities that Dmae Roberts undergos as a half-asian woman who can pass as white. For the most part I stay quiet on the particulars of these sorts of seemingly oversensitive claims of racial injustice since I lack enough personal experience with the situation to productively comment. However, while I’m not half-asian myself my fiance is and after dating for five years or so (and explicitly asked her opinion for this post) I’m quite confident that I’m not merely being naive about how people treat half-asian women. Given the social pressure not to dispute these sorts of claims and the potential for even false perceptions of racial injustice to cause suffering and undermine our resolve to combat genuine racism I feel it’s important for people to speak up against unjustified hypersensitive claims of racism¹.

I don’t doubt that Dmae Roberts has experienced genuine (and horrific) racism in her life². It’s certainly no overreaction to call her grandmother’s expressions of disappointment that Dmae’s mother couldn’t have been white racist. The rejection and poor treatment of her and her brother by other young children on account of her race was also literally racist. However, as Dmae admits herself at the time she never thought it was a huge deal when she would be made fun of by other kids on account of her race. It is only in retrospect that she interprets it as being hugely significant. Obviously it’s awful how cruel children are are to anyone who doesn’t fit in but nothing she describes about their behavior is any worse than the way children treat those who are different on account of being nerds, having a skin condition or whatever other weakness they seize upon. As the victim of this kind of behavior myself I certainly don’t want to trivialize the harm of this behavior but we should avoid the fallacy of treating children’s cruelty as dramatically worse because it falls into a historically recognized category of adult cruelty. It’s not something we’d like to believe but children are incredibly cruel and we shouldn’t implicitly send the message that it’s okay because their cruelty is based on a child’s lisp than on their racial background.

It’s understandable that someone like Dmae would come to see the world through the lens of race, just as kids who grow up poor often come to see the world in terms of social class and smart academic kids can come to see things in terms of popularity and jocks vs. nerds. However, this fact doesn’t make it the case that talking about a “Chinese fire drill” is a racist remark. The etymology of the term is irrelevant since the users of the term don’t reflect on it and unlike terms like “negro” use of the term doesn’t suggest affiliation with any anti-Chinese prejudice. Racial theorists might want this term to be racist but the fact that in actual practice Asian-Americans aren’t offended when their white friends use the term makes it a non-racist term. Similar points can be made about other things Dmae brings up like people imitating the martial arts master from Karate Kid. It isn’t racist now because it doesn’t suggest any prejudice or dislike and the last thing we would ever want to do is widen the class of comments that we decide express prejudice. We want to reduce the potential for accidental offense not increase it.

This brings us to the central hypocripsy of Dmae’s piece, an attitude that puts decades of progress against racism at jeopardy. Most of the complaints Dmae makes about modern events (not her grandmother or being raised in the midwest) ultimately reduce to the fact that people recognize race and view it as a genuine matter of commonality or difference. She complains that people ask what ethnicity she is or inquire about how her parents got together. Dmae gets very upset when a friend of hers comments, in response to Dmae’s claim that she can tell that some other girl is also half-asian not white, that you can tell but we can’t. In other words her complaint is essentially that people identify themselves with their racial group yet the other half of the piece is all about Dmae having pride in being half-asian and making a big deal out of racial identity. Dmae comments several times that she feels particular kinship with other half-asians even expressing how grateful she is that there are now more people like her out there. But if your ethnic background dictates certain common experiences that are justifiable grounds to feel kinship with others surely then being white in America involves certain commonalities (if nothing else the failure to have these experiences) that justify talking about what ‘we’ experience.

What I find so objectionable about this piece is that it threatens to undo much of the progress we have made towards racial equality. Sharon (my fiance) just assumes that she isn’t being the subject of racial discrimination (except the benefit of having more guys who want to date her) and as a result doesn’t suffer racial resentment or anger. However, it’s very easy to make yourself see racial bias around every corner and that perception can cause almost as much pain as true racism. It’s this pain that is why it’s important to eliminate racism in the first place so it’s similarly important to prevent this false perception of racism, not to mention the harm this does to the cause of eliminating true racism. Equating your experience as a half-asian having to hear people comment about “Chinese fire drills” or asking about how your parents met with the sort of things that happened at Jena not only trivializes real racism but creates faux feelings of racial victimization where they don’t need to exist.

Dmae’s family may be racist and growing up in the midwest when she did may have exposed her to some racial prejudices but give me a break. A half-asian woman in the US in this day and age is hardly oppressed. Somehow having more guys who think you are hot doesn’t make me very sympathetic.

Update:

Just to be clear I think my fiance’s experience is particular to the treatment of half-asian women (it may not even extend to guys) by whites. I’ve certainly had other half-japanese friends complain about the way other japanese people treated them (primarily when they lived in japan). It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if half-asians generally had trouble being accepted by the asian communities but my fiance has never really seen a reason to go out of her way to socialize with people because they share her ethnicity (and knows less about Taiwan than I do…and I just watch CNN). In short I think this is a peculiarity of the way our culture regards Asians and Asian girls in particular (if anything the stereotyped as hot and smart which is hardly an oppressive burden). I think there is still real racial discrimination that goes on and if you are half-black you probably run into real problems as a result but that’s one of the reasons it’s important to distinguish being oversensitive and offended by the term “Chinese fire drill” and real racism that we need to work hard to eliminate.

In any case part of what I wanted to point out here was the harmfulness of an attitude that always takes individual accounts of racial difficulty at face value while discouraging others from speaking up to say, “Hey, I don’t have those kinds of problems.” In short it bothers me that I’ve yet to meet a half-asian girl who had any significant problems with discrimination by whites but yet this one woman’s story is broadcast on the radio as if it was totally typical.