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Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

I was over at Historiann’s tonight, checking to see what new delights lurked in her latest blog posts and what new comments had been added to earlier posts. Just the other day, she’d posted a wonderfully skewering critique of a weekend NYT article that raised a horrific social panic about what are all these young college women going to do for dates and boyfriends if girls outnumber boys on campus.

I noticed that a mansplanation had made its way into the comments there. Oh, boy. Because, you know, we weren’t interrogating the problem from the (obviously!) only one important angle: how this feminization of the B.A. would affect educated women in Afghanistan. Silly us! We obviously needed a mansplaining or two, now, didn’t we?

You all know what mansplanations are, don’t you? A mansplanation isn’t any explanation that a man offers, but it’s the particular moment when a man corrects a woman on something about which she has first-hand experience or expertise in, say. Or when he comes in to say “You women, you’re doing this all wrong!”

Do you want more? Read more »

“By means of two legal fictions, that corporations are people and money is speech, the Roberts court has turned America from a democracy to a plutocracy.” — Norman N. Holland, Professor Emeritus, Univ. of Florida on the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission

Skimming through the NYT sections, I came across a compelling and interesting story about the increasing involvement of children raised by same-sex parents in advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriage in parts of the U.S.

Guess where that story’s filed by section in the NYT.

No, guess! (No fair peeking at the URL!) Read more »

As I’ve been predicting for the last year and a half, Ontario’s premier Dalton McGuinty is now talking about unpaid “days off” for public sector workers (including doctors, teachers and professors).

Of course, our “Dalton Days”, when they come into being in 2010, will have to be taken on non-teaching days so as not to affect students. And, as I remember well from my experience with Rae Days in the 90s, no co-workers respect your schedule of days off when it comes to setting meetings. So your unpaid “day off” as an academic means you’re simply working without pay for those days when you’re in meetings or marking student work.

Don’t get me wrong: lay-offs would be much worse. I’m also pretty sure that the health-care workers are going to make sure that the public realizes they can’t have it both ways: all the health-care, all the time AND an unpaid day off a month for all public-sector employees including their doctors and nurses. But right now, the public mood is ready to see public-sector workers “suffer”, giving the provincial government some ammunition to go after our pay-cheques or even our pensions.

Once again, evidence for equal male and female mathematical ability shows up on Slashdot. And, once again, a certain large chunk of the /. readership goes wild with anger and outrage to assert that women get all the advantages these days in schools and scholarships, that women just use their wiles to get ahead and, oh, that men really are better at all this stuff than women. *sigh* As usual, xkcd has already skewered that mentality perfectly.

But, in the meantime, let me just say that, as I gear up to teach my fall senior seminar on gender history, I’m thrilled to see that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has published such important material under such a kick-ass title: “Gender, culture and mathematical performance.” And the important, inescapable conclusions from this research review is best summed up in the words of Janet S. Hyde and Janet E. Metz who write:

Thus, we conclude that gender inequality, not greater male variability, is the primary reason fewer females than males are identified as excelling in mathematics at the high and highest levels in most countries. Of course, gender inequity is complex and multifaceted. It can encompass dynamics in school classrooms leading teachers to provide more attention to boys; guidance counselors, biased by stereotypes, advising females against taking engineering courses; mathematically gifted girls not being identified and nurtured; scarcity of women role models in math-intensive careers leading girls to believe they do not belong in them; unconscious bias against females in hiring decisions; and hostile work environments leading qualified women to drop out in favor of friendlier climes.

Of course, we had much this same discussion, only about women writers, a few generations back when Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own, and indulged in the wonderful thought experiment, drawing out, in chapter three, the imaginary life of one Judith Shakespeare, a sister to William with equal ability bred in her bones. Woolf mercilessly itemized the ways in which Elizabethan society would have hemmed in the female equivalent of Shakespeare — denied education, employment and even the vehicles for expression that came comparatively easily to her brother. Read more »

That’s the gist of this piece from the National Post, “Bob Rae: Goodbye ‘Rae Days,’ Hello ‘Harper Holidays’”:

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing you in my former role as Deficit Poster Boy and Punching Bag. This title was bequeathed to me by Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney when I became premier of Ontario, and I have been carrying it around on my back since 1990.

I have tried to wear the title as lightly as possible, but have to admit that its “baggage” has hindered my progress on occasion.

It is hard to describe the pleasure I take in bequeathing it to you and Jim Flaherty. Harper Holidays and Flaherty Fridays will join Rae Days in the lexicon. You will learn, as I did, that the estimates of Finance officials are never quite on, that as the layoffs and bankruptcies pile up government revenues collapse and expenditures grow. (Read the rest)

The strike of TAs and contract faculty goes on unabated at York University, with the unions rejecting the administration’s offer 63-37 (according to The Toronto Star). If the strike lasts Friday, and it can’t help but do so, this will be the newest record for strike length at a university becoming infamous for its fractious labour relations.

York’s school year will probably run into June or July in a best-case scenario. York students, who’ve been out of the classroom since November 8th, will be hitting the books and writing exams right through Canada Day, unable to secure summer jobs to assist with next year’s expenses. And looking ahead wouldn’t fill anyone with hope. There have been three strikes of not-inconsiderable length in the past twelve years. The odds of another in the next few years aren’t ones that some people are willing to gamble upon.

While applications to universities across the province are up by 1.1%, The Globe and Mail says that York’s applications for 2009-10 are down by about 15%. That’s staggering, even moreso if you remember that York is normally in second place behind U of T in the number of applications province-wide. This year it’s in fourth place, behind Toronto, Ryerson (a former polytechnic that’s located in downtown Toronto and offers a range of undergraduate and graduate courses — a close-at-hand alternative for many of York’s undergraduate offerings) and Western. The article goes on to detail how York’s administration is considering cutting down the size of next year’s freshman class so that they’re not lowering standards as they pick through their slightly shrunken pool. Read more »

Caught a cruddy cold on Friday and have been laid low ever since. Of course, tomorrow the first wave of the final assignments for the term start to come in and there’ll be no rest until December 18th, according to my Google calendar.

Time to batten down the hatches and lay in the supply of Kleenex, no?

Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States of America.

The world rejoiced because instead of a maniacal John McCain warbling “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” we have a president-elect for what might still be the world’s most powerful nation who is reflective and controlled.

American expats no longer feel like we have to hang our heads in pure embarrassment before the rest of the world, as we have since the ill-conceived and soul-destroying invasion of Iraq.

I’m proud of my country and my fellow citizens, especially those who have sacrificed for their country in times of war and crisis. But I’m unbelievably happy to be looking forward to the day in January when I can be proud of my president and proud of my country’s policies.