A White person may benefit from fighting White privilege, because if she accepts the existence of White privilege, she will develop a healthier self-esteem.

High self-esteem is not always healthy self-esteem.

High self-esteem is not the same thing as healthy self-esteem, according to psychology research from the University of Georgia. Those with “fragile” high self-esteem are more likely to be verbally defensive compared to those with “secure” high self-esteem.

According to the news release, people with fragile high self-esteem:

• compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend, protect and enhance their feelings of self-worth
• are verbally defensive; they lash out at others when their opinions, beliefs, statements or values are threatened
• feel that potential threats are more threatening and work harder to counteract these threats

This behaviour differs from individuals with “secure” high self-esteem:

On the other hand, individuals with secure high self-esteem appear to accept themselves “warts and all,” and, feeling less threatened, they are less likely to be defensive by blaming others or providing excuses when they speak about past transgressions or threatening experiences.

One reason the study’s findings are important, Kernis said, is that it shows that greater verbal defensiveness relates to lower psychological well-being and life satisfaction.

What does this have to do with Whites and White privilege?

Defensive Whites have a fragile high self-esteem.

The study is not about race, but the idea of distinguishing between “secure” high self-esteem and “fragile” high self-esteem can be applied to Whites’ view of themselves. Whites with secure high self-esteem can accept themselves “warts and all” and can accept that society confers privilege on them due to their skin colour, while Whites with fragile high self-esteem will “lash out” at the mere possibility that our society is not a meritocracy.

A person with fragile high self-esteem has a superficial sense of confidence, but when his self-perception is challenged by reality, he suffers from cognitive dissonance and anxiety. Whites with fragile high self-esteem have uncritically bought into the (implicit) culture of White supremacy due to our history books and entertainment media that focus on White achievement and White heroes. Because of this, any evidence that challenges this world view becomes a psychological threat.

For example, if a black person is admitted to an Ivy League university, the fragile White will defend his feelings of self-worth by believing that the black person was admitted because of Affirmative Action. If a black person speaks eloquently, the fragile White will manage her cognitive dissonance by not thinking of him as “black”, and may even state outright, “I don’t think of you as black.” If a black person is more perceptive than the average White person in recognizing racism, the fragile White will blame the black person and lash out verbally by calling her “oversensitive”. If the topic of racism is broached, the fragile White will accuse the topic broacher of playing the “race card” or of “overreacting”, mention that his family never owned any slaves, try to explain away a controversy as a desire to adhere to “political correctness”, mention that minorities can be racist against Whites, or mention that his best friend or spouse is black. If a person of colour says that Band-Aids were designed for Whites in terms of colour, the fragile White will concoct exaggerated rationalizations and say, “the lightness in colour allows us to see cleanliness and hence the sterility of the bandage”, or refute a ridiculous straw man by responding, “my little brother has spiderman band-aids, does that mean that the band-aids were created for spiderman?”

Whites who behave in this manner in discussions about racism or White privilege have fragile high self-esteem. Their self-esteem is “high” because they stick steadfastly to their opinions despite evidence to the contrary, but their self-esteem is “fragile” because they exhibit verbal defensiveness and insecure behaviour.

Defensive Whites have fragile high self-esteem, but how does fighting White Privilege give a White person secure high self-esteem?

A White person who accepts that she is privileged develops a more secure high self-esteem.

A White person who accepts the existence of White privilege and recognizes it as a part of his personal existence will no longer feel threatened when confronted with evidence* for it. She will not suffer from anxiety when the topic of “race” is brought up, and she will not try to ignore the issue by claiming that she is “colorblind”. He will not waste his energy denying that systemic racism exists, and instead will use that energy to explore the complex relationship between himself and the world in which he is embedded.

In other words, when a White person accepts and owns White privilege, she builds secure high self-esteem through developing a deeper understanding of herself and her place in the world.

Acceptance of the existence of White privilege is not the same as fighting White privilege, but it is the first step.

• Why Should White People Fight Racism? by Carmen Van Kerckhove
• How to Suppress Discussions of Racism by coffeeandink
• Sixteen Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing with Racism by Holly at Feministe
• give good audio-visual comments at Stuff White People Do - While grinding away responding to the same old thought processes denying White privilege by a commenter, I was asked by the site’s author about why Whites would want to give up White privilege. This post is an attempt to address that question.

When women suggest indirectly to stop or slow down sexual intimacy, men interpret these messages as requests to escalate sexual intimacy. This is due to men’s faulty introspection, according to a University of California study.

If she says, “It’s getting late,” he interprets this to mean “Let’s speed things up,” because that is what he would mean if he said it. (This research “does not address rape or other situations in which a man indeed understands ‘no’ but ignores it,” according to the news release.)

In one study, Motley gave 30 female and 60 male UC Davis undergraduates a multiple-choice questionnaire that asked about 16 common “female resistance messages.” The messages ranged from very direct — “Let’s stop this” — to very indirect — “I’m seeing someone else.” Four potential interpretations were listed for each message; only one was “stop.”

For “I’m seeing someone else,” for example, the following four interpretations were listed:

a) You want to go further but you want him to know that it doesn’t mean that you’re committed to him;

b) You want to go further but you want him to be discreet, so that the other guy doesn’t find out;

c) You want to go further but you want him to realize, in case you end up “going together,” that you may do this with someone else while you’re seeing him;

d) You don’t want to go further.

The women in the study were asked to recall a time when they used one of the messages, and to choose the answer that best matched what they meant when they said it. Half of the men were asked to recall a time when they were with a woman who communicated each message, and to choose the interpretation that best matched what they thought the woman meant when she said it. The other 30 men were instructed to choose the interpretation that best matched what they would mean if they were to communicate the messages.

By the way, for the average woman, her intended meaning is d) You don’t want to go further.

The questionnaire study showed that men were accurate at interpreting direct resistance messages like “Let’s stop this.” But they were as apt to interpret “Let’s be friends” to mean “keep going” as to mean “stop.” And few of them would mean “stop” if they were to deliver any of the indirect messages themselves.

This is amusing in a horrible way. What is fascinating about this is that there are multiple interpretations of “I’m seeing someone else,” and “Let’s be friends,” and that the male-centric interpretations assume that wanting casual sex and cheating is more likely that wanting to stop/slow down sexual intimacy.

In related studies, Motley has also shown that most women use indirect messages out of concern that men will be offended or angered by direct messages — but that most men actually accept direct resistance messages easily and without negative reactions.

This is even more intriguing. It is probably the case that women experience street harassment and find that rejecting sexual advances often results in anger/offense and being called a “bitch,” or in extreme cases, results in threats of death or rape. These studies that show men accept direct resistance messages “easily and without negative reactions” should be investigated for more details.

Motley’s book also offers practical recommendations for dealing with this type of miscommunication:

• Men need to be aware of the many ways that women may say “stop” without using the word “stop.”
• When a man asks himself during intimacy, “Why did she say that?” he should not try to answer the question by imagining what he would mean if he said the same thing.
• When in doubt, ask. “So it’s getting late; does that mean we should stop?”
• Women should use direct messages.
• A woman who cannot be direct should at least work a direct message into the indirect one: “It’s getting late, so I’d like to stop.”

Women should definitely use direct messages, as should men and genderqueer people. Both direct and indirect communication are important skills that must be cultivated, but explicit statements can be understood by a wider range of people and are less culturally dependent.

References:

• University of California (2008, April 25). Sexual Intimacy: Why College Men May Hear ‘Yes’ When Women Mean ‘No’. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 4, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/04/080424140251.htm

Hate speech may stifle free speech by monopolizing the marketplace of ideas. Some types of arguments hinder rather than contribute to productive discussion (such as logical fallacies), and some hate speech may fall into this category. Additionally, some hate speech, or rather certain framings of how the world is, limit the scope of discussion and who is allowed to debate.

Generally, some practises can never be questioned in debate. Logical fallacies are not acceptable arguments, and persisting in logical fallacies is considered bad form rather than a valid avenue of discussion. Is it possible that some types of hate speech are inherently fallacious?

Is hate speech ad hominem?

Description of ad hominem:

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A’s claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

Not all personal attacks are ad hominem, as sometimes a negative characteristic about a debater is relevant to the topic. For example, if the debate is about one debater’s level of sexual attractiveness, a claim that the debater under discussion is ugly would not be ad hominem. However, is hate speech (directed against ethnic minorities, queer folk, people with disabilities, etc.) necessarily ad hominem?

For example, let us say that the debate is about whether all members of a minority group are involved in a global conspiracy. An implicit assumption in this debate is that any member of that minority group is not allowed to participate in the discussion. If a member of that minority, Person A, provides reasons why he is not involved in a global conspiracy, the other debaters, who are of the majority group, can argue that Person A’s testimony is invalid because he belongs to that minority group.

Here, Person A’s membership in the minority group is relevant to the debate that questions the minority group’s integrity. To accept Person A as a valid debater is to assume one side of the debate, that members of the minority group can be telling the truth and can be equal participants in society. To allow Person A to speak and take him seriously would be circular reasoning. Thus, according to this point of view, rejecting Person A’s arguments on the basis of his minority membership would not be ad hominem.

On the other hand, this situation is quite different from mentioning ugliness in a debate about a debater’s sexual attractiveness. In a debate about a debater’s sexual attractiveness, the debater’s alleged ugliness is not relevant to his status as a debater. Only if another debater argued that the allegedly ugly debater’s arguments are invalid because he is ugly would it be ad hominem.

However, rejecting Person A’s arguments because he is of the minority group is of the same form as rejecting a debater’s arguments because he is ugly. In this sense, rejecting Person A’s arguments because of this minority status would be ad hominem. Person A’s minority status is being used for no other purpose other than to undermine him as a debater and to reject his arguments, which differs from the case when mentioning the debater’s ugliness.

Does hate speech commit the burden of proof fallacy?

Description of Burden of Proof:

Burden of Proof is a fallacy in which the burden of proof is placed on the wrong side. Another version occurs when a lack of evidence for side A is taken to be evidence for side B in cases in which the burden of proof actually rests on side B. A common name for this is an Appeal to Ignorance. This sort of reasoning typically has the following form:

1. Claim X is presented by side A and the burden of proof actually rests on side B.
2. Side B claims that X is false because there is no proof for X.

In many situations, one side has the burden of proof resting on it. This side is obligated to provide evidence for its position. The claim of the other side, the one that does not bear the burden of proof, is assumed to be true unless proven otherwise. The difficulty in such cases is determining which side, if any, the burden of proof rests on. In many cases, settling this issue can be a matter of significant debate. In some cases the burden of proof is set by the situation. For example, in American law a person is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty (hence the burden of proof is on the prosecution). As another example, in debate the burden of proof is placed on the affirmative team. As a final example, in most cases the burden of proof rests on those who claim something exists (such as Bigfoot, psychic powers, universals, and sense data).

Let us use again the example of a debate about whether a minority group is involved in a global conspiracy. This type of debate is quite common, and has been used to question the validity of Jewish Europeans in Europe, to question the validity of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in North America, and to question the validity of Muslim Westerners in the West.

In hateful discussions about Muslims in the English World Wide Web, Muslims are often asked to prove that they are not terrorists, or asked to prove that they are not “Islamists” with a hidden agenda to supplant Western democracy with an autocratic form of sharia. Of course, if a Muslim tries to participate in this discussion, nothing she says can disprove the presumption of guilt. Participating in stereotypically “American” activities — like eating McDonald’s or shopping from Victoria’s Secret — does not prove that one is not a terrorist or conspirator, and is irrelevant to determining the truth.

The problem here is that the burden of proof lies on the side that assumes a given Muslim is a terrorist or conspirator until proven otherwise. It is possible to prove that a given Muslim has not been involved in any terrorist activity so far — theoretically — by listing a moment-by-moment account of her activities since birth. However, when it is claimed that a living Muslim is a future terrorist or conspirator, the truth-value of this claim cannot be determined until her death. To assume that a given Muslim debater is guilty of future terrorism or conspiracy until proven otherwise essentially bars her from participating in the debate until her death, after which she still cannot participate.

In practice, it is impossible to prove that one is not a future terrorist or conspirator, and the presumption of guilt does not allow an opportunity for rebuttal.

How can hate speech limit who is allowed to debate?

In the earlier section on ad hominem, it was claimed that rejecting a debater’s arguments because of his minority status takes the form of ad hominem. In the section on burden of proof, it was claimed that the presumption of a debater’s guilt is committing a burden of proof fallacy. In both cases, it was claimed that committing these logical fallacies limits the debaters who belong to the minority group under discussion from participating in the debate. How does this conclusion follow?

When a debate is framed in a way that questions the validity of certain persons, the implicit assumption is that these persons cannot be assumed to be full persons, and they cannot be assumed to be equal participants in the debate. In most debates, the debaters are not the topic of discussion and the personal characteristics of the debaters are irrelevant, so all debaters are considered equally valid debaters. In debates that question the humanity or personhood of certain groups of people, however, allowing the people under discussion to participate as debaters presumes their humanity and personhood.

A debate that questions the humanity or personhood of certain groups of people violates the separation between the debate and the debaters. The debater’s personal characteristics may become relevant to the direction of the debate, and the direction of the debate may say something about the debater’s personal characteristics. For example, if all Muslim sources on the nature of Islam are to be discounted, the direction of the debate discounts a wide range of perspectives, and also projects a non-validity on to any Muslim debaters within that discourse.

This type of debate becomes a self-referential, closed system that shuts out certain voices and perspectives, and is contrary to the ideal of an open “marketplace of ideas.” The messiness of social relations plays a part in the ostensibly “abstract” nature of ideas and discussion when people are the subject of debate.

Systems of power and oppression become relevant. National debates about the humanity and personhood of minority groups can affect national policy, whereas local debates restricted within the minority group about the humanity and personhood of the majority cannot change national policy legally without the majority’s consent.

If hate speech can restrict free speech by limiting the scope of discussion and limiting who is allowed to debate, and if certain types of hate speech are inherently unfruitful and unproductive, then are laws against hate speech necessarily harmful? If freedom of speech cannot be completely divorced from systems of power and oppression that privilege some perspectives over others, then can hate speech laws function as checks against the monopolization of the marketplace of ideas?

It certainly appears that hate speech can limit free speech, so debates about freedom of speech should recognize that hate speech is much more complicated than “unpleasant” ideas or social taboo.

Q: Why are Asians successful in America? Do Asians have a higher intelligence than non-Asians? Are Asians more hard-working?

A: Asian immigrants in the United States and their descendants are more successful on average because they are highly self-selected. Overseas immigrants are a biased sample and not representative of their original country’s general population. They tend to be economic immigrants coming from the middle and upper classes, with a higher degree of education and wealth. However, the subset of overseas immigrants (including Asians) that are refugees suffer extreme poverty, on average, because they are more representative of the general population of their originating countries.

All non-whites in the United States are subject to racial discrimination in employment, and are denied white privilege. Even the Asians that arrive with or inherit economic and educational privileges suffer from racism in employment, as they need to have more education than a white person to receive the same pay. They also bump into the glass ceiling.

The United States is not a meritocracy. Racism, sexism, and inherited wealth are determinants of who is in power.

Q: Where is the data that supports this explanation?

A: Sociologist Stephen Klineberg conducted a 1996 survey of Asians in Houston and found that there was little or no social mobility among Asians.

[...] Klineberg revealed that nearly 40 percent of Asian respondents said their fathers had been doctors, lawyers, corporate managers or other professionals, compared to about 30 percent of Anglos, 20 percent of Blacks, and 15 percent of Hispanics.

[...]

The occupational profiles of the Asian respondents and their fathers suggest little or no upward social mobility. For example, 44 percent of the Indians and Pakistanis in Houston are in professional or managerial positions, but so were 47 percent of their fathers. Among the Vietnamese, 28 percent are in low-skilled production or laboring jobs as were 30 percent of their fathers.

From the same study, Klineberg found that although Asians, on average, are more likely to have college degrees compared to Anglos, their income and employment positions are lower than Anglos.

While nearly 60 percent of Asian adults in Harris County have college degrees, compared to about 40 percent of Anglo adults, Asians report considerably lower household incomes and are more apt to work in lower status positions than Anglos.

Sociologist C.N. Le reviews research on the “returns in education”, which shows that non-whites, including Asians, earn less than whites with equal qualifications.

Recent research from scholars such as Timothy Fong, Roderick Harrison, and Paul Ong, to name just a few, continues to confirm these findings that controlling for other variables, Asian Americans still earn less money than Whites with virtually equal qualifications. Once again, for each statistic that suggests everything is picture-perfect for Asian Americans, there is another that proves otherwise.

Guofang Li, an academic researcher and assistant professor in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, debunks the myth that Asians are by nature more academically successful than other minorities:

Although many Asian students do quite well in school and on standardized tests, Li maintains their success often reflects the additional expensive private schooling provided by upper- and middle-class parents on evenings and weekends.

[...]

The persistence of these ideas, says Li, prevents us from unraveling the social realities of those who face problems in the educational system. Furthermore, she says, they authorize a flat denial of racism and structures of social dominance, and silence those who are not economically successful.

More data and explanations debunking this “model minority” myth can be found in the section below.

Further reading:

• How Whites Use Asians to Further Anti-Black Racism by Tim Wise
• Myth: Asian-Americans are a model minority by Steve Kangas
• A Brief History of the ”Model Minority” Stereotype by Andrew Chin
• Black Immigrants: the new model minority? by Wendi Muse
• Survey Examines Asian Mobility (Rice University)
• The Model Minority Image by C. N. Le
• Researcher Debunks “Myth” that Asians Are, by Nature, More Academically Successful than Other Minorities (University at Buffalo)

If you ask an Asian in Canada, “Where are you from?”, the person may be take offense at being assumed a foreigner because of her race, or she may be happy to tell you about her motherland. Foreign-born and native-born Asian Canadians are different. They should not be lumped together and treated the same.

Although you cannot tell if an Asian individual is foreign-born or Canadian-born by looking at his physical features (being born and raised in a Western country does not change small, slanted eyes into large, round eyes), we have data on Asian Canadian visible minorities as an aggregate and where they are from.

2 in 3 Japanese are Canadian-born:

1 in 4 Chinese are Canadian-born (”Canadian-Born Chinese” or “CBCs”):

1 in 3 South Asians are Canadian-born (so-called “Canadian-Born Confused Desis” or “CBCDs”):

On average, 3 in 10 visible minorities were Canadian-born. The breakdown of the Canadian-born percentages across the individual visible minority groups are shown below.

(The “Canadian-born occurrence” column is an extrapolation from the percentage, not explicitly listed in the analysis series article.)

Sources:

• Statistics Canada. 2008. Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census. 2006 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 97-562-X. Ottawa. Released April 2, 2008.

Visible minorities accounted for 42.9% or 2,174,100 of the population in Toronto (Census Metropolitan Area), according to the 2006 Census. The largest visible minority groups in Toronto were South Asian (684,100), Chinese (486,300), Black (352,200), and Filipino (172,000).

The census metropolitan area (CMA) of Toronto had the largest proportion of visible minorities among all CMAs in Canada. 94.0% of the visible minority population in Toronto (CMA) lived in one of six municipalities: the City of Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, Richmond Hill, or Vaughan. The municipalities of Markham and Brampton had the highest proportion of visible minorities within the Toronto CMA.

Markham: 65.4% visible minorities

The municipality of Markham, Ontario had the highest percentage (65.4%) of visible minorities in Canada, surpassing the visible minority percentage of Richmond, British Columbia (65.1%). The two largest visible minority groups in Markham are Chinese (89,300) and South Asian (45,000).

Brampton: 57.0% visible minorities

The municipality with the second-highest proportion of visible minorities within the Toronto CMA was Brampton, Ontario, with 57.0% visible minorities. The largest visible minority groups in Brampton were South Asian (136,800) and Black (53,300).

Visible minorities made up 49.0% of Mississauga, 46.9% of the City of Toronto, and 45.7% of Richmond Hill.

Sources:

• Statistics Canada. 2007. 2006 Community Profiles. 2006 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 92-591-XWE. Ottawa. Released March 13 2007.
• Statistics Canada. 2008. Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census. 2006 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 97-562-X. Ottawa. Released April 2, 2008.

Visible minorities made up 16.2% of the total population in Canada in 2006, according to the newly-released 2006 Census data.

Visible minorities are defined as “persons, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

Interestingly, South Asians have surpassed Chinese as the largest visible minority group.

The South Asians became Canada’s largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese for the first time. The populations of both were well over 1 million.

The 2006 Census enumerated an estimated 1,262,900 individuals who identified themselves as South Asian, a growth rate of 37.7% from 917,100 individuals in 2001. They represented one-quarter (24.9%) of all visible minorities, or 4.0% of the total population in Canada.

In contrast, the number of individuals who identified themselves as Chinese increased 18.2% from 1,029,400 in 2001 to 1,216,600 in 2006. Chinese accounted for 24.0% of the visible minority population and 3.9% of the total Canadian population.

The number of those identifying themselves as Black, the third largest visible minority group, rose 18.4% from 662,200 individuals in 2001 to an estimated 783,800. They accounted for 15.5% of the visible minority population and 2.5% of the total population in 2006.

Other visible minority groups included Filipinos, who represented 8.1% of the visible minority population, Latin Americans (6.0%), Arabs (5.2%), Southeast Asians (4.7%), West Asians (3.1%), Koreans (2.8%) and Japanese (1.6%).

Related webpages:

• Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census: Summary

Some anti-oppressive thinkers distrust powerful institutions, and end up distrusting the scientific institution and even scientific knowledge itself. However, scientific knowledge and scientific practise are not inherently oppressive. The oppressions that appear to come from science actually come from the upper-class white male domination of scientific disciplines.

Science is not the enemy; the practise of science is a productive method for understanding ourselves and our world. When some scientific studies overgeneralize and/or neglect certain groups of people, the problem is bad science, not science.

One of the serious problems with the lack of diversity in the practise within certain knowledge domains is that some important aspects of reality are not even considered, leading the researchers to overgeneralize and draw incorrect conclusions. This problem comes from the fact that scientific practise is a social activity, subject to the biases and prejudices of the scientists. In contrast, the scientific methods of gathering empirical data to refute hypotheses, and using statistical methods to determine statistical significance, are perfectly sound.

It is illogical to assume without reason that the results of a given scientific study (especially one that you do not particularly like) must be false. There is no contradiction between truth and justice. Anti-oppressive thinkers should not be afraid of science.

For example, in a recent Feministing post about using yoghurt to treat yeast infections, Courtney writes:

There’s no question that the personal is the political, even when it comes to our most individuated health and wellness choices. But it’s got me wondering, is it “less feminist” to resort to store-bought cures or is this one of those things that we should lay off on politicizing?

Commenter FrumiousB responds:

Well, if you found it by Googling, it must be right. Since when is trusting random strangers to dispense medical advice a feminist action? Since when is using evidence based medicine resorting to the man? And how do you know yogurt doesn’t have any drug interactions? Next time you want medical advice off the internet, use Medline.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

Of course, by searching Medline, one can find a scientific study that concludes that ingesting yoghurt that contains Lactobacillus acidophilus reduces vulvovaginal candidal (yeast) infections by threefold, which is an example how scientific knowledge can be empowering by giving women more choices. Of course, this does not mean that using store-bought cures is “less feminist”. Courtney received a lot of criticism for this line of reasoning from Feministing commenters, although there were also many anti-science supporters. In response to a commenter that advocated trusting folk remedies over “traditionally male-dominated western medicine”, commenter BluePencils writes:

No, it’s not a feminist issue. It has nothing to do with the patriarchy. It has to do with anecdotal evidence versus the scientific method. I’ll go with the scientific method, thank you. Yes, there are natural remedies that work, of course there are. It’s just rare to be informed of any side effects and interactions, which leads to many people believing that if a treatment is “natural,” it doesn’t have any side effects. Which is ridiculous.

In addition to its anti-intellectual and self-oppressive properties, science-hating by some prominent feminist bloggers isolates females and feminists who love science. Commenter moley writes:

Oh, and can we stop saying that science is one giant woman-hating shit show?

As a female scientist, I am fully aware that there have been extremely unethical practices in the past, and that we’ve yet to reach a point where there is equal attention paid to men and women’s health, but c’mon man. The venom with which you so flatly shoot down science is really frustrated. I’m a chick, and I love science. Not in a, “wow this is interesting” kind of way, but in a “I want to devote the rest of my life to this” kind of way.

So, please just be a little sensitive when you insult my first and true love. Yeah, it’s not perfect. I KNOW THAT, that’s why I’m trying to change it. Please don’t say its completely politicized. Have you been to medical research labs? Have you seen the GREAT work people are doing to cure things like breast and cervical cancer? It’s just insulting that you brush it off so easily.

Yeah the FDA sucks big time, but you demean the work I do with your comments.

Oh and probiotics work, just not at the low concentrations they put in the “active naturals” yogurts. Just get organic yogurt or take probiotic pills (they’re expensive but they work). Oh and just a warning: DO NOT take probiotics if you have compromised immunity.

Oh yeah, and douching doesn’t work, I agree.

Another commenter Kayt writes:

As a female scientist with training in pharmacology, I can both understand and shake my head at the medicine-is-a-feminist-issue rant. No, paternalistic doctors are not good. But if you have a bad infection, you need to get rid of it.
Most of us who are reading this blog grew up with clean communities and ready access to antibiotics, so we fail to fully appreciate that infectious disease can be very damaging, if not fatal. Many antibiotics are derived from microbes and other natural sources, and they are often more concentrated than the helpful organisms/compounds that you find in yogurt or garlic. As a result, the antibiotics that you purchase are often at least if not more effective than the less concentrated source product, and efficacy matters if your infection is extensive. If you want to speak out against medical condescension towards women, a sometimes poor attention to education by people in medical fields, or excessive corporatization of medicines, then I am with you. However, if you’re attacking the objective study and effective treatment of infectious disease as being inherently masculine, you risk alienating those who devote their time to finding effective treatments for everyone. In addition, I have heard the Western-medicine-and doctors-are- anti-feminist-argument from people who won’t vaccinate their kids, and that is a dangerous route to take. Obviously yeast infections aren’t usually as serious as many diseases, but once you start following an overgeneral line of reasoning, you really set yourself up for primitive conditions for women (and children and men)-which seems pretty anti-feminist to me.

Those who bash science seem unable to make a distinction between scientific methods and the patriarchy of the scientific community. It is healthy to criticize individual scientific studies because of specific flaws in reasoning due to the authors’ biases. It is healthy to criticize the social aspect of scientific activity that shuts out certain members of society and their associated ideas. However, it is very unhealthy and counterproductive to reject science as a whole and trust anecdotal evidence over properly-controlled studies. Using anecdotes over controlled studies, using personal experience over real statistics, is a common practise of bigots who make false generalizations about entire groups of people. Anti-intellectualism is not progressive. Anti-intellectualism and ignorance are the problem.

Over at Shameless, and inexplicably filed under “Geek Chic”, Thea blogs about a study of the relationship between women’s fertility and hip-swaying:

A Friday Funny (though this could also fall under the category of a Friday Cry-y): Women sway their hips the most when they’re least fertile, according to Queen’s University study.

Scientists at Queen’s are apparently blowing the minds of current zoology, claiming that women, contrary to a popular belief, make themselves less, not more, attractive when they’re “fertile.”

The study got 40 women (my goodness! 40 whole women!!) to wear clothes with special markers on them so that computers could track their movements, and then asked the women to walk up and down in a 6-metre area.

I keep on trying to come up with a clever critique of this study, but honestly I’m speechless. How and who came up with the idea for this study? Why is the degree of swayiness of my hips considered important? What is humanity supposed to do with this breakthrough information? And when are they gonna do a study on the boys, so I know when my man is most virile? Vomit!!

First of all, it is very annoying to people who have taken some basic statistics when somebody criticizes the sample size of a scientific study for being arbitrarily too small, as if scientific researchers are not trained in statistical methods and statistical significance. Secondly, it is generally oppressive to dismiss the interests of a small minority with “Who cares?”, as if what counts as “important” is decided by majority and popular opinion. Thirdly, geeks who love theory and factual details are already marginalized if their interests do not have immediate, practical applications, so requiring that the results of a scientific study should have an immediate, practical application to aid humanity to be considered “important” repels many “Geek Chics”, those to which the post is meant to appeal.

Back to a recent post on Feministing, Miriam blogs about a telephone-survey study that found women on average eat more fruits and vegetables:

Studies like this, and the simple reporting that outlets like the NYTimes does upsets me for a few reasons. One, it is really that useful? Could we also do a telephone survey and find that brunettes show different trends in eating than blonds? How much does this research just reinforce our already concrete ideas about gender difference? Of course men eat more meat than women! It’s because they need more protein for all their manly activities.

Once again, a feminist blogger asks, “One, [is it] really that useful?” as if a study needs to have an immediate, practical application that is immediately obvious to the average person in order to be considered “important”. Secondly, she criticizes research on gender differences, as if finding that there exists a gender difference is equivalent to saying that the gender difference is an innate and biological sex difference. Thirdly, even the existence of biological sex differences — such as that most women menstruate and most men do not — is not necessarily justification for sexism.

Should we stop collecting data that can be used to track gender disparities and gender socialization? Should we be gender-blind and pretend that gender does not exist? Is the goal of feminism to move towards a society where gender and gendered people do not exist? Of course not. People should be more, not less, conscious about gender. The fact that many gender-conscious people are gender-conscious in the sexist way does not mean that gender-consciousness as a whole is a bad thing. Data and information are good.

Miriam also criticizes the tendency of newspaper articles to distort scientific research, and scientific researchers often complain about this as well. However, many of the commenters are hostile to the study itself and seem unable to distinguish between “women on average are less likely to eat asparagus than men” and “no women like asparagus”. Commenter Ithika responds to this absurdity:

Hm, I like asparagus, and yet I lack a penis. There must be something wrong with me.

What gives you that impression? That’s as absurd as looking at the global population, seeing that there are more women than men and concluding that there must be “something wrong” with men.

I realise your statement was somehow in jest, but I still don’t see what a contradictory anecdote has to do with the matter.

It is good that scientifically-illiterate statements are being criticized within anti-oppressive blog communities, but the general anti-science and anti-intellectual memes needs to stop. This anti-intellectualism may be a reflection of the general anti-intellectualism of contemporary North American culture, but in any case, it is a significant hindrance to productive anti-oppression work.

Apparently, the United Nations thinks that recognizing race is racist. Here is an article from last year, March 08, 2007:

UNITED NATIONS - Canada’s use of the term “visible minorities” to identify people it considers susceptible to racial discrimination came under fire at the United Nations Wednesday - for being racist.

The world body’s anti-racism watchdog says in a report on Ottawa’s efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in Canada that the words might contravene an international treaty aimed at combating racism.

For people who want to discuss racism, this accusation is sounds familiar. A person who points out an instance of subtle racism is often accused of being racist herself. The accuser argues that this person is racist for noticing race. Would this be the reasoning of the UN committee?

Canada’s Employment Equity Act defines “visible minorities” as “persons, other than aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

To the committee, highlighting a certain group does not appear to be consistent with Article One of the convention, which says racial discrimination occurs when equitable treatment is upset by “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.”

Recognizing race is making a distinction, but recognizing race does not necessarily lead to exclusion, restriction, or preference. “Visible minority” is a meaningful and intuitive term that recognizes that those who do not appear to be “white” may be discriminated against because of their physical racial appearance, which is a separate factor from their ethnicity, language, and culture.

An explanation of why colorblindness subverts antiracist work is well-articulated by Magniloquence in the post Race Relations 101: Colorblindness:

I don’t want [my race] to not be a problem for you; I don’t want race to be problematic.

The distinction may seem subtle, but it really isn’t. When a person says “I don’t see color” as a way of saying “your race is not a problem for me,” it casts the problem as race. Race is not the problem, racism is.

The news article on the UN accusation continues:

Speaking at the committee grilling of Canada last month, committee member Patrick Thornberry went further.

“The use of the term seemed to somehow indicate that ‘whiteness’ was the standard, all others differing from that being visible,” says the British international law professor, according to UN note-takers.

First, let us bring up the normative versus descriptive distinction. In philosophy, a normative statement is a statement about how things should be, while a descriptive statement is a statement about how things are.

Normatively, whiteness should not be the standard, and all others differing from that should not have a unique visibility due to their non-whiteness. Descriptively, however, it is true that ‘whiteness’ is the standard, and that all others differing from that do have a unique visibility due to their non-whiteness.

Rachel’s Tavern notes that the inability to make this [normative versus descriptive] distinction is one of the central problems with colorblindness:

Moreover, like most people I hear discuss race, she was unable to make a distinction between “should racial issues/identities matter” and “do racial issues/identities matter.” This is, of course, one of the central problems with colorblindness. Maybe in an ideal world where race was never invented race wouldn’t matter, but we don’t live in that world.

Other Related articles:

• Misreading the Dream: Color-Blindness and the Distortion of Martin Luther King Jr. by Tim Wise

If you condemn people of ethnicity P who live in your country based on the actions of foreigners of ethnicity P living in a different country, your reasoning is illogical. At a basic level, this is fallacious because

• If individual x has property P and individual y also has property P, one cannot conclude that x = y.
• If individual x has property P and individual y also has property P, one cannot conclude that if x has some property Q, y also has property Q.

In the ethnicity example, if a foreigner x of ethnicity P in a different country participates in action Q that is morally questionable, one cannot condemn a minority y in your country for action Q simply because that individual is also of ethnicity P.

For example, if a Muslim in a Western country complains that her rights were violated by the state, it is illogical to argue that this individual is being hypocritical because the laws in Saudi Arabia are worse in terms of human rights violations. Here, the individual y who complained about the violation is not necessary the person x who carried out a human rights violation, even though both x and y have property P, being Muslim. Furthermore, it is not the case that if some w has property P and property Q, all z who have property P also have property Q.

At a second level, this reasoning is fallacious because it assumes that minorities of ethnicity P in countries like the United States and Canada are representative of people of ethnicity P living in countries where ethnicity P is the majority. This is often not the case, as those who choose to immigrate to a Western country tend to be sympathetic towards Western values, and may even be escaping persecution from their original country. Cuban Americans on average tend to be anti-communist despite or perhaps because of the fact that Cuba is a communist country. Iranian Americans on average tend to be actively against Muslim fundamentalism despite or because of Iran having a Muslim fundamentalist government. Making generalizations about ethnic minorities based on foreigners living in a different country is simply ignorant, and often ironic.

At a third level, this reasoning is racist because it assumes that Canadian-born Canadians and American-born Americans of Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latino descent are somehow “the same as” or interchangeable with foreigners. This is known as the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype. For example, the tastes, culture, and politics of a fourth-generation American of Asian descent are often inferred from the tastes, culture, and politics of her ancestral country instead of her native country and country of origin, the United States. On the other hand, the tastes, culture, and politics of a second-generation American of Western European descent are assumed to be American. The perception of foreignness when it comes to native-born North Americans of Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latino descent is almost always a result of racial prejudices rather than the “culture” manifested by these individuals.

Related webpages:

• Asian Americans and the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome by Frank H. Wu - An analysis and history of the perpetual foreigner syndrome as it relates to Asian Americans, explaining why it is racist and making references to “color-blindness”, color-consciousness, and the reality of participating in racial discrimination without being mindful of it.
• “Asking Permission” by X. Dean Lim - Humourous video about equating “Asian” with “foreign”. Rather than the reverse situation shown in this thought experiment, in practise, there are more situations where an Asian American is alone and under the scrutiny of the white American majority, so social pressure usually works against him.