Archives for July 2006

Finding it hard to absorb all the news coming in from Lebanon & Israel? I highly recommend reading the blog of Women’s eNews’ intern, who only left Lebanon earlier this month to come to NYC for her internship and who is offering a really personal perspective on what it all means:

Yesterday, I signed on to my MSN Messenger hoping to have news from my friends in Beirut.

A friend of mine, 18 years old, living near the south part of Beirut—where Hezbollah’s supporters are concentrated, 10 minutes from the airport—was there. I asked her: “Hey, how are you? How is everything?”

I could read her terror between the lines of her answer: “Lebanon is destroyed. See, all of them are playing with our lives. I couldn’t sleep till 5 o’clock in the morning because of the bombs’ sounds. It looks as if they are bombing my house. I keep running from a room to another trying to escape from that horrible sound. I don’t feel my legs anymore.”

She kept silent, then she added: “I can’t believe what is happening.” After that, she told me that she passed her high school official exams and that on July 13 she was supposed to present her entrance exam at college.

“I even don’t know what to do in the future now. Everything is destroyed.” After 15 minutes, she said “I got to run. They are bombarding the airport. The sounds terrify me.” And she signed off.

Read more here.

Posted by CNW at 08:33 PM
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I know I’m the last blogger on earth to post about this, but you’ve just got to check it out. Ben A. Barres, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford who began his life as Barbara, is using his rare (but not unique) point of view as someone who’s lived both as a woman scientist and a male scientist to refute Larry Summers’ sexist charges about women in science.

His original article appears in the journal Nature, but here are some samples from his recent interview in the NYT (free signup required):

Q. What about the idea that men and women differ in ways that give men an advantage in science?

A. People are still arguing over whether there are cognitive differences between men and women. If they exist, it’s not clear they are innate, and if they are innate, it’s not clear they are relevant. They are subtle, and they may even benefit women.

But when you tell people about the studies documenting bias, if they are prejudiced, they just discount the evidence.

Q. How does this bias manifest itself?

A. It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants. And then, and this is a huge part of the problem, they don’t get the resources they need to be successful. Right now, what’s fundamentally missing and absolutely vital is that women get better child care support. This is such an obvious no-brainer. If you just do this with a small amount of resources, you could explode the number of women scientists.

Q. As a girl, were you pressured not to try for M.I.T.?

A. Of course. I was a very good math and science student, maybe the best in my high school. And despite all that, when it came time to talk to my guidance counselor, he did not encourage me. But I said, I want to go to M.I.T.; I don’t want to go anywhere else. So I just ignored him. Fortunately, my parents did not try to dissuade me.

Q. When you were a woman did you experience bias?

A. An M.I.T. professor accused me of cheating on this test. I was the only one in the class who solved a particular problem, and he said my boyfriend must have solved it for me. One, I did not have a boyfriend. And two, I solved it myself, goddamn it! But it did not occur to me to think of sexism. I was just indignant that I would be accused of cheating.

There’s loads more in the interview. But my favorite part is this:

Q. Why do some people attribute differences in professional achievement to innate ability? A. One of the reasons is the belief by highly successful people that they are successful because of their own innate abilities. I think as a professor at Stanford I am lucky to be here. But I think Larry Summers thinks he is successful because of his innate inner stuff.

“Inner stuff.” Is that what kids are calling it these days?

Posted by CNW at 01:59 PM
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Today’s proof:

1) According to Women’s eNews, Cecilia Fire Thunder has been impeached. Until June 29, Fire Thunder was the president of the Oglala Sioux Nation in South Dakota. She stepped into national view when she vowed to open an abortion clinic on the sovereign tribal land as a direct response to the South Dakota abortion ban. Turns out the forced-birth advocates on the reservation didn’t like that too much. Read the ugly details here.


2) This ad really exists:

Dear Sony,

Please fire your ad agency. Lynching isn’t a joke. Do not attempt to convince the gaming public that your system is superior by likening your potential customers to anime-besotted Klansmen.

Yours truly,

&c

SONY CORPORATE OFFICES:

Sony Computer Entertainment America

PO Box 5888

San Mateo, CA 94402-0888

800-345-7669 (800-345-SONY)

M-SAT 6:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. PST

Sunday 7:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m

Posted by CNW at 02:53 PM
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It’s time for a great summer read! This month we’ll be reading and discussing THE BOOK OF SALT by MONIQUE TRUONG as part of our online book group, and talking about it on our Discussion Boards.

Here’s the official description:

The Book of Salt serves up a wholly original take on Paris in the 1930s through the eyes of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh’s youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.

MONIQUE TRUONG was born in Saigon in 1968 and moved to the United States at age six. She graduated from Yale University and the Columbia University School of Law, going on to specialize in intellectual property. Truong coedited the anthology Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, and her essay “‘Welcome to America”’ was featured on National Public Radio. Granting her an award of excellence, the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State University called her “‘a pioneer in the field, as an academic, an advocate, and an artist.”’ She was awarded a prestigious Lannan Foundation writing residency in 2001.

I’d add that the writing is ridiculously beautiful, the food descriptions can make you delirious, and it was one of those books I was sad to get to the end of, just because there wasn’t any more of it.

You can buy it online at Women & Children First — and if you use this link, part of the proceeds will benefit CNW.

If you’ve already read it, feel free to jump in and let us know what you thought, what kind of ideas & questions it provoked, and whether you’d recommend it to a friend. If you haven’t read it yet, join us in reading it together!

Posted by CNW at 06:17 PM
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Because men like Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and the upcoming Wonder Woman movie) exist. Take a ten minute break from your day to see his speech at a recent Equality Now event, in which he goes to town on the number one question lazy journalists ask him: What’s with all the strong women characters? Plus, a bonus introduction by Meryl Streep and awesome props to his mom.

Via PopPolitics.

Posted by CNW at 10:32 AM
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