Cinderella ate my Gender Delusions - a double book review

When I was pregnant with our second daughter, I expected many things, first of all, lots more of pink (it's incredible how much pink stuff turned up after the birth of #1, and that was with all close friends and family being well aware of how much I loathe it. But everybody else obviously  thought a pink cute onesie would be such an original present for a baby girl).
The one thing I was not prepared for was pity.
In Germany.
In Twothousandandnine.
Because I was expecting a second girl.
"Oh, but  #3 will sure be a boy"
"Ah, we need them too."
"Ehm, congratulations!"
What the fuck were those people thinking?
Let me make it clear, they were not trying to insult or hurt me. None of them was a devout muslim or christian, No ultra-orthodox jew who thanks god for not having him made a woman.
Just ordinary, not very religious in a happy go lucky way people, quite some of them women.
That wasn't the start of my renewed feminist interests, nor was it the end. It was a snapshot, one of a million.
And on my journeys through debates and debacles two books were recommended to me: Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and Cinderella Ate my Daughter by Peggy Orenstein.
First of all, both books are well-written and entertaining to read. They both made me laugh out loud, although it was sometimes one of those bitter laughs you give off when somebody relates a gruesome tale in a funny way.
But it is pretty obvious that one of them is written by a scientist (Cordelia Fine) and the other one by a journalist (Peggy Orenstein), so if you have read neither of them and want to read both of them (and I really recommend both of them, especially if you have a little daughter or granddaughter), I suggest going from Fine to Orenstein, because the knowledge of the scientific background will add much more to Orenstein's vivisection of  the girlie-girl culture than the other way round.
So let me start that way, too:

If you're anyway like me, your copy of Delusions of Gender will become littered with post-its. There's the Ha! I knew it (or at least expected it)- notes, there's the Holy shit, that's even worse than I thought -notes, there's the The next idiot to make that argument will get a thrashing with added bibliography -notes. It really isn't only an educating and entertaining book for one's own enjoyment, it's a weapon. There's somebody with the scientific background who did the work for you AND properly sourced her work. Just what you wanted for christmas for being such a man-hating evil feminazi.
What I really liked was how she didn't only present the science, but also the pitfalls of science. There's probably no other area of science where ideology and biases infiltrate the scientific process as much as the area of sex- and gender-studies. She embeds the current scientific discussions in the centuries of Science proving that women just aren't really people or at least not rational ones.
How come that in this one area scientists often go looking for confirmation of a cultural bias and then take any results they get as evidence without actually showing not only that A exists, but also that it leads to B?
Why are they so eager to put all those actual differences they find down to nature as if their subjects were grown in a sterile lab until the very moment they engaged in that particular study?
Well, Cordelia Fine can't answer those questions either (except with, it's patriarchy, duh, remember, that confirmation bias thingy), but it's good to keep an eye on them.
It helps to understand why all that "sciency" stuff  bothered you when you first read and heard about it (like, why on earth men can't seem to find the milk in the fridge. It's because of mamoths, duh*), not so much because of the conclusions (woman, just get off your ass, get over to that fridge and get that milk, the poor guy is genetically hardwired not to see anything smaller than at least a big deer), but because the argument made no sense. I would have thought that a successfull hunter needed skills like being able to spot and read traces on the ground and remember where he put the fucking spear. Let alone to communicate with his fellow hunters about the best strategy.
So, if you need ammunition, this book is for you. After this, you cannot only point out that this scientism is wrong (no, it's not because the conclusions disagree with our "feminist dogma"), but you can also provide a handy reference as to why that is (because their science is crap).
Cordelia Fine demonstrates brilliantly why affirmative action is still needed because especially people who think themselves to be "unbiased" and "rational" will still base their decisions on those very biases they deny having and then rationalize their biased decisions with seemingly sensible arguments.
But I'm not going to spoil your fun reading anymore. Go get it!

Now to Peggy Orenstein (I'm German, that name is hilarious!). Her book is a very different book, not so much about the science, but about the culture. Not about the whole of women's lives, but about that slice of childhood and adolescence. And it's written not by a scientist, but by a journalist and, of all things, the mother of a little girl. Her writings convey the anger, worries, desperation and helplessness of a mother who, just like me, saw her daughter washed away in a wave of pink princess glitter.
The one feeling I got while reading her book (apart from being thankfull that things are still less extreme here in Europe) was that Cordelia Fine's science somewhat was the easy part, while the parenting is hard.
She deals honestly with the conflicts of a mother who wants to raise her daughter a strong, brave, daring woman, who disapproves of the pink princess-bullshit but who also has to walk the fine line not to disapprove of her daughter as a girl.
Those conflicts aren't easy. How do you teach her that those Disney Princesses are crap and that, you know, those fancy geometrical magnets the boys in kindergarten always play with are actually cool without falling into the old misogynistic trap of painting girl things as inferior and boy things as superior (those magnets ARE cool! I wished I'd had a box of these as a kid)? And on top of all of that, how will that affect your daughter socially if you manage in preserving all the colours of the rainbow instead of limiting it to pink?
I like how she tied it all back to mostly toy manufacturers, Disney and such, how they created that pink princess market that constantly drives a wedge betweens our boys and girls, not out of malice or bad patriarchal inclinations, but just out of the general laws of the greedy, all-devouring market.
It helps remembering Cordelia Fine's chapters about how easily children are manipulated into thinking a toy is for boys/girls (hint, paint it pink/blue), how easily they can be influenced to try out more options and it is incredible how little it is done, falling back on the naturalistic fallacy of Boys/girls are different.
What I found quite enlightening was the fact that up to a certain age children actually think that gender is determined by what you wear/do. It made me wondering if that was partly due to the body-hate we instill into our children from birth on. Sure, first they are wrapped into their diapers, but I remember kids up to school-age running around naked in summer. They don't do anymore, swimming-pools prescribe at least pants. Dolls don't have genitalia and I know that my husband was asked if he was wearing swimming trunks when he takes a bath with the kids.**
So, yes, it makes total sense that children are confused about what makes you male/female apart from haircut and colour codes. It makes sense that they guard the boundaries closely. If we think about how deeply the sense of one's gender is ingrained into us, it must be frightening to believe that you could lose it by accidentially wearing the wrong shirt.
Another part that struck me was that about children and make-up. I mean, sure I would never sign the kids up for a toddler pageant, would I? Or give them lipstick while in kindergarten, right?
Only, thinking about it, the amount of beauty-products they own is frightening. Kiddie soap, bathtub-colour, sparkling purple princess-shampoo, sparkling purple princess spray-on conditioner (disclaimer: that stuff's great, I use it myself), extra-soft kiddie facial cream (OK, I use that, too) and the pink cherry lip-balm (the only way I could get her to use some in winter on cracked, bleeding lips). See, I have good explenations why they have them. And so does the mother who adds a whole cosmetics store for a beauty pageant.
Peggy Orenstein doesn't have the perfect answer. Where draw the line? Was the pink lip-balm too much, setting her onto the path of objectification, making her think that how she looks, her performance are more important than how she feels and what she does?
But she raises your conscience. I'll think twice before buying any "kiddie-cosmetics" again.
She makes you think again. The only advice she can offer is to talk to your daughter, to talk about girls and women in media, about what exactly you dislike about those princesses***. There's a multi-billion dollar industry out there trying to teach your daughter some things, you're absolutely allowed to do so, too.
Having said all this, there's one thing I missed about her book and that was more a matter of style than content. I often had the impression that I was indeed reading a series of newspaper articles. Her red thread, the fact that all those things set out our girls early for a path of self-objectification, alienating them form their own feelings, bodies and sensations, is sometimes getting lost. She wraps it up from time to time, but in between she lost me reading highly entertaining passages about Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears.
So, to sum it up, if you have a (grand)daughter or two especially in the toddler/tween age, go read her book. If you don't, it's still good read. If it doesn't do anything else, at least it will take away your feeling of being the only person on planet earth who hates Cinderella.
My own path? We try to be break up those gender-roles in our own life, although circumstances limit this somewhat. It's become paramount for Mr. to wear yellow, orange, purple T-shirts, the tool box is mummy's toy box and it's important to keep those up when the other one is around. My habit to get into the passenger's seat when Mr. is also at home out of laziness (isn't it nice that he can do the driving sometimes, I have to do it all week so, shared responsibilities it's his job now) made the little one believe that I was only allowed to drive the car when he wasn't around. Which wasn't what was going on in our minds, but in that of our daughter.
*Sigh*
More driving for me then.

P.S. What did I write about this morning? make-up for children? This afternoon they were given sparkly lipgloss. For a 2yo. Seriously. 


*Yes, that's Why men don't listen and women can't read maps.
The very bok that also told me that I am probably lesbian and my husband is gay. At least the ratio of people doing men vs people doing women in our relationship didn't change, so we decided to just stick with each other.
**No, he doesn't. It is one of our principles that there's nothing shamefull about the human body. I want them to know how men and women look, I want them to be comfortable with their bodies and bodies in general and I really, really don't want shame to stop them from telling me if one they the horrible thing of sexual assault should happen to them.
*** Not that easy either, as she notices. How do you explain your preschooler that you think that a doll is inappropriate for her age because she's way too sexualized to be some kind of model for her without explaining "sexualized" in the first place?

Won't somebody think of the fetus!

Or my voyages into the strange land of secular pro-lifers.
Alerted to them by various people on the blogosphere, I decided to go and see for myself what they look like.
If you're curious, go to their blog.
If you want to get the Full Monty for non-sequiturs, read the post on why they think shit about a woman's bodily integrity. But I warn you, you are a troll by default.
So, being interested in what if not baby Jesus can make the fetus a superhuman, I engaged in  discussion. My question was that if I granted the blastocyte/embryo/fetus full personhood and human rights, why on earth should they have more than any other being on this planet. I'm not forced to donate blood, plasma, bone marrow or kidneys, so why should the fetus* have a right to access my bodily resources.
The short answer: because you didn't keep your legs shut, slut!
The commenter, Simon, engaged in a longish exchange about this, trying to give me various analogies as to why I owed the fetus something.

Having said that Anon is wrong you aren't giving the foetus more rights, rather similar 'rights' to other moral agents; and using established moral precepts of moral responsibility and compensation that are already used in society.

It is actually similar to the violinist but instead for consented sex it is the violinist being kidnapped and attached to the individual through the casual consent of that individual. Since you have caused existential dependency you owe compensation to keep the individual alive and since the only compensation applicable is the continued use of the body it isn’t unreasonable to make that the payment. It is only in rape the this doesn’t hold.

So much for the human rights of the fetus. It forfeits them for the crimes of the father. It's kind of funny to see pro-lifers try to get around that problem. Or it would be, if it weren't so damn serious.
You will see a pattern emerge here that Simon couldn't get rid of:
Sex is a crime. At least if you are a woman. He is for full social wellfare so fathers don't have to be burdened with child support:

 No I advocate cancelation of all direct child support for everyone male and female because sicne you have cancelled the male’s stake in his offspring you have effectively cancelled his moral responsibility for said action. Moral parity would demand no say no pay.

I mean, hey, woman, you had sex. You owe the fetus, you have moral responsibility!
Hey, man, you don't own the kids anymore, no consequences for you therefore.
But they really don't hate women...

He tries again:

Thinking about it we can still full moral rights to a rape foetus but unless we force everyone to abrogate bodily autonomy to save a life, those full moral rights are trumped by bodily autonomy when no moral responsibility is involved.

Keep. Your. Legs. Shut. If you don't, you owe the fetus. If you didn't actually consent to the sex, the fetus is out. But if you actually had consensual sex, you have forfeited your right to bodily autonomy.

I tried to argue that the established moral precedent is that you owe legal responsibility (also, the creation of the fetus seems to cause harm to the fetus in and on itself) and financial compensation, but you never have to sacrifice your body. Just. Doesn't. Happen.

So, we're talking kidneys now:

...what if -using an argument put forward by a Pro-Choice philiosopher David Boonin- YOU CAUSED an infant to need a organ transplant or they will die and you are the only match?

You could choose to let the infant die and you go to jail -or maybe even executed since you might be in Texas-or you donate the organ?

You caused the harm/dependency you owe compensation.

Again: having sex = crime, or at least reckless, becoming pregnant = harm. Will you be surprised to say that he didn't get when I pointed out that the crime or reprehensible act actually happened before the question of the kidney arose and is a criminal act indipendently of whether I choose to donate or not?

He also totally isn't equating sex with crime, no no:

& no as I see it having sex isn't the crime, nor getting pregnant. It depends on the analogy.

It's all about the analogy. Funny thing is, when I learned about analogies, they were supposed to be likewise or equal scenarios, especially when talking about morally reprehensible/criminal acts.

So, since I didn't like his previous analogies, he tries again:

If you caused a infant to need an organ transplant because you stored toxic waste in their home and you were the only one who was the match; are you saying you shouldn't be punished? But hey you didnt intend for that to happen so you aren't responsible.

Sex = Storing toxic waste
Pregnancy = Punishment

But, you see, the problem is me:

Looks like you cannot understand the analogy, the point of the toxic waste was to show it was an indirect causal event that lead to the harm, he didnt intend to give the kid a disease. Next Boonin points out even when we cause indirect harm we are morally responsible and can owe compensation. It might not have precedent but the underlying principle is still there.

Again, my body seems to be the appropriate compensation.
After all I'm responsible.

Oh, and talking about responsibility...
Question:

Also, do you think that women should be held criminally accountable for damage they caused to the fetus during pregnancy because they smoked, drank, handled a dangerous toxin?
Should a woman who has a traffic accident and consequently suffers a miscarriage be punished like a woman who runs over a 6 year old?

Answer:

Nxt Ano Troll yes I think a woman should be held accountable for such damage and there are in fact laws to that effect in some countries. & yes if she has a accident through negligent driving she should be punished as others in fact are by child destruction laws in my state.

Charming, isn't he?

So, his toxic waste didn't win me over, so he needed something better. This time his analogy contained sex!

So the act of having sex means you are immune to punishment or moral responsibility? Say a partner who knows they has HIV has sex thats ok no punishment because sex is normal?

So, yeah, having sex is just like infecting somebody with a deadly disease on purpose. If you're a woman, of course.

Also:

Ano Troll thanks for demonstrating you are such a douche.

That's me. I'm a bit proud of myself

There was a bit about that fucking "post birth abrtion paper". I knew we'd get that crap rubbed in  our faces. Now we want to kill real babies!
That's because there's actually better eating on them.

*I'm just using fetus from now on, I can trust you to know the differences

Rape, statistics, criteria and probability

Since this has come up again and again in discussions about Schrödinger's rapist, I thought I'd put together something about statistics and probabilities, which is something most people don't really understand.
Not that I was a mathematician or something, so, it's a layperson's explication for laypeople.
If I make factual errors please correct me.
The latest example of this is in The Crommunist's excellent post on Racism and Schrödinger's Rapist.
Here are the facts people can mostly agree on (I'm too lazy to link the sources right now. Ask me and I'll do so):

• Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 4 women are raped during their lifetime.
• They are alsmost exclusively raped by men (98%)
• Between 1 in 15 and 1 in 20 men are rapists.
• Most women are raped by someone they know, only about 3% of women are raped by a stranger.

Those are pretty scary statistics, but they look a lot better once you turn them around:

• 75-86% of women are never raped
• 93-95% of men are not rapists
• The stranger on the street is safer than the acquaintance who's giving you a ride home.

Therefore, people argue, it is unfair to contemplate the idea that a random stranger you meet at night in a dark area might be a rapist. The chances of being raped there and then are very small. It's also unfair to make this decision due to the sex of the person. After all, they also all have 2 eyes and I don't treat 2-eyed people as potential rapists.

There are several problems with this which I'll try to show.

1) Probability never hits the individual with 3%. Any risk/chance is calculated on a large number of data. When the actual event happens, there's only 1 or 0: you don't win the lottery 1:480.000.000. You either win it, or you don't. While it is a fact that the chances of winning the lottery are extremely small, people do indeed win the lottery.
Smaller example: When you throw a dice, the chance of rolling a 6 is 1 in 6. And the average number you roll is 3.5. The moment you throw it, the chances break down. The number is cast and you'll never roll a 3.5.

2) 3% isn't a small number. 5% isn't a small number. If you get that much interest, or have to pay it, you notice 3% quickly.
Walk along highstreet and count the women. Statiscally, number 6, 12, 18, 24 have been raped by somebody they know, number 30 by a stranger.
Count the men. Number 20 is a rapist (statistically. Don't do this with a group of people you know, it might drive you nuts). He has raped an average 6 times.
How many times can you repeat that exercise until you reach your office/the supermarket/etc?

3) Those numbers are people. The example above should have demonstrated that we're talking indeed about a lot of people. Above, we just assigned the value rape survivor / rapist by statistics. You have no clue who they actually are. Probably the first man you met was the rapist, maybe none in the first 20 was a rapist, but 16, 17 and 18 in the second set of 20. As long as there are no additional criteria/information, you cannot tell. And you ignore the peril at your own risk.

4) There are necessary conditions, sufficient conditions and red herrings.
The fact that all rapists have (more or less) two eyes is not in any way corelated with rape. It's a logical conclusion of them being humans. As a criterium to distinguish between potential rapists and harmless people, it's absolutely useless, since I cannot eliminate anybody by that.
If I want to be aware of poisonous snakes and be able to tell them from harmless snakes, "no legs" is a useless criterium.
Other criteria make more sense. The fact that most rapists are men is more usefull*. Now, as people rightly pointed out, viewing all men as potential rapists doesn't make much sense either, not any more than all grey snakes when, although all poisonous snakes were grey, only 5% of grey snakes are poisonous. But, honestly, which snake would you be more wary of if you found it on your terrace, the grey one or the green one?
So we add more criteria. Is he trying to isolate me? Is he getting uncomfortably close in a lone area? Does he follow me into confined spaces? Now, none of those criteria necessarily mean rapist. There are perfectly non-rapy reasons for doing so, maybe he doesn't notice that he's isolating me, or he really just wants to be helpfull and make sure that I get home safely. Maybe he's just heading home. Maybe he just confused the doors because he's a bit drunk himself.
Fact is, although those behaviours might be harmless, they are also the exact same behaviours a rapist would show. Those are, so to speak, necessary conditions for a rapist. But they are not sufficient conditions. The sufficient condition is the rape. That's when you cast the die and if it comes down as a six you're raped. So, is it reasonable to wait until that moment, or should you avoid rolling the die?
Maybe this grey, 2m long snake with the checkered pattern is completely harmless and just mimicking the looks of the poisonous 2m checkered grey snake, but since you can't tell until you're attacked, is it reasonable to be carefull with all 2m checkered grey snakes?


*What did I just say about numbers? 4 in 1000 women are raped by women. But I'm lacking data about how many women are raped by strange women. I don't think the numbers are the same, but just for the sake of the argument, let's use the same numbers as for men:
15% strangers: 6 in 10.000 women are raped by a strange woman.
Each rapist rapes about 4 new victims (they rape 6 times, the difference is due to women being victimized more than once), so 1 in 1000 women you meet is a rapist.

5) Schrödinger's anybody
In our daily lives, we engage in a lot of Schrödingers'.
-If you drive a car, you engage in Schrödinger's reckless driver. You monitor those around you for potential mistakes and outright violations. If you have right of way and a car approaches, you assess the situation, you watch it the other driver slows down to yield or not.
Does that mean you accuse the other driver unfairly of being an incompetent idiot who can't drive?

-If you engage in casual sex, you find it reasonable to use a condom for protection. Does that mean that you unfairly accuse the other person of having an STD?

-If you shield the panel while at the ATM, do you unfairly accuse the person behind you of being a criminal?

-If you don't open your door for a stranger while alone at home, are you unfairly accusing the other person of being a burglar?

If your answer is no to all the above, why are you upset at women being wary around strange men in a dark car-park.

Boy or girl?

,

If you know me, you probably know the answer.
If you don't, so what?
Please, don't pressure the kids into some stereotypeor other.

Take the above as a picture of a kid.

The rational debate

Well, people engaging in the ongoing debate about sexism in atheist/skeptic communities have been throughly chastized by D.J. Grothe from the JREF:

I think as skeptics, it behooves us to be a bit more generous with others in disagreement, to be slower to vilify, and to engage in less scorched-earthing. I know it may be good for blog hits, but it is bad for skepticism and in my view, is antithetical to our values.

He also thinks that we are too much engaging in groupthink:

And I do believe that much atheist and skeptic blogging engages in far too much in-group/out-group categorizing, us vs. them thinking.

Basically, both sides are equally bad and should just stop. We also have to be nice to people who threaten women with violence that women calling them out are unfair.

So, let's see how actually both sides are equally bad and what the people engaged on the other side are actually making as arguments:

Note: This is intended to be an ongoing collection for handy reference. Please post your examples as comments with attribution.

Tube Worm on the CFI blog #166

It’s nice to see Watson, Myers, and their legions upon legions of  fem-zombies continuing their project to hijack the skeptical movement to push their radical leftist political agenda. Over the last year I’ve seen this movement devolve into a PC-whitewash fest in which dissenters are tarred and feathered as “sexists” and “mysoginists, vitriole has come to replace reasoned debate, and fuzzy PoMo critical-theory reasoning has become a stand-in for science and evidence. If this keeps on, the skeptical movement will have to abandon science altogether, lest we offend anyone with “sexed” equations like E=mc^2, which clearly “privileges” (*vomit*) light over energy.

And that's not the end of it.
Here's his characterization of the whole  debate (#175):

Hi David,
Welcome to the Skeptical Movement’s version of the Cultural Revolution!
I’m not sure what happened, but at some point over the  previous year, skepticism suddenly lost interest in science and critical thinking and suddenly began to resemble a freshman sociology class at a third-tier liberal arts college.  Skeptical discussion became less of a reasoned debate about facts and evidence and more about upholding a far-left PC worldview and purging and ostracizing those who don’t toe the line. As in certain religious movements and cults, those who poke the new Sacred Cows (I.e deviating from the party line on issues of gender, sexuality, and leftist politics in general) become victims of online lynch mobs and character assassination—not unlike the way the Athiest Movement attempted to silence atheists who were opposed to a militant approach to discussion with people of faith.
 At the heart of the shitstorm are certain personalities of questionable motives who are jockeying for leadership, control of the agenda and discourse, and who are attempting to purge the “old guard.” As usual, politics ruins everything and like you, I have lost all interest in participating or contributing to this movement. 

If he could just do as he says...

Liam is very disappointed with us:

Wow, reading the reactions have left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve always considered myself pro-feminist. But looking at the hysterical reactions in these blogs, the attempted character assassination, the extremely disappointing personal attacks in the blog post. And the extremely low level of discourse on a subject that really needs a rational consideration rather than succumbing to the heat of emotion that such subjects as these make it easy to fall into.
But it does seem that such a touchy and important subject like this in this self proclaimed skeptical community are not immune to these horrible non arguments and character attacks by community spokespeople and rank and file alike.
If these are the sort of tools we use in womens advocacy, then count me out.

 Wilt informs us that it's all Rebecca's fault:

Professional victim and blaming 50% of the population is not fair. Plus, it’s now “not my opinion, STFU”.
Rebecca has hurt more people. And turned off more women, that don’t want to associated or represented by the skepchicks, mainly Rebecca Watson. The quality of the posts and posters at Skepchick reflects this change. Yes, women need to be represented more and respected more. But not lectured and nagged… instead included and brought into the discussion.

 He also informs us that (comment #4):

Rebecca lives for the imagined sexist slant from anyone on her “hit list”.  She can’t NOT keep looking for it.  She can’t deal with it in a creative responsible way.  She deals with the slights to women the way the CHURCH deals with slights to their theology.  With GUILT and finger pointing.  Ben, has crossed the Rebeca line, and must pay.  I don’t know where she went to church but she learned her lessons well. 

 And Ben Radford explicitly demands a rational and respectful discussion like this:

...and it's clear Rebecca enjoys being outraged at various things. It's often the case that outrage and insults substitute for truth and accuracy; it's easier to call someone stupid than it is to engage them respectfully.

 Collection ongoing...

Misronen, outraged that somebody could like Rebecca Watson better than Rick Gervais beats the straw rapist:
After being asked by janine: whether

“Is it because I do not have a problem with a rad-fem like Rebecca Watson. (Does that make me a rad-fem?)”

the badly prosecuted misronen asnwers:

I honestly don’t know. Does the fact that I do make me a potential rapist / a rape apologist / full-fledged rapist (apparently on the loose)? I don’t know that either. Maybe I’m just confused.

 Huskvarna gets all upset because the readers of Blaghag gave Rebecca Watson an award. How could they, she did something stupid on the internet 3 years ago!

Here’s a critique for you:
Rebecca accidentally got moderator privileges on JREF following the rescindment of a suspension. She then immediately abused those privileges by banning a bunch of people she didn’t like, then got permabanned by the JREF staff who understandably didn’t want Comrade Commissar Watson running around deciding what opinions people are allowed to have:

 I'm not sure if Emil Karlson isn't a Poe:

It is sad to see that Heina has sunken to the level of pseudoskepticism by primarily using anecdotes in the justification that sexism is a significant problem in the skeptic community.
Just as we reject anecdotes when it comes to claimed “alternative” cures of cancer or the efficacy of psychics, so too must we reject anecdotes when it comes to this subject.
Your initial attitude may be one of disbelief, objecting to this “dismissal of women’s experiences”, but you must understand that we do this without any problems whatsoever in other areas. To be consistent skeptics, we must apply the same rational criticisms to our favorite positions. We cannot shield them from criticism just because they are dear to us.
Anecdotes are not scientific evidence as there is no independent confirmation of the truth of these anecdotes (some are labeled as “anonymous” so they could, hypothetically, have been made up on the spot), and it is not necessarily the case that these anecdotes are representative of the experience of women in the skeptic community overall.
Another shameful entry from people who know better.
A recommendation for the future is to discuss the actual scientific literature on the topic of sexism (using it to support and strengthen your positions), while making sure not to draw conclusions not warranted by the evidence and _only then_ talk about future prospects and directions (e. g. suggesting partial, evidence-based solutions).
That will be a much more persuasive strategy and will leave critics with no where to go.

SkepticAtheist is also very, very disappointed with us:

Freefromthoughts’ blogs never ceases to amaze me. This baboon board has hit a new low. Now there’s even more blogging about problems which Greta created, which her and her minions fueled, with no mention of their attacks on Ryan, how they goaded him, misquoted him, used him as their scapegoat to vent their hostility, and with no mention that Ryan sarcastically posted on his own wall [in his screenshots] about the attacks made against him.

 And then there's Ryan himself.
He became part of the debate when he posted this on Facebook (link goes to Greta Christina):

Fuck you Greta. You’re the troll. You posted for the sole reason of trying to bait a sexist into writing something threatening. You didn’t find one, but I dared to disagree with you, so you and your brainless followers thought ‘eh, fuck it, close enough. We’ll attack him instead.’ You’ve been capitalizing on this for months and perpetuating vicious stereotypes about both men and women, under the guise of ‘feminism’. I used to think you had something to contribute. Now I see you’re just a pathetic attention seeker who isn’t interested in anything other than stirring up shit.

 His excuse? Women made him do so!

I encountered the same hostile insults on Greta’s wall, and you’re actually wondering why I lost my temper? Figure it out

You can be what you want in your dreams, except a woman

I've been reading and thinking about gender and transgender a lot, lately (I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Skepchick has launched a sister-site called Queerika. What's a straight cis woman like me doing there? Well, shutting up and listening. Learning. I feel privileged to be able to do so.)
And so it came that a little remark made by a friend lately got me all going.
My kids love playing make-believe. We spend half the days as characters from their favourite books/ movies or animals. So, lately we were playing Winnie-the-Pooh and my oldest daughter handed out the roles. She was Tigger, her sister was Roo, I was Rabbit and then she told her dad that he was Mummy Heffalump.
To which she was chastized by a well-meaning, but absolutely clueless friend that "oh, but your dad can't be Mummy Heffalump, he's a boy, not a girl!".
Thankfully, my husband glossed over the awkward moment by saying that he'd love to be Mummy Heffalump, because he loves Heffalumps and because she's so strong .
BUt there were two things about our friend's remark thst struck me:
First, she never said a thing when the three women in the room turned into male characters*.
Secondly, it was absolutely possible that the dad got turned into a purple, giant, elephant-like creature that can tear up whole trees. It was not possible that he got turned into a woman.
Because that's truely unheard of.

*Most series don't even come with three female characters we could use

What does it matter to you?

I've been reading some of Natalie's fantastic articles on gender, transgender and privilege on Skepchick lately, and I've been wondering: Why do people care so much?
I don't mean on a personal, intimate, concrete level. I admit that I don't know what would happen if my husband came out as transgender, but somehow I doubt that I need to worry much about this possibility. And as a straight, cisgender, married woman, the whole business is pretty far removed from my personal life.
That's what makes me wonder:
Why do other people care so much? Even people who are not bigots, who consider themselves to be allies.
Why?
Why do people feel entitled to give a different asnwer to the question "Is somebody male/female " than the actual person it concerns?
I have no answer. Do you?