Beyoncé's Feminism

Let me start by saying that I neither love nor hate the music and performances of Beyoncé. I'm not even familiar with them. Couldn't give the title of a single song off the top of my head. (I don't listen to a lot of pop music except what I catch on the radio while driving whenever I'm bored with NPR.) Being neither a fan nor a hater, I'm in a good position to dispassionately evaluate the approach in which Beyoncé has promoted feminism as of late, and the media response to her approach.

If you haven't seen the performance, here it is, and I recommend watching it. I just did, and first and foremost it is 14 minutes of mesmerizing vocals and choreography. During part of the song Flawless, words defining and advocating feminism from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (an African writer also known for her TED talk) flash across a giant screen. You can read the full lyrics of the song which include Adichie's statements in verse 2 here.

Editor of the Federalist Mollie Hemingway lays down pretty typical conservative spin on this, claiming that Beyoncé's performance at the VMAs proves "feminism right now is an incoherent mess of double standards." Hemingway's reasoning is that Beyoncé's hyper-sexual performance is at odds with feminist objections to the objectification of women. The problem is, even if one finds the sexual segments of the medley too bawdy to be in good taste, the performance doesn't read as objectification. The gist is clearly that the woman is being sexual assertive and seeking her own sexual gratification as much as that of her partner. The most sexual part of the entire performance is followed up by the voice of Adichie (and her words projected on the backdrop), commenting, "We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boy are." Beyoncé is certainly an exhibitionist, but that she does it for her own gain and pleasure is made explicit. 

Megyn Kelly who interviews Hemingway snarkily comments, "But she's okay with 'Bow down bee-otch" (her mis-pronunciation proving that Kelly hasn't actually watched the performance or know those lyrics in their full context.) The line "bow down bitches" is chanted as a challenge to other women to acknowledge, value, and be inspired by Beyoncé's ambition and success that goes beyond the domestic sphere. Again, the lyrics from Adichie in the song read, "We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men." Oh, those pesky details getting in the way of Hemingway's and Kelly's conservative spin. 

Hemingway makes a judgmental comment about Beyoncé as a parent in this article, saying: 

I mean, it wasn't totally usual in that Beyoncé's toddler child was in the audience to witness all this dry-humping and simulated getting down, but other than that, your typical Beyoncé. 

I am perfectly comfortable with either of my toddler children watching this performance, because first of all, they wouldn't even understand the most sexually explicit lyrics (and by the time they do understand, they'll be mature enough to process it), and in case anyone hasn't noticed, we live in a culture that is absolutely saturated with sexually suggestive images of women. Does Hemingway never notice billboards or magazine covers featuring women in provocative outfits giving bedroom eyes to the viewer with their lips suggestively parted that are everywhere? At least in Beyoncé's performance the glittery butts are attached to professional dancers who are not just on display for us to gawk, but actually engaged in an impressive dance routine. 

The biggest problem with Mollie Hemingway's criticism of feminism is that what might appear as an incoherent mess can be pretty quickly sorted out if one bothers to take a close enough look.

I'm not going to go into details that anyone can look up on Wikipedia, but I can put this particular performance in some context. After all the major successes of what is often called first wave feminism (voting and property rights) and second wave feminism (reproductive rights, equal opportunity in jobs and education, changes in attitudes regarding gender roles) we entered into an era where feminism is suffering from its own success. Some leaders in the movement thought the next big fight should be against abuses of women in the sex industry (sometimes dubbed "anti-porn feminists"), but there was backlash against those leaders because some anti-porn feminists allied with religious conservatives, and also because it could be perceived as an attack on women who work in the sex industry, including those who enjoy and make a good living off their work. Thus we had the birth of sex-positive feminism, which emphasizes women's sexual freedom as a fundamental to the goals of the feminist movement.

While there are still anti-porn feminists, it is clear that sex-positive feminists are winning that war. Beyonce's uber-sexually titillating performance juxtaposed with the feminist label is nothing new. Candida Royalle is a former porn actress who produces and directs pornographic films for couples and which specifically aim to appeal to female sexual desire. Feminists Against Censorship is an organization in the UK whose mission is to prevent censorship, particularly of materials with sexual content. Hell, just check out sex-positive feminist Annie Sprinkle's website.

There is a middle ground between the extremes of Andrea Dworkin who wrote "No woman needs intercourse, few women escape it." and Camille Pagilia, who justified "certain forms of rape" as "what used to be called unbridled love."

I suspect that most feminists, such as myself, fall in this middle ground. I wouldn't label myself an "anti-porn feminist" because I think porn, while often a shady, manipulative and degrading (to both men and women) industry, can and often is produced under ethical conditions. Similarly, I'm also not against legal prostitution across the board, but I am deeply concerned about how any form of prostitution - legal or otherwise - is run and regulated, given the abuses common to that industry.

While I'm totally cool with Beyoncé's hyper-sexual VMA performance as the act of a particular artist in the appropriate venue for such a performance, I am disturbed by the omnipresence of images of women displayed in a cheap, narrow, and generically titillating fashion for the real purpose of making a quick buck. Context matters. 

This issues are not black and white. They are not simple. Of course there will be endless debate within the feminist movement. That doesn't change the fact that issues of inequality exist and call out for research and thoughtful discussion followed by plans of action. Feminism is the social movement that specifically addresses issues of sexual inequality. And, gee, sorry if that gets complicated because the world is complicated. When Mollie Hemingway dismisses feminism as meaningless, she undermines the work of grassroots feminists who are working to achieve and maintain sexual equality.

I do think some of the liberal, feminist response to Beyoncé's VMA performance is rather over-enthusiastic. 

Jessica Bennett wrote in Time that Beyoncé has "accomplished what feminists have long struggled to do: She’s reached the masses." She goes on:

Universally loved, virtually unquestioned, and flawless, the 33-year-old entertainer seems to debunk every feminist stereotype you’ve ever heard. Beyoncé can’t be a man-hater – she’s got a man (right?). Her relationship – whatever you believe about the divorce rumors – has been elevated as a kind of model for egalitarian bliss: dual earners, adventurous sex life, supportive husband and an adorable child held up on stage by daddy while mommy worked. Beyoncé’s got the confidence of a superstar but the feminine touch of a mother. And, as a woman of color, she’s speaking to the masses – a powerful voice amid a movement that has a complicated history when it comes to inclusion.

Oh, yes, it is totally refreshing and exciting for sex-positive, third-wave feminists to see a successful, talented, black woman taking ownership of the feminist label in the expressive languages of R&B, hip hop, and soul. But how much of what Bennett writes is hopeful hype? Clearly Beyoncé is a talented artist and super-celebrity, but when it comes to the shifting socio-political landscape with regards to women's equality, is she taking us in a new direction, or really just part of a tide that was already moving that way? 

Amanda Marcotte writing for Slate, remarks: 

Having dismantled the idea that feminists are just ugly wannabes during her performance, she might as well clean house by smashing the notion that feminists hate men or are somehow not maternal.

Oh give me a break. There are plenty of self-declared feminists out there who are, while not as stunning as Beyoncé, perfectly attractive, happily married, and mothers, so as far as I can tell, the accusations from assholes like Rush Limbaugh that feminists are "ugly" and "man-haters" should have been laughed into oblivion the moment he said them. And yet they weren't. Stereotypes of feminists as ugly, bitter man-haters took hold and continue to thrive.

Those who perpetuate or who eagerly accept those stereotypes will not be moved to change their minds by Beyoncé. Like Mollie Hemingway, conservatives are mocking the idea of Beyoncé as a feminist, using her VMA performance as proof that feminism is contradictory and meaningless, and then just for good measure, shaming Beyoncé for being, as Megyn Kelly puts it, skanky. 

What Amanda Marcotte suggests is that feminism needs a ridiculously gorgeous performer who wears scantily clad clothing and dances and sings in a manner that would rival the greatest stripper act in its ability to titillate the average straight man in order to refute the stereotypes of feminists as ugly man-haters. But we don't, and we never did.

Fans of Beyoncé who are totally ignorant of feminist history and current issues and grassroots action might take an interest in it because of her, but I doubt we're suddenly going to see a surge in feminist activism or a big bump in the percentage of people labeling themselves "feminist" any time soon. 

Indeed, what good does the trendy rebranding of the "feminist" label do to achieve actual equality of the sexes? Lauren Duca writing for Huffington Post points out that Beyoncé championed feminism in the midst of an award show rife with old-fashioned sexist behavior. She writes:

The VMAs are like a petri dish for all of the misogynistic crap in the music industry: It is the reality of refusing to accept women as legitimate artists and reducing them to sexual objects boiled down into a handy two-hour television special.

Duca concludes that Beyoncé's efforts are futile unless the label and definition of feminism she promotes are taken into action. 

Beyonce isn't just hot in the sense that she turns on most men (and no doubt a lot of women, too.) She's hot in the sense that she's known and adored by the general public. She has reached the apex of popularity. It's called pop culture for a reason. Feminism is not hot. It's not popular. So those devoted to the feminist cause and the feminist label are getting a huge charge out of it being adopted and promoted by such a hot celebrity. That's great and all, but I'm skeptical that it goes any deeper than that. 

America Needs Quality, Subsidized Day Care

Me working  a job while recovering from having my first
child. As an independent contractor, if I didn't work, I didn't
get paid. 

 I have three jobs. One is full time, two are part time. Only one pays, and not much. 

I am not alone. 

My first, full time job is as a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). 23% of American moms with kids under age 15, and 35% with kids under age 6 stay home. Such work is always unpaid, and always more than the typical 40 hour work week. It's a job we can never leave. The kids are there in the morning needing to be changed and dressed, taken to school, play dates, classes and practices, fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner, helped with their homework, bathed, and gotten ready for bed. Many of these moms are single, and many others have husbands who work long hours and/or commute to jobs, causing them to come home late and exhausted. 

It's a big risk being a SAHM. Even for those of us who are married to spouses with well-paying jobs with good benefits, the divorce rate is still high, and sometimes spouses die or become disabled. For a parent who stops working for years to take care of children, going back to work in later life poses all kinds of challenges, and our life-time earning potential has been drastically lowered. 

On the other hand, many SAHMs express deep fulfillment in this practice. I know I feel grateful for all the time I spend with my daughters, how much I get to see them grow up, and how I'm building a bond and memories that the three of us will cherish for our lifetimes. 

Everything in life is give and take. 

My second job, as an artist and writer, is also mostly unpaid. I manage to put in an average of 20 hours a week in my studio making woodcuts and doing blogging and social networking to "raise my platform", and sending my work out to agents, editors, and galleries. I do this work while my littlest one is napping and my older child is at school, and after they go to bed at night. I rarely go to sleep before midnight. In my studio I'm surrounded by to-do lists and self-set deadlines to keep myself focused. 

In addition to fulfilling my creative and intellectual needs, my work as an artist gives me a huge sense of personal accomplishment and sense of career status. When strangers ask me or my husband what I do, we talk about my art - where I'm showing, the book I'm trying to sell, the new book I'm working on. After all, only other parents really want to hear much about my kids, and even then talking about the kids can get tedious. 

Me working on a book at the kitchen table in between
making dinner and getting kids ready for bed.

But as I said, this rarely pays. I sell a few, small prints on Etsy every month. I earn a paltry amount through Google Ads. The last arts and crafts sale I did, after the table fee, brought in only $25.00. I scored an agent, but she wasn't able to sell my book for me, so now I'm again at square one with that project, adding to the pile of things to do. It is a daily struggle to keep myself feeling confident that eventually I'll hit my "tipping point" and make some real income. 


My third job is as a part time art teacher. I must do this to bring in extra income because my husband's pay alone isn't quite enough to support our family. I work through non-profits and art centers. It pays a decent hourly wage, but I get hardly any hours, and those I do get require a lot of babysitting trades with other parents to cover childcare. When all the extras are added up, it's really not much more than minimum wage for a few hours a week. 

I am one of the lucky moms. My marriage is strong, and my husband has a good job. Without his gainful employment, my art career would go comatose, despite years and thousands of dollars in investment. I also have enough family support to get us through rough patches. If things for me keep going the way they have (fingers crossed), odds are I will eventually hit that sought after "tipping point", so that by the time my kids are grown, I might actually have a full time paying career as an artist and writer. 

But what about the moms without supportive spouses who can pay the bills? The ones without extended family who can help out? 

Today in America, women are under-represented in politics, business, STEM fields, the arts, just about everywhere. And not for lack of women getting the degrees and having the potential to be hugely influential in all those segments of society. Do we really wonder why? Do we really think we can fix this problem by merely giving women lip service and the encouragement to "lean in"? 

Typically, the only subsidized early childhood care in America is for poor parents, and most of these programs, including Head Start, are at facilities where those children are segregated from their more affluent counterparts. 

In general, day care in America is associated with substandard early childhood care, which is one reason why so many parents who can manage to avoid it, do. But in many other industrialized nations, publicly subsidized day care, which is accessible to all families, often on a sliding scale based on income, is of high quality and embraced by parents. Just look at France. 

American parents seem increasingly convinced that children fare better with a parent at home than in center-based care, but there is little to no scientific evidence for this. Consider: 

Multiple studies, including the NICHD study, have found that, after statistically adjusting for the effects of social class and other potential confounders, kids enrolled in high quality child care given by nonrelatives develop slightly better cognitive and language skills—as measured at various points in their lives, all the way up through age 15—than do kids in low-quality care. These beneficial effects are more pronounced for low-income kids than children from more affluent families and for kids in center-based care than other types of care. The NICHD study also compared children in child care to children who stayed at home with their mothers for the first three years of their lives, and the ones at home fared somewhere in the middle: They scored better on verbal comprehension tests at age 3 than did kids in low-quality care, but they scored worse on language tests at age 2 than kids in medium- and high-quality care. Interestingly, studies suggest that the cumulative amount of time kids spend in care makes little difference when it comes to scores; what matters is whether they go at all and if it’s good or bad.

In her article The Dark Side of Preschool, Gwen Dewar compared studies of American center-based care to a study done in Norway. Although more studies need to be done to come to a better understanding of how center-based care impacts children, there is some evidence that it is largely the quality of care that makes a difference, not whether children are at home or in a day care center. 

So if Zachrisson’s team found no evidence that preschool attendance causes behavior problems, that might be because preschool in Norway is better. 

The question becomes this: how can we make center-based care in the United States as good as it is in other developed nations? In addition to integrating programs that separate the poor and middle class, another no-brainer seems to simply subsidize care so that we can afford to raise the professional standards for those who work in day care centers and preschools.

Childcare workers are often paid a paltry sum, despite frequent requirements for degrees in Early Childhood Education and having to work year round and longer hours than school teachers. The average hourly wage of these workers is less than $10 an hour. Even in New York City, day care workers are paid an average of $25,000 a year - barely a living wage! This leads to high turnover, low status, and staff burnout, not exactly a formula for quality child care. 

We Americans need to ask ourselves what sort of society do we want to be? One where women are equally represented in every career field while our children receive loving, quality care from well-respected child care professionals, or one where we turn back the clock to the days when women took a back seat to our husbands running the world while we stayed home and changed diapers, regardless of our educational backgrounds, talents, and aspirations. 

I'm raising two little girls. Right now I tell them that they can be whatever they want to be so long as they work hard. But I know that's only a half truth. When my girls come of age, will I have to change my tune and tell them that they will probably have to choose between fulfilling their career dreams, or having kids while being financially dependent on a spouse and setting their careers back at least a decade? I dearly hope that they and none of the other American women of their generation will have to make that choice. 

Women In Art, Forgotten and Ignored

The Wounded Deer by Frida Kahlo

Every year Camp Quest, a summer camp for secular humanist kids, puts together famous freethinkers cards to educate the campers about the many individuals who, without religion or faith, made significant contributions to history.

I was contacted by some Camp Quest organizers who were seeking examples of women artists. So far the only one they had come up with was Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist popularized in America by the film starring Salma Hayek, and known for her often surreal and autobiographical paintings. 

I ended up highly recommending they use Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, and Yoko Ono, as all three are confirmed non-theists and big names in the art world. It does somewhat sadden me that even among college educated people, only one of these three is commonly known, and she's mostly famous for being married to John Lennon. 

Portrait of Victorine Meurent by Annie Kevans

As both an artist and parent of a little girl who loves to paint, I was thrilled to hear about Annie Kevan's new exhibition: Women and the History of Art. It is a series of delicate, yet stark and emotionally charged portraits of women artists, prominent in their time but largely forgotten by history. 

Nell Frizzell of the Guardian writes: 

(Annie Kevans) has now painted more than 30 portraits of successful women who have been smudged out of the history of art for a new exhibition. Women like Victorine Meurent, who was an artist in her own right as well as one of Manet's muses, or Suzanne Valadon, who became the first female painter admitted to France's Société Nationale des Beaux Arts are among the women who are only now being singled out by later generations (Kevans's work follows the BBC's recent Story of Women and Art).

Palm Sunday, the only surviving example of
painting by Victorine Meurent.

I was surprised to learn that Victorine Meurent (the nude model in two of Manet's most famous works: The Luncheon On the Grass and Olympia) was an artist who regularly exhibited in the juried shows of the Paris Salon. Alas, when I went in search of examples of her work, I discovered that there is only one surviving work! 

There is plenty of lamentation these days about the lack of women in STEM fields, despite the fact that women are often well represented as students in STEM at the academic level. 

But these same trends exist in the field of visual arts. 

As one can tell from a stroll through any art museum, women artists in general have never been well represented. The numbers today are still rather bleak. Less than 5% of the artists featured in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, and startlingly, the numbers at the Museum of Modern Art aren't much better!  

Despite the fact that in the 1970's (and also today) women were earning more than half of all graduate degrees in studio arts (source), less than half of full time professors of art are women, and only 30% of the artists represented by professional galleries are women. (source.) Similarly, women artists are featured only about 30% of the time in reviews and articles of ARTnews and Art in America. 

Shamsia Hassani, an Afghan graffiti artist

Given all the female talent coming out of academia with BFA and MFA degrees, academic awards and solid portfolios, why the inequality in professional representation? 

It is here that the sexism inherent in American society is most evident. Evaluation of the quality and significance of works of art is a largely subjective practice. Expectations and standards evolve over time based on the ever-changing values and conditions of the society from which the artwork emerges. When only a slice of societal perspectives is represented by the dominant institutions and publications, history is bound to be skewed, and social progress stunted. 

In is alarming, for instance, that Juxtapoz, a magazine covering the underground art scene, including graffiti, street art, erotica and illustration, features very few women artists (but plenty of casually sexist imagery without critical commentary), sometimes having whole issues which include not a single woman artist. This despite the fact that there are plenty up-and-coming female illustrators, creators of erotica, and street artists out there to profile, interview, and critique. 

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, an American street artist

Critics, curators, dealers, and editors need to wake up to the sexist biases that influence their choices of what to write about, exhibit, and feature. They need to cultivate an awareness of the broader society and make real efforts to seek out the art (which does already exist!) that gives voice to historically marginalized groups, including not only women, but people of color, ethnic minorities, and LGBT people. 

Moreover, just like Annie Kevans, we need to remember the women artists forgotten by history; bring them back to prominence, and teach about them to our daughters who long to be artists. 

The summer of 1995, when I was a senior in high school, I spent 5 weeks in Mexico learning their language and culture. During that time I had the great privilege to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City. The building (La Casa Azul) had been Kahlo's home. Many of the rooms have been kept as they were when the artist was alive. It was a hauntingly intimate experience. I felt a bit as if I'd stepped into someone's home, uninvited. 

In one room I noticed a pillow with the hand-embroidered inscription: 

No me olvides, mi amor. 

Friendly Atheist Gives a Platform to Anti-Choice Atheists

Hemant Mehta, of the popular blog Friendly Atheist has twice in one month given a platform to anti-choice activists who act under the banner of freethought. This comes at the same time as President of American Atheists David Silverman's statement:

I will admit there is a secular argument against abortion. You can’t deny that it’s there, and it’s maybe not as clean cut as school prayer, right to die, and gay marriage.

As a humanist and feminist (I used to think I could just say "humanist" and that then "feminist" would then be assumed. Now I'm starting to wonder), I am deeply disturbed by this, and dearly hope it is not reflective of a shift in the tide regarding abortion rights.

Back to the Friendly Atheist. February 17th Mehta criticized those who vandalized posters advertising a talk by Kelsey Hazzard of Secular Pro-Life. He then went on to post the video of Hazzard's entire talk, commenting:

Without getting into her actual arguments and whether they’re fair or flawed, I’m amazed that I haven’t seen a presentation like this at any of the atheist conferences I’ve ever been to. (At least I can’t remember seeing one like it.) If conference organizers are trying to reach out to a broader spectrum of people, Kelsey seems like a natural choice for a poised speaker who has a very different perspective to bring to the secular table. Even if you think she’s way off base, she represents not-an-insignificant portion of our community. It’d at least be interesting to see the two sides of this argument hash things out in front of a crowd.

Of course there haven't been presentations like this at any freethought conferences; their arguments are irrational, emotionally manipulative, and anti-women's-rights.

Ok. You're an extremist.

Whether performance enhancing drugs should be allowed use in professional sports is an interesting debate. Continuing a debate over a women's rights issue that should have been considered settled 40 years ago is unsettling, even alarming.

Secular White Supremacists such as the Creativity Movement have a very different perspective to bring to the secular table. Should we invite them to our conferences and help disseminate their video propaganda online, too?

Finally, "poised speaker"? Who the hell cares how poised the speaker is when she's spouting ignorance such as that abortion is a "quick and easy solution" and that part of How You Can Help is "Don't become pregnant before you are ready." It's like listening to fiscal conservatives characterize living on social assistance as luxurious and that the solution to poverty is for poor people to stop being poor.

Then on March 11th, Mehta did something even worse. He featured a guest post by Kristine Kruszelnicki, President of Pro-Life Humanists: Yes, There Are Pro-Life Atheists Out There. Here's Why I'm One of Them. 

Kruszelnicki opens up with the argument that since polls show that there's a lot of anti-choice atheists, they deserve a seat at the table of this movement. No, they don't. There is no magical percentage at which their arguments become any more rational or humane. If 19% of atheists were white supremacists, they still wouldn't deserve a seat at the table, and neither do anti-choice atheists. That is unless the secular movement wants to sink itself into a sandpit of mediocrity.

After admitting that the scientific evidence shows embryos and fetuses to be non-sentient, Kruszelnicki presents a weak and purely philosophical argument as to why we should bestow even a 2 week old embryo with rights equal to that of the woman.

Kruszelnicki pretends to address the issue of body autonomy, but she really doesn't. At one point she compares the responsibility the pregnant woman has to the embryo/fetus to the responsibility anyone has to an abandoned infant they discover on their front porch. As if 9 months of pregnancy and birth could even be compared to making a call to child services.

Kruszelnicki essentially argues that while a woman is pregnant, she and the embryo/fetus share her body, and thus have equal rights to that body. But physiologically this is not accurate. The facts are that the woman and embryo/fetus are two separate entities, connected by the latter's dependence on the former's body for survival, and in a situation which poses certain risks to the health of the woman.

A much better analogy than the baby on the porch would be a brother who needs a kidney to live, and his sister as a healthy, perfect candidate for organ donation. Do we legally compel people to donate their organs? No. Not even in death.

I'm bothered by Mehta wanting to have this debate within the secular movement because by even engaging in a debate with anti-choicers (opposed to mocking and dismissing them) we give legitimacy to their arguments.

But I'm more disturbed by the fact that Mehta put this out there without actually engaging in the debate himself. It seems that to Mehta that raising the visibility of anti-choice atheists is more important than defending women's reproductive rights.

The Friendly Atheist has no excuse, because as he knows from his own previous posts on abortion, equating abortion with baby killing sends us down a frightening path.

Chewbacca Goes to the Salon

Nothing too fancy, just a little off the top, please.

The other day one of Lysi's best friends came over to play. He's been coming over regularly since he was 18 months old (he's now 5), so knowing his way around, he pulled out a familiar drawer, and upon seeing a bunch of dolls, asked, "Hey, where are the blocks?"

Oh, yeah, sorry, the giant Mega Bloks, Tinkertoys, letter blocks, and generic wood building blocks got replaced with dolls because our two girls (ages 2 and 4) didn't play with them anymore.

"That's okay." He said, walking to a large storage cabinet in another part of the room, "I'll just play with Legos."

Yes, while all the other building toys have been tossed aside for stuffed animals and dollies, Lego has remained as the only building toy our girls still enjoy. But that's OK, because they really enjoy it.

I've already gone on here and here in praise of Lego's new sets which target girls, because at least for my girls, it is working. Here's what I mean:

Pet salon is busy. Not sure if Ariel is a customer or staff.

First of all, as a typically girlie girl, Lysi has something she can still do with her rough-and-tumble boy friend, and which they are both passionate about. When they were both two and three years old, almost any toy was fine for playing together. But now she's asking to play puppy and house, paint and dance ballet, while he wants to fight ninjas and make things explode. With Lego they can combine their interests and play together without either feeling as if they are totally giving in to the other.

In fact, this boy friend was so intrigued by the details in the Friends pets that he asked his parents for several for Christmas. The biggest bonus for me is perhaps getting to see things like Chewbacca going to the pet salon.

What 2 four-year-old girls made in 20 minutes.

Second, just as Jesus Diaz claims in his post Hey, Anti-Lego Feminists, "Lego for Girls" Actually Kicks Ass, Friends and Disney Princess sets can and will be broken up and made into new stuff by any typical kid, which is exactly the point and why Lego toys are so great for encouraging creativity, imagination, and early building of STEM skills. I thought about Diaz's post today when Lysi and another four-year-old girl built this awesomeness (according to them it is a fishing dock combined with a launching pad for a rocket ship - how sweet is that?)


Third, the Lego sets marketing to girls are not dumbed down in terms of their complexity or how much bang you get for your buck. In Why Lego Friends is not one of the worst toys of 2012 (and why Mega Bloks Barbie is), David Pickett reports on his comparison of construction complexity of various lines of Lego sets and Lego competitors. He writes:

If we assume that constructions sets with similar price points will result in completed models of equivalent size, then we can use the piece/dollar ratio of construction sets as a rough indication of the complexity** of one building kit relative to another. The higher the piece/dollar ratio, the more building is involved in a given set or group of sets. This is a way of quantifying the differences that are obvious to the naked eye in the above comparison of the Friends and Babrie sets. I charted these values for sets from nine different themes and found the average pc/$ ratio for each line of products. The product lines I used were LEGO Friends, Mega Bloks Barbie, LEGO City, Mega Bloks World of Warcraft, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Paradisa, LEGO Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit, Mega Bloks Skylanders and Mega Bloks Halo. 

Much to my surprise, Friends came in second (Halo was highest) with a ratio of 9.8. 

Diaz argues that the heavily themed sets are a "back door" to hook kids on Lego and eventually interest them in other sets that are even more challenging and spark even more creativity:

Once the radioactive Lego brick bites them, they become hooked. The next time they will want one Lego set just because it seems cool or more complicated. The space shuttle. A Lego creator building. A Technic car. Both girls and boys would pick those and build whatever they want with them.

Two preschoolers concentrating for an hour and politely
taking turns following an instruction manual - just because
they wanted to build a scorpion. Lego must be magic.

When I first read that, I wanted to believe it, but I didn't know if it would be true for my kid. Now I'm watching it unfold just as Diaz described. As Lysi flips through her Lego magazine, she gasps and exclaims, "Whoa, cool! I want that!" at sets of robots, tow trucks, and airplanes. She's become such an impressive builder already, that she and her before-mentioned boy friend together built the scorpion from Lego's more challenging Creator line. It is a set geared for kids ages 7-12, and she and her friend intensely built it over an hour and 15 minutes, politely taking turns following the steps in the instruction manual.

As a parent, I must just say: Dude, that is so much cooler than watching her dress and undress fashion dolls for an hour. 

A Rocky Start for Skepchick's Grounded Parents

Back in November a friend of mine posted a link to an announcement: Now Hiring Parents! Skepchick was seeking writers for its new sister blog Grounded Parents. 

I'm not naive; I know most blogging "jobs" only pay in exposure. However, some do pay, even if it is just a token amount. I'm not looking for a full time career. Just a little something to help pay for dance lessons and this killer-winter's heating bills. Since nothing in the notice mentioned it being volunteer, I went ahead and applied. 

I was soon emailed for a "call back" and asked to submit an article. I wrote and submitted A White Mom Talks To Her White Kid About Race and was promptly "hired." 

I expected maybe a contract to follow. Instead I was added to an email discussion list, instructed on how to use gravatar and sign up for WordPress and there was a flurry of casual introductions and chitchat. After a week, the administrators submitted a rough draft of the "guidelines", where it mentioned this was an "unpaid gig." 

After another week (and before the site's launch) I resigned, including this paragraph: 

As an artist, I stopped entering juried exhibitions that charge fees 8 years ago because I felt the practice took advantage of artists. In graduate school I refused to do unpaid internships on principle and still find the widespread practice of them unethical and giving advantage to young people from more affluent families. If writing was a hobby, I would do it. But I've been paid for my writing and I'm currently in the process of trying to sell a book. If I'm going to take myself seriously as a professional artist and writer, I just can't give it away. 

(And just in case anyone thinks I'm giving it away here on my Humanist Mom blog, I'll have you know that I earned $3.00 on Google ads last month.) 

Grounded Parents launched on December 17th. After being introduced to the diverse and interesting group of people who were hired to write for the site, I began reading. 

Like most blogs, there's a lot of personal memoir. Indeed, memoirs can be enlightening if they are well written (or performed, as with Jenny Splitter's F#@*ck the Birth Experience) and tackle meaty topics. Some posts on Grounded Parents (such as Splitter's), accomplish this. Others came off to me as a bit self indulgent and dull. 

Several of the articles offer parenting advice or descriptions of what they think is superior parenting. When such advice comes from writers with no professional credentials in childhood development, cite little to no research to back it up, and/or employs vague platitudes and generalizations, it is meaningless and unwarranted. In other words, writers writing because they love the sound of their own prose and get a zing out of comments praising them for their insight. This sort of mediocre writing is common on blogs, but it is disappointing to see so much of it on a high visibility skeptic website. 

There was also this bump in the road; just two months in, Grounded Parents had to fire one its bloggers and issue a public apology for the person's inappropriate behavior. The poor ethics of this blogger-in-question was exhibited previously in this post (a rather shitty argument in favor of standardized tests) where she admits to giving a student a worse grade than he deserved because he was "a pain in the ass." 

The shit really started to hit the fan for me with Chris Brecheen's post Grounded Midwives, which is a personal story about how his partner attempted a homebirth with Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), and how the midwives alleviated his fears of their woo with their actual good sense trust in real medicine. It is clear by the end of the article that he's unaware of the controversy over CPMs being even allowed to practice midwifery, seeing as unlike Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) who receive a high level of medical training, work with hospitals, and abide by standards set by the medical establishment, CPMs are lay midwives certified by a separate organization, are often not covered by insurance, and fail to meet minimum standards of training to practice midwifery in most other developed nations. The moment in the article when Brecheen stops worrying and begins to view the midwives as his skeptical allies is when one of them admits that there is no science to back the notion that eating placenta has any benefits. Kind of a low bar for skepticism if you ask me. 

Next there was the English professor who claimed in Against Marriage that "The solution to poverty is to encourage all our children to avoid marriage until they are at least twenty-five." Because after all, people under twenty-five's forebrains are too underdeveloped to make adult decisions about getting married and being parents, nobody with a high school diploma has a complete education, and anyone can earn a living wage if they just wait long enough to have kids. I ended up being so pissed about this ignorant piece of crap post that I felt compelled to write Harming Young Mothers With Stereotypes in response, just to balance out the blogosphere. 

Then, for whatever reason, Grounded Parents decided to feature a guest post by "Skepchick's resident stats junkie/guru" Jamie Bernstein, titled Homebirth Safety and Risk. In the article, Bernstein looks at two very different reports on this study of home birth outcomes: first that of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) and second that of Skeptical OB Dr. Amy Tuteur. Bernstein concludes that while MANA is guilty of downplaying the dangers of high risk home birth (as they celebrate the supposed safety of low-risk homebirths), Dr. Tuteur is manipulating data to make home birth look riskier and fear-mongering. 

To put it another way, a skeptic blog smacked down a skeptic of good repute who is fighting a war against reckless lay midwives who put women and babies at risk, and gave a slap on the wrist to the organization that supports those same lay midwives. What the fuck? 

Dr. Tuteur went on the offense, pointing out Bernstein's errors, clarifying where Bernstein was confused about Tuteur's analysis, and chastising Bernstein for not contacting her first for clarification about the points where she was confused. You know, like a journalist would have done. But this isn't journalism. Not even amateur journalism. This is bad blogging. Of course Dr. Tuteur also asked for an apology. 

Instead of an apology, Grounded Parents published a follow-up guest post from Bernstein which criticizes statistician Dr. Brooke Orosz's analysis of the study as presented on Dr. Tuteur's blog and promoted by iO9. This second article starts out with errors, such as describing only one of the study's authors as midwives (and that therefore iO9's title is misleading.) In fact, three of the six authors were midwives and five of the six had ties to MANA. And regardless of the article's title, iO9 refers to the study authors as "PhDs and midwives" in the body of the article. 

Bernstein's big message in this second post is that Dr. Orosz failed to construct a well-enough matched cohort when comparing the MANA stats to CDC numbers, and therefore her and Dr. Tuteur's conclusions are a misrepresentation. Dr. Orosz herself appears in the comments to explain (actually to reiterate) that she deliberately selected a cohort that would likely favor home birth. She writes: 

My hospital cohort ISN’T a good comparison. I did not attempt to construct a matched cohort, because, as you noted, that would be very complex and subtle and open to interpretation and misinterpretation. Instead, I selected a cohort that could not possibly be LOWER in risk.

Ultimately Jamie Bernstein comes off as if she's nitpicking any bit of minutiae she can to discredit Dr. Tuteur out of personal vendetta. 

And this when (as Dr. Tuteur points out) homebirth advocates are linking to Bernstein's articles to spread their message that homebirth is just as safe as hospital birth. 

In the time since Bernstein's first guest post was published on Grounded Parents, Dr. Amy Tuteur has debunked a study that claims that c-sections cause obesity, and has unrelentingly continued to report on the unnecessary death of Gavin Michael that happened because instead of strongly recommending transfer to a hospital, the midwife crowd-sourced advice on facebook. Because that's what a great skeptic blog does. 

I had hoped for more in a parenting blog geared toward freethinkers. But, as they say, you get what you pay for. 

LEGO Jumps on the Princess Bandwagon

LEGO has just come out with its new line of building sets hoping to attract girl customers, and (no surprise here) the theme is none other than Disney princesses.

*Cue the groans of feminist parents everywhere*

Much has been written about the dangers of marketing separate toys to boys and girls. The concern is that by encouraging girls and boys to play with different toys, we are encouraging separate gender roles. Pushing gender roles can do all kinds of damage. It can stigmatize individuals who don't fit into those assumed roles.

One of the biggest, specific complaints today about the toy marketing directed at girls is that it can steer potential talent away from STEM fields, and this at a time when more talent is needed and men dominate those fields.

As a mother of two girls, I definitely share these concerns about assigned gender roles. However, I don't want to join the throng of people railing against all things pink and princess without looking at all the available evidence and carefully thinking it through. Especially when my young daughter (to disclose my personal bias) has become a huge clothes horse, refuses to wear anything other than a fancy dress and tights, and revels in calling herself a princess.

The most popular toys, as reported by the Washington Post, are Barbies for girls, and LEGOs for boys, and certainly that fact lends credence to the idea that toys aimed at boys encourage interest in STEM, while toys aimed at girls steer them away. Given this situation, aren't LEGO building sets aimed at girls a good thing? A way to bridge the gap?

Last year I wrote about LEGO's recent efforts to market their building sets to girls, with Appreciation for Pink and Purple Lego Bows. In that article I made the case that typical girls are turned off by traditional LEGO, and that with the new Friends line of sets, LEGO has found a way to draw typical girls to their products in droves.

The LEGO Friends minifigs are more naturalistic, having numerous accessories, some curves and more facial, clothing, and body details. The buildings in Heartlake City, too, put more emphasis on the decor than the architectural design.

Critics of the new LEGO products and marketing campaigns argue that the Friends sets are LEGO altered to the point where the drawbacks of promoting superficial and stereotypical femininity outweigh the benefits of girls playing with building sets. Basically that LEGO for girls is just another version of Barbie.

The new Disney Princess series of LEGO building sets are a continuation of this new marketing campaign targeting girls. The minifigs are based on the Friends minifigs, not the traditional yellow ones. That said, they are hardly Barbie.

Consider this side to side comparison of the LEGO version of Merida (from the film Brave) and a Barbie-like fashion doll version of Merida. Certainly LEGO Merida is pretty, but she's not nearly as glamorous as the (heavily criticized) fashion dolls. These new LEGO figures aimed at girls might be more curvy than the traditional figures, but they are still stylized in a non-sexual way. They don't depict unrealistic ideals of female beauty as super slim and busty, as do fashion dolls. The essential spirit of LEGO as toys generic enough to encourage kids to impose their own vision is still present.

I must add that I'm getting kind of tired about how much I see written against girl toys that obsess over physical beauty, yet how little I see criticizing boy toys that obsess over violence. The LEGO City series is marketing to boys the same age group that Friends is aimed at for girls, so as young as five years old. While LEGO City has many everyday happenings such as trash collection, logging, and surfing, it is apparently also a place full of criminal activity which requires a huge emphasis on law enforcement. Other LEGO lines that tend to attract boy consumers such as Chima and Ninjago are full of violent conflict, weapons, and warriors.

I am hesitant to say that all these toys for boys that glorify violence are a definite bad influence. Of course they might be. After all, they do promote dehumanizing stereotypes of "good guys" and "bad guys" and depict war and noble, exciting, and even entertaining. But is there any evidence that boys whose parents ban such toys grow up to be less violent and more compassionate because of it?

Likewise, is there any evidence that playing princess with makeup, accessories, and costumes will dissuade girls from entering STEM fields? Can girls not be interested in STEM and also glamour and glitz?

Jennifer Welsh wrote an article for Business Insider, saying These Are the 7 Things Keeping Women Out of Science Careers. Her list includes teasing of girls for studying science, and stereotypes of female scientists as weirdos. The argument is that the culture and perception of STEM fields is not friendly to typical girls and women, and so only a minority of outliers brave their way in. The only real solution is for STEM culture and perception to change.

If we apply this to toys, and consider LEGO as representative of toys which direct kids toward STEM, LEGO's marketing to girls is a step in the right direction. With these new products and marketing campaigns, they are changing the broader perception of the LEGO brand as for boys. Once girls feel that they have been invited in by Friends and Disney Princesses lines of LEGO, they are more likely to reach for the more challenging sets found in the totally gender-neutral Creator and Architecture series. Boys and girls who are friends will also be more likely to play LEGO together, as the bricks from all the sets are interchangeable.

While concerns about gender stereotypes will (and should) haunt me as a parent, at the end of the day, I must admit I'm impressed with any toy that gets my four-year-old daughter to spend several hours over a couple days following a 67 page construction manual (the result of her receiving the Friends Pet Salon for Christmas.) And when my daughter begs me for princess toys, I'm happy to have an alternative to the fashion doll.

As much as I previously hated all things Disney Princess, when I saw LEGO join the princess parade, I cheered.