Independent Women’s Forum on the Inaccuracies in Women’s Studies Textbooks

Christina Stolba has written an excellent 33-page summary of the overwhelming deficiencies of the most popular textbooks used for Women’s Studies courses in the United States. According to Stolba’s report,

Rather than offering young men and women exposure to knowledge, these texts foster a cynical knowingness about women’s status in society, one that consistently emphasizes women’s supposedly subordinate position. The danger of such a worldview, particularly for a generation of young men and women who enter the classroom already steeped in popular myths about women’s place in society, is that it will ripen into a form of anti-intellectualism.

One of the textbooks Stolba looks at is Sheila Ruth’s Issues in Feminism, which I skewered here many years ago.

Stolba goes through the litany of problems from absurd factual errors to stereotyping to the anti-intellectualism (in too many of these textbooks, critical thinking is blasted as an artificial construct of the patriarchy). But the most absurd abuse of the textbooks is their condescending attitudes toward young men and women.

Stolba notes, for example, that the authors of the textbook Gender & Culture in America conducted surveys of their students and found that, “nearly all of the women, but none of the men interviewed, plan to curtail or cease their paid employment after their children are born.” They cite one female student proud of her GPA and career prospects but who tells the authors that she believes “children suffer if their mothers work outside the home.”

Of course to a movement that places so much emphasis on reproductive choicest, there can be no room for allowing young women to make their own choices in other areas. The authors of Gender & Culture in America simply conclude that women like this student are victims who “are apparently unaware that in these decisions they are following traditional gender stereotypes.”

Except when having an abortion, no woman in radical feminism ever makes choices except when their actions agree with the radical feminist view of the world. Anything else is chalked up to false consciousness, patriarchal oppression, and/or implicit societal-wide threats against women. And yet, even though radical feminists constantly circumscribe the range of acceptable choices for young women, they still scratch their collective heads in amazement at the general rejection of their philosophy.

Could it possibly be that, unlike their sisters in academia, young women in fact take the pro-choice message about deciding for themselves to heart. For academic feminists, “pro-choice” is just a convenient ideological term that serves a political purpose. For many younger men and women, however, choosing for themselves is a way of life, and such people have as little use for the boring constraints of radical feminism as they do for traditional anti-feminism. And good for them.

Source:

Just in Time for Women?s History Month, Review of Women?s Studies Textbooks Reveals Questionable Scholarship, Ideological Bias, and Sins of Omission. Independent Women’s Forum, March 20, 2002.

Is a New Movie Worse than 9/11 Terrorist Attacks?

Jeff Deverett produces a kid’s show in Toronto called Ricky’s Room that is carried by some PBS channels. Deverett is currently protesting the new film, Death to Smoochy, a dark comedy about such children’s shows. According to Deverett, Death to Smoochy is the equivalent of the Sept. 11 attacks for kids.

When the World Trade Center fell, it was like a movie happening. But when a mascotted character like Barney gets his head blown off, that’s real. It’s real violence on their level. To [kids], this movie is Sept. 11.

Of course young kids who are watching an R-rated movie like this probably have at least one and maybe two problems that are far worse than anything in Death to Smoochy.

The funny thing is that Deverett claims he is suing Warner Bros. on the grounds that the Smoochy character is to close to his Ricky character. Yeah, because Everett’s the only person in the world who ever thought of putting an actor in a dumb-looking animal suit and building a kid’s show around it.

The 9/11 comparison, on the other hand, puts Deverett in a far more exclusive group of idiots.

Source:

Smoochy gets the kiss-off from kiddie show. Tamsen Tillson, Toronto Globe and Mail, March 27, 2002.

On a Related Topic . . .

For the last few months I’ve been (slowly) updating all of the articles on this site with a keyword system. Whenever I update the site with a new entry, I have a list of 13 categories with numerous subcategories under each of them.

For example, when I posted this article about a new high-resolution image of Saturn, I clicked on a couple options to indicate that it was a Science-related story, and then one level deeper it was an Astronomy-related story.

Not all stories have been marked up in this way, but I am slowly getting through the older ones (it took me awhile to settle on a taxonomy I liked). Now, though, for those stories that are labeled with keywords, a “Related Topics” set of links shows up in the right hand column. Visit that story about Saturn, for example, and a link back to the Astronomy page shows up under “Related Topics.” My recent review of a baseball computer games includes links back to both my baseball page and my computer games page.

This is the sort of thing that Conversant really shines at. I have complete control over what sort of categories and subcategories I want to set up, adding or deleting categories and subcategories takes just a few seconds, and once articles are tagged with this sort of metadata, there are some extremely powerful knowledge management-style applications that can be done without a lot of effort. Changing the template for this site to display the Related Topics information took just a few minutes.

My Herbalife Story

Boing!Boing! pointed to this long article by a person in Sacramento that starts out being about ugly signs offering a work-at-home scam and ends up being about Herbalife.

After college, my first job was working for a hospital laundry. The laundry had very little handle on its inventory and bought a half-assed system to try to keep better track of it. The whole system was a disaster, and it was my job to get it to work.

I had to work regularly with the manager of the linen facility at a hospital, and this guy was one of those goofballs who it is extremely difficult to fathom how he ever rose to the management level. The guy was a schemer with lots of ideas and wacky business ideas and not a whole lot of brains or persistence to actually follow through.

One of the things he constantly pestered me about was Herbalife. He was constantly telling me about all the weight he was losing as well as trying to get me involved with the MLM scam/scheme. I thought it was inappropriate, but that pretty much summed my view of everything this guy did.

Finally, though, I just wanted to get him to shut up so I agreed to go to his little MLM meeting. If you’ve never been to one of these things, they are really fascinating (but if you’re going to go, do like I do and make sure you don’t bring any form of money with you — I had like five dollars in my pocket, and that was probably to much around these folks).

The entire evening was half revival meeting and half the most manipulative sales pitch you’ll likely experience. The whole idea is basically a scam — there is no way in hell the people like the laundry manager are ever going to get rich. On the other hand, though, the very tiny number of people who are able to convince their friends and complete strangers to throw their money into this are like the sharks of the sales world — there’s nobody better nor more vicious.

The leader of this event looked like a 45-year-old Tom Cruise who was doing too much Herbalife. He was thin to the point of bordering on gaunt. He looked a little bit like a world class long distance runner, except from his skin complexion it was obvious he was probably following a drastic diet to keep his weight low to impress the people he was pitching.

And the guy was slick. Too slick. Con man slick. Michael Douglas in Wall Street slick. He gave some very spirited talk about all the money he had made, the vacations he had taken, the cars he owned, etc., etc. Then, of course, when he’s done he announces some special offer just for newcomers like myself. For something approaching $1,000 we can get $1,500 worth of merchandise to sell, and they start with the nonsensical litany of uplines and downlines or whatever the terminology was.

The cool thing about not having any money with you is you can let the full effect of this hit you. It’s interesting just how easily some people can use your fears and hopes to manipulate you. I could see why people would find this sort of pitch attractive, even though you’d have to be insane to say yes and put up your money.

The sad thing was that while the laundry manager is pulling out all the stops trying to convince me (and, of course, I have to make my decision right now), it’s pretty clear that the big guy is manipulating him. The laundry manager wasn’t a bad salesman but he never was very convincing — and fell hook, line and sinker for the big guy’s pep talks about what a great salesman he was and how determination and drive could make him rich.

Finally, after listening to the pitch several times and refusing several times the meeting is over and I am out of there. Walking out feels like you’ve been trapped in a cave underground for a year and are finally being allowed to see the light of day.

And, of course, I drive straight to the library because now I’m very curious. Of course, this was the early 1990s and by then Herbalife had already had run-ins with various legal authorities over illegal and dangerous ingredients in its products, tax problems by its founder, and all sorts of other issues. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

The next day I have to drive out to the hospital, and while I’m there hand this guy a manila folder asking him if he’s aware of the previous investigations of Herbalife, not to mention all the crap that is in these supplements he’s popping because Herbalife tells him they’re all natural and they’re cleansing his body.

And the color completely leaves his face. For an instant he has this look that is just priceless. This guys’s spent thousands of dollars of his money, persuaded family and friends to get involved, and he hasn’t even done even a cursory investigation of Herbalife. He’s screwed.

But he recovers pretty quickly. He’s hooked. I could have just shown him pictures of his wife with the big guy and he’d still be convinced that Herbalife is going to make him rich. I explain to him that even if I wanted to take Herbalife — which I most certainly do not — I could not because the products were chock full of ephedrine (although, consistent with its business practices, Herbalife never listed ephedrine in the ingredients list).

At which point he turns to me, very sincerely — he’s not trying to insult me at all, he clearly feels sorry for me — and asks, “So you’re just going to have to stay fat?” Which is when it hits me that this guy is totally dominated by his own fears. Fear of being fat, fear of not having enough money, fear of not being as successful as other people, and he’s the perfect sucker for this scam.

I have no idea whatever happened to him. A couple months, later I couldn’t take that job anymore and quit. A couple years later I partially mastered my own weight problems and dropped 50 pounds (and I’ve kept it off) without having to throw hundreds of dollars after unhealthy supplements (it’s amazing what giving up fast food and exercising once in a while will do).

Mark Hughes, who started Herbalife in the early 1980s, was not so lucky. He was found dead in August 2000 in the $27 million mansion that he had bought by suckering people. The 44-year-old apparently had all the money he could ever want but couldn’t kick his alcoholism. He died after a four-day-long binge of drinking alcohol in combination with anti-depressants.

WHO: Tuberculsosis Efforts Falling Behind

The World Health Organization issued a report this month noting that the world is falling behind in efforts to contain tuberculosis. According to the WHO,

A strategy that can cure up to 90% of all tuberculosis cases, and thus is the best chance for controlling the global epidemic, is reaching only 27% of the world’s TB patients. . . . According to the new WHO report, at the current rate, TB targets set for 2005 will not be reached until 2013.

Tuberculosis currently kills about 2 million people a year, and is the number one preventable cause of death in the developing world.

The main thing holding back better treatment of tuberculosis is money. WHO estimates that countries around the world need to spend about $300 million more per year to control tuberculosis.

Source:

Funding ‘hits tuberculosis fight’. The BBC, March 24, 2002.

Only a fraction of TB patients get the best care. World Health Organization, Press Release, March 22, 2002.

Genetically Modified Dairy Cows Cloned in Australia

Australia joined the United States, Europe, and New Zealand in producing its first cloned and genetically modified dairy calves.

A team of researchers at the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development first cloned several cow embryos. They then inserted an extra bovine protein gene taken from a cow cell into the embryos. The extra gene boosts the amount of protein in milk expressed by the cows, though it will be awhile before researchers learn by how much the protein content is increased.

The same technique, of course, could be utilized to make the cows express other compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, in milk. “Being able to add specific genes to cloned calves will provide us with the potential to produce milk containing human vaccines and medicines for diseases such as hemophilia,” said Monash Institute director Alan Trounson.

Such possibilities are still 5-10 years away, however.

Source:

Australia breeds super milkers. AAP, March 27, 2002.

Australia look to milk cow cloning. Reuters, March 27, 2002.

Protein shakes on the way after cloned cows born. Penny Fannin, Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2002.