“One year after college graduation, women are paid 82 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers, according to a report from the American Association of University Women. The gap is evident even when comparing women and men who work in the same field, and had the same college majors.”
“We have the right to interpret the universe in a way that makes sense to us. What we don’t have a right to do is expect — never mind demand — that other people share our worldview. This flies by some Republicans, and they trip over it. Particularly when it comes to abortion. They are so lost in their own religious belief — that a fetus is a baby, that God is against abortion, contraception, often sex itself — that the idea that other people get to form their own beliefs too on these issues, just like they do, flies by them. It boggles their minds.”
An absolutely sensational musical video on the presidential debates. Enjoy!
I always hated Monk but never knew why. Here is a brilliant analysis of the show that made it clear to me why I never could get into it.
“If your God condones forced pregnancy, get a new God.” I don’t think anybody could put it better.
If you still fear that psychoanalysts will tell you what to do, read this en enlighten yourself already: “I would never have signed up for this job if my sole goal were to help someone figure out how to live and die in accordance with the Big Other’s wishes. This is why neutrality is fucking key. If clinicians actively encouraged bourgoisie values such as the importance of the nuclear family, gainful employment, a comfortable retirement and some (but not too much) community activism then we would undoubtedly miss out on loads of conflicts and problems that often remain un-analyzed if these normative values are upheld as sacrosanct.”
Other than purple hair and the sweatpants, I already do everything the author of this great poem plans to do when she is an old tenured woman. So now I don’t even know what I will do when I get tenure. By the way, how can anybody buy a piece of clothing that has the word “sweat” in it? What next, an excrement dress? Poop jeans? Blood scarf?
The title of the post of the week goes to: “When people ask me why I am voting for Barack Obama in this election, I say, “Because I am a Christian and I vote my values.” I am pro-life, and when you line the two candidates up side by side, there’s an overwhelmingly clear choice.” I’m totally with you, Nerissa. (And what a beautiful name, too.)
And the most idiotic post of the week: “Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.” It is unbelievable that anybody older than 15 can be so ignorant about the nature of human sexuality and the definition of a friendship. I have somehow avoided “spontaneously sleeping together” with my close male friends for years. And they managed the great feat of not “spontaneously sleeping” with me. I think we all deserve a medal now! Jeez, this makes me want to barf. The article’s author needs to go get laid already to stop seeing those bubbly sexual impulses where they don’t exist.
Clarissa's Blog 
Reading that last post was almost physically painful.
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I wonder how much of this “leftward drift” in American Academe can be accounted for by scholars who can not, in good conscience, continue to support the Republican party in view of their conscious rejection of evidence-based reasoning?
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The Republicans are also getting more and more beholden to the religious fanatics of the worst caliber. It is impossible not to feel extreme repugnance towards them.
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“I have somehow avoided “spontaneously sleeping together” with my close male friends for years.”
Hahaha! The author of that article would be amazed to learn that I live with a heterosexual male roommate who’s currently single, who’s seen me nearly-naked loads of times because we just don’t care, and who has never expressed any attraction to me and neither have I for him. In fact, he’s told me pretty clearly that while I’m an attractive person and he considers me a great friend, he’s just not interested that way.
To quote Bill O’Reilly, YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN THAT.
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The refusal to believe in sexual selectivity of human beings is also quite dangerous. The idea that all men want all women and all women want all men all the time inspires a lot of the rapist mentality. “What does she mean, she doesn’t want to? Of course, she wants to. She’s just being coy.” Disgusting.
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Mhm, I’m not sure if these people are capable of imagining sex as neither 1) the result of Blind Uncontrollable Animalistic Urges nor 2) a necessary evil if one is to do one’s duty and produce offspring.
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Love these Sunday encyclopaedias. Particularly like the one on psychotherapy this week!
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Thank you! I’m glad you like these posts.
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Some stories about my recent adventures in desert hiking, including snakes and maps.
As well as an open thread asking for book recommendations as I seem to have fallen into an Agatha Christie pit.
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Re that silly “can men and women be friends” article: I can’t believe how many people think When Harry Met Sally was a documentary.
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I never understood that weird movie.
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Me neither. Sandwiches just aren’t that good.
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The analysis of Monk is right on. Like you I have never been a fan.
I watched a rerun of Prime Suspect on TV this week and I suddenly remembered how I loved that show in the 1990s. I thought that perhaps you would like it too. At least I think that the show it would not leave you indifferent.
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I also loved Prime Suspect.
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Me too, but not the American re-make.
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The psychoanalysis article is good, in terms of defending psychoanalysis and perhaps even its practice, for those who need it.
I can particularly agree that knowledge has a value in and of itself. The idea that knowledge isn’t real unless it produces results is exactly what Nietzsche and Bataille have struggled against. It’s the quintessential enemy of the nobility of thought. After all, if thoughts are only valuable for their utility, we end up only able to recognize the thoughts that make use useful within the system as it currently stands. Other kinds of thoughts that do not go to making us more useful are cast aside. Where does this ultimately lead, but to the reorganization of the University along the business model.
As for the content of psychoanalysis, which the article represents as knowing what your conflicts are, I’m not so sure how useful it is to know what one’s conflicts happen to be. It may make one wiser, in a certain sense. Wisdom is not bad or wrong — but there is something to be said for not knowing, too. In terms of the paradigm of psychoanalysis, one may be led to assume that all conflicts produce pathological states. I say this because psychoanalysis adopts a medical model of sickness versus health. According to the two writers I’ve mentioned above, though, conflicts are very useful for generating creativity.
Nietzsche thought that everybody’s character has some attributes that are weaker and some that are stronger. If someone happened to have social authority, they could turn even their weaker attributes into something everybody wants to emulate, so creating a fashion. To intuitively rework the weaker components of one’s being into a complete character would be a way of decisively overcoming ‘pathology’.
The contrast here seems to be between knowledge and creativity. They’re not entirely separate, but to some degree the sobriety inherent to obtaining knowledge works against the kind of creativity that would simply redirect the streams of one’s internal conflicts into more productive and exciting wholes.
Freud and Nietzsche aim for different outcomes and use different methods to achieve these. I tend to see more value in Nietzsche’s view that we should strongly redirect our urges, on the basis of an intuitive reading of one’s subconscious. In fact, this is what I mean by ‘shamanic doubling’ — it’s the capacity to be one’s own physician in service of one’s own creativity.
The writer who defends psychoanalysis argues that coming to knowledge about one’s unconscious drives gives the client more choices as to how to live their life. He also points out that conflicts will be ongoing throughout the life of the client. While that seems reasonable enough, there remains an unspoken question as to whether gaining wisdom through psychoanalysis adds or subtracts from a client’s overall state of being. One assumes that it will add something, but that assumption is based on the idea that knowledge of any sort is always useful. I think one may also simply assume that one is tasked with plucking out a pathological component of the mind when one aims for psychoanalytic wisdom. This much has not been proven.
To the contrary: one may need one’s conflicts for creative fodder, so long as they are not too overwhelming. It may also be beneficial, under certain circumstances, that one does not become too aware of what they are — Otherwise one may almost certainly have to seek out other conflicts and states of stress, in order to get the creative juices flowing again.
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“As for the content of psychoanalysis, which the article represents as knowing what your conflicts are, I’m not so sure how useful it is to know what one’s conflicts happen to be.”
– I personally find it fascinating to discover things about myself. What can possibly be more interesting than exploring oneself, you know?
“It may make one wiser, in a certain sense. Wisdom is not bad or wrong — but there is something to be said for not knowing, too. In terms of the paradigm of psychoanalysis, one may be led to assume that all conflicts produce pathological states. I say this because psychoanalysis adopts a medical model of sickness versus health.”
– No, that’s not true. One of the main tenets of psychoanalysis is that there is no psychological norm.
“According to the two writers I’ve mentioned above, though, conflicts are very useful for generating creativity.”
– This romantization of neurosis never did anything for me. When one gets to the point where one needs to spend 15+ hours a day compensating, there is simply no energy or time for creativity. The impulse might be there but the energy is not and neither is the time. I did reach a point when I was doing nothing but compensating, hard, at least 12 hours a day, and that was no fun.
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– I personally find it fascinating to discover things about myself. What can possibly be more interesting than exploring oneself, you know?
**When what you discover is you are a straight-forward product of historical determining factors, it can be less fun.
– No, that’s not true. One of the main tenets of psychoanalysis is that there is no psychological norm.
**Yet you yourself view conflicts as necessarily neurotic in your statement below. That is the model of pathology I am referring to.
“According to the two writers I’ve mentioned above, though, conflicts are very useful for generating creativity.”
**Both of the writers I mentioned were prolific.
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“Yet you yourself view conflicts as necessarily neurotic in your statement below. That is the model of pathology I am referring to.”
– I’m not an analyst, though. I often call myself “crazy” and “a stupid cow.” 🙂 The analyst always suffers when I say this. 🙂
“Both of the writers I mentioned were prolific.”
– This must mean that my issues are way cooler than theirs. 🙂
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Georges Bataille received analysis from a really liberal guy in Paris, as I recall. The analysis was just for Bataille to express his weirdness, not to change it. Bataille’s father was an atheist, and therefore Georges became a Catholic. This was because his father was extremely violent.
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Of course, if one is happy with one’s weirdness, why change it?
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One should not change it. In my case, for example, one has to make a judgment as to what to keep and how to let off some heat. For me, letting go of some issues is not a psychological preference, but a necessity related to health. I’m getting older and I can’t keep this heat in, in the same way, even though it has made me immensely productive and interested in the world. This makes me sad. Psychoanalysis is a kind of personal undoing, in this sense, or a way of taking one’s medicine.
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“Psychoanalysis is a kind of personal undoing, in this sense, or a way of taking one’s medicine.”
– No, not in my case. I’m discovering that I’ve been hiding my real personality from the world and now I’m finally letting it out. And it’s not a bad personality at all. 🙂
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Ah, I see. I recently determined that I had been trying to fit the mold of a Western personality and that I could no longer do so. This hasn’t been working out for me at all, because it requires me to over-think everything before I speak, and then I get tied up in knots trying not to offend someone in a way that would make me seem a political monster. It also fed my creativity, though, in that it seemed desirable to compensate by saying monstrous things. What I lost on one side of the equation, I could gain on the other side.
Right now, though, I’ve decided not to bother anymore. I have accepted that I am actually rather insensitive to a lot of things that Western people consider important. I’m also very much in tune with aspects of reality they are oblivious to. I’ve understood that there is nothing I can do to change this. My force of will over twenty years has done nothing to change my innate tendencies, particularly what I am sensitive or insensitive to.
I actually don’t like being made sensitive to those things Westerners are generally sensitive to. I start to feel queasy and uncomfortable after a while, and much more quickly when I am cajoling myself into making an effort.
So I have to accept that I am going to automatically come across as anti-social at times, but not as much so as if I am intentionally sparring with myself and trying to bring myself in line with cultural values I consider to be inherently arbitrary. In those cases, I rebel against my own self-policing and become even more unrefined.
So, I’m sticking to the path of least resistance. It’s kind of weird to enter that mode of relaxed indifference after all these years, instead of being on edge. I know that I will upset some people by being me, but since I am not trying to carve out a career for myself, in Western culture, the stakes are extremely low.
This more relaxed state does enable me to be much more efficient in what I ordinarily do. I can easily tutor my overseas clients without second-guessing myself, and I can engage with most people in that way without offending them. I used to doubt whether I had the right to speak authoritatively on any given topic, but suddenly this is gone.
I’m always going to be too African for my own good, though. People confuse me when they make assertions about the need for greater sensitivity. It even happened at the Reclaim the Night rally, where I gave a short speech on self defense. Afterwards a woman asked me to show her one of the techniques again, and she seemed really nervous. Then two guys also came up to us to talk about the technique and to explain it to her in finessed terms. I thought that was fine, but she later mentioned that this hadn’t been what she’d expected and she didn’t know how to tell them to go away. So I guess I wasn’t being territorial enough, which is something I’ve also decided to stop attempting, since I don’t find it very natural or harmonizing.
Generally, there will always be problems with mis-communication in my sphere, but I think the best way to minimize that and to enjoy life is to just accept that I will always end up instinctively doing things differently.
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mesearch?
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My bullshit detector went off with that sex pay gap paper. It is illegal to pay men and women differently for the same job if they work at the same company. Yet men still earning more suggests a few things:
1.. The same fields and same majors is bullshit. I bet its an apple to oranges comparison. Men and women law graduates who work in the legal field for example. What is glossed over is that men are, in greater numbers, in the higher paying area. I expect this gap really widens when you take male dominated disciplines, such as engineering.
2. They are already working more overtime.
3. The top graduates of some fields were predominately men and received a few extremely high starting salaries.
4. Men as a whole did better at job interviews and received the better paying jobs, or negotiated a higher salary.
Frankly, the wage gap myth is a statistical lie and, with sex discrimination legislation and fair pay acts, due entirely to the choices men and women make. The only way to eradicate that pay gap is to make it law that 50% of all classes be women (whether women want to be there or not), make all university results equal and legislate that all companies pay the same wage (so they have no chance of bidding for talent).
I live in Aus where there is a mining boom going on. Men are out earning women because they are choosing to do the long hours, work in remote locations, do dangerous and dirty jobs and so on. I would love to be able to work these jobs (150K a year etc) but I have damaged my health and choose not to damage it further, despite being qualified and experienced.
Women are actively encouraged to do these jobs, yet few apply. If they don’t want to work the high paying jobs (and everything that goes with them) should we force them to?
Secondly, I have been told, in confidence, that some jobs I applied for that were more cushy were reserved for women and my application couldn’t be considered because the company had too many men and had to hire so many women but women would only take the cushier jobs.
Finally, garbage truck drivers get the best pay for truck drivers of their licence class, but nobody is trying to encourage women to become garbage truck drivers in order to end the pay gap. Why not?
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“It is illegal to pay men and women differently for the same job if they work at the same company. ”
– Not in the US, unfortunately.
“Frankly, the wage gap myth is a statistical lie and, with sex discrimination legislation and fair pay acts, due entirely to the choices men and women make. ”
– We live in the US, and there is no sex discrimination legislation or fair pay acts. As for the “choices” argument, I’m sure that as an intelligent person, you realize how childish it is. Choices are not made in a vacuum and saying “this is simply his / her choice” explains nothing.
“Men are out earning women because they are choosing to do the long hours, work in remote locations, do dangerous and dirty jobs and so on.”
– In contemporary society, the best-paying jobs are neither dangerous nor dirty.
“Finally, garbage truck drivers get the best pay for truck drivers of their licence class”
– I’m trying to figure out if you are being facetious or if you are saying all this stuff seriously. The pay gap discussion is not a discussion of a tiny subfield of blue-collar jobs.
“Secondly, I have been told, in confidence, that some jobs I applied for that were more cushy were reserved for women and my application couldn’t be considered because the company had too many men and had to hire so many women but women would only take the cushier jobs.”
– Do you have problems in your personal life? Was your mother a housewife? There has to be a reason for your intense dislike of women. I mean, you’ve got to realize on some level that this story you were told “in confidence” was concocted on purpose to placate you.
P.S. I have had a personal experience of being paid significantly less for doing the same job as a less qualified male colleague. So all this impotent childish yelping about how my personal lived experience is a myth makes me angry.
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