Violence and History

A little bit of military history, to start us off:

Much of today's military continue to follow principles that ancient armies developed and then the Roman Army perfected.  For example, the phalanx and shield-wall, which required extraordinary discipline to maintain the soldiers in tight formation.

Now, this shield-wall is mostly stationary, and only holds together for a short time, but it gives an idea how shields can interlock and be used:

At Disney World's Epcot Center, we took the ride, Spaceship Earth as it described a history of communications. Spaceship Earth, like most Western Civilization courses, traces back from Egypt to Greece, and then Rome. Bypassing most of the Fertile Crescent cities (clay tablets are more portable than cave walls!) and the Eastern Civilizations in India and China altogether.

It's... cognitive dissonance, to think about how Rome is held up as this pillar of civilization (granted, there was literacy, philosophy, mathematics), when we also know that it was cruel and brutal.

Feminism Friday: Spiritual Feminism

Previously, I mentioned how feminism can coexist within traditional and specifically Abrahamic religions, as they draw on the historical women of faith. As I understand Jewish and Muslim teachings where there is just one God, God is beyond gender.

This week I thought I would give an intro to some of the other spiritual paths that feminism has taken. In particular, the remembrance of the divine feminine. The rest of this article may be offensive to some Christians and non-Christian believers in the Biblical preachings against Canaanite goddess-worship.

Feminism Friday: A Little about Radical Feminism

I've often discussed global and transnational feminisms and intersectionality on this blog. These branches of feminism are particularly developed by women of color (for example, Kimberle Crenshaw developed intersectionality).

I've touched on White Feminism, but I haven't discussed one of its major strains: Radical Feminism.

Radical feminism was part of the women's liberation movement and second-wave feminism in the 1960s, and continues as a strain of feminism today. As with any other feminism, there can be many variations on the theme. The Chorus I sing in recognizes that feminism can be defined in many ways, and does not attempt to define the feminism of the singers.

In my encounters with radical feminists online, they appear to build on the concept of the gender binary, and the ways in which society has allowed anatomy to determine a person's destiny as a human being.

Many of the radical feminists online criticize religion as a tool of the patriarchy, and particularly religious dress as a form of women's oppression. Transnational feminism (which intersectionality is a part of) recognizes that many women draw strength from their faith, even if it is one of the traditional Abrahamic religions. There are Muslim feminists, Jewish feminists, Catholic and other traditional Christian feminists who draw on the stories of the women in the respective traditions.

Some radical feminists are "trans exclusionary" (what intersectional feminists may abbreviate as "TERF"s), who consider trans women to be men invading women's spaces. While they have a few good points about how men should be allowed to wear whatever they want, and all genders should be able to do whatever jobs they want... so many of the arguments in the Wikipedia article are harmful.

Unfortunately, the exclusion of trans women from feminist spaces has had the effect of leaving trans women unsupported, with nowhere to go. Trans women (and men) have unique insights into the kyriarchy and systems of oppression, that cis-gendered people don't experience, as this article discusses:

Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.

Because Intersectionality embraces non-binary gender expressions (as well as a variety of religious beliefs and expressions), proponents of intersectional feminism often find themselves in opposition to radical feminism. Intersectional feminism recognizes Trans women as women, and works to include these women in their safe spaces.

I will admit that on my journey towards becoming an LGBT Ally, it took me longest to understand the transgender aspects. But knowing someone, caring about someone, made it easy. I don't need to know their anatomy, I just need to treat them with respect and honor their preferred pronouns.

Taking Time

Two weekends ago, we kicked off the 23rd Season of the Huntsville Feminist Chorus with our annual retreat at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, AL.

The mission of the Chorus is to open hearts and minds through song.

This begins my sixth season with these wonderful women. The songs we sing bring me strength, not only to get through my own day / week / phase, but also fuels my activism, reviewing the literature and promoting women in STEM, women in leadership, GLBT rights, intersectional representation in general.

Pointers to GaslightingDuo Conversation

A very short post today. I hadn't written about it on my blog yet.

Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci are two academics, who have been writing papers together for a very long time. I did a search on Google Scholar, and found them working together in 1997.

Both October of last year and this spring, they have published papers and written news articles suggesting that academic sexism is a myth.

Karen James' Storify has the details, links to articles, links to responses, hashtags being used for the discussions, links to the previous discussions in October, etc.

There is a term used in psychology, called Gaslighting. One of my first encounters with the term was from this article, A Message to Women From a Man: You are not "Crazy".

In February, I wrote "Creating Context and Background" to provide my readers with just a taste of the history that has been occurring with feminism and the internet. It's been very clear since long before #YesAllWomen, GamerGate, or #Shirtstorm that there is a segment of the population working in opposition to diversity and inclusion.

The articles from Ceci and Williams feed that phenomenon, and have earned them the hashtag #GaslightingDuo.

Cross-cultural Communication, Books that Changed my Life

I saw discussion about a book that changed your life. There's a series of books that changed my life, relevant to this week's discussion on culture, history, and decolonizing STEM:

• StarBridge (StarBridge #1) (Starbridge Series)
• Silent Dances (StarBridge #2)
• Shadow World (StarBridge #3) (StarBridge Series)
• Serpent's Gift (StarBridge #4) (StarBridge Series)
• Silent Songs (StarBridge #5) (StarBridge Series)

There are two more in the series, that I haven't read:

• Ancestor's World (StarBridge #6)
• Voices of Chaos (StarBridge #7)

The stories are about interstellar space travel, contact between and among alien races. There's a school, called "StarBridge," with three learning tracks: Translator/Interpreter, Telepath, and Interrelator. From "Silent Dances":

#ToTheGirls, Month of the Military Child, and #Tableflip2015

#ToTheGirls is trending on Twitter, and it's wonderful.

April is the Month of the Military Child, and I keep thinking about the connections between how I grew up with the US Air Force, and moving here, outside an active Army base.

There's a book, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress, first published in 1991. Excerpts are available on Google Books. The parts I have read, she seems to be writing about an earlier generation of Brat, perhaps my parent's time, and yet there are many aspects of Brat culture that were still in place when I was growing up. Still, chapter 4: "Daughters of Warriors," hit home.

"In fact, to be a daughter inside the Fortress is to be a kind of hovering spook: a weightless creature without power, without presence, without context, whose color is camouflage and whose voice is unheard."

The world is changing. There are many more women in the U.S. Armed Forces today. Just last year, Admiral Michelle Howard was promoted to 4-star Admiral. This interview from Forbes is worth reading.

Capitalism, Misogyny, Business and Negotiation.

On Monday, this Tweet passed by:

It's not a "law of capitalism" that you pay people as little as possible — it's an excuse http://t.co/GovtG5I3t1 pic.twitter.com/kpTXiwHDwt
— Henry Blodget (@hblodget) March 23, 2015

The article it links discussed how "maximize profit" has become the goal of businesses over the past 35 years.

In fact, it reminded me of this Consulting Adult Article, "Misogyny and the Valley," particularly her description of the events at Ruckus:

Update on Science and Fashion, aka: Why can't we have nice things?

The latest news about Lego reminded me of this article about “Unclaimed Treasures of Science”: Even during the Cold War, these women brought feminism to STEM, although one must keep in mind that many of these STEM women would not have claimed the term "feminist."

"Women argued over the need to convince skeptical onlookers that a person could be both feminine-looking and interested in STEM. For the Society of Women Engineers” in particular, Puaca writes, “projecting a positive image of women engineers required accepting, on the surface at least, dominant notions of femininity.” Some members made sure to wear dresses, heels, and lipstick for presentations, reassuring people that professionalism and the standard beauty code of Cold War womanhood were not mutually exclusive."" [Unclaimed Treasures of Science]

I keep writing about Kimberle Crenshaw's Intersectionality. I wrote during Wedding Week about GLBT issues, but because I am neither a lesbian nor transgender, it hasn't been a frequent topic on my blog.

One of the concepts that the GLBT community in particular brings to intersectional feminism, is that gender is a spectrum, and the gender binary is a social construct.  If gender is a spectrum, then that means femininity and masculinity each have a range of behaviors that can overlap, in a range from Femme to Butch and anywhere in-between.

In a perfect world, should a person wear whatever they want?

There's a discussion on LinkedIn, pondering whether Sheryl Sandberg would wear a hoodie, like her boss Mark Zuckerberg.

The Seattle Times even published "Guest: The most common question from young women engineers? What to wear."

Quite frankly, if we could FIND more STEM-related fashion like May Britt Moser's lovely Neuron dress that she wore to accept her Nobel prize, these decisions might be easier. But over and over again, we find that the cool STEM / geeky things are coded as masculine.

It's a good question, because in truth, there are geek women who would prefer to wear the t-shirt or hoodie.

It's enough that the Geek Feminism Blog has had a series of posts under "Ask a Geek Feminist" about the subject:

Language Learning

I've always been fascinated by languages.

I can remember thinking about the Biblical Tower of Babel, and wondering what the first language was. So over the years, when I came across a newspaper article about linguistics, languages, or the human brain, I've usually read them.

The space station program became international very soon after it was begun, as the European Space Agency  and the Japanese were invited to participate with their own modules. So, for me, studying languages became closely tied to my fascination with spaceflight and my awareness of globalization.

The Base library proved an excellent resource for that fascination, as I could check out books attempting to teach myself a dozen different languages at once. Of course I bit off more than I could chew, I would have done better to focus on one at a time. The one I went farthest in, was reading and writing Finnish, as I found a good resource. But I've forgotten most of it since then.

When I finally had the opportunity to learn a language (Spanish) in school, I took it. One Valentine's Day, the teacher handed us a worksheet and asked us to match the translation of "I love you" to the appropriate language.

While my language reading hadn't taught me the language, per se, I had a pretty good feel for "this looks like the Chinese symbols," and "this looks like German", so that I had the most accurate answers.

Why does all of this matter?

Language is another key component to culture, that American culture likes to... overlook? ignore? criticize? A Host of Tongues describes how people in the United States inherited the British tendency to just speak louder when confronted with someone who doesn't speak English. It's a fascinating book, if you're interested in the history of languages and attitudes toward language in this country.

I knew from an early age that I did not want to be one of those "ugly Americans" who travel overseas and then wonder why the locals don't speak English.

I know from Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World and my own experiences, that because my primary responsibility is to the technical design, I will most likely need a professional translator for business. As much as I enjoy language learning, what I have had time to learn has tended to be needs-focused.

There are several apps that break vocabulary down, and travelers phrasebooks. Any one can learn a few phrases, if not well before the trip, then at least on the airplane. If you only have time for 20 words or phrases, learn:

He For She

It occurred to me that some of my readers may not be aware of important background material for my own blog and work. In order not to confuse the message, I'm pre-empting the economics post, look for it tomorrow.

Yesterday, I tagged my post with HeForShe, the UN Women campaign for gender equality. Emma Watson gave a speech to kick off the campaign:

"For the record, feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights, and opportunities." - Emma Watson, HeForShe campaign 2014

More on the key concepts and my take below the cut:

The Personal is Political

When we lived in Houston, one of the interim ministers before Rev. Dr. Matt Tittle was Rev. Shirley Ranck, who nearly 40 years ago developed the Cakes for the Queen of Heaven adult religious education for the Unitarian Universalist Association. The curriculum explores the divine feminine in history, and also women's issues in society.

I believe that is where I first learned about the Consciousness Raising groups that developed in the 1960s. What I was told was that as the women started to talk about their lives, they began to see common themes, things that many or all women experienced. And so they began to see how their personal lives connected to the bigger, political world.

Yesterday I promised I would get back to John Scalzi's post: Why Yes, I Should Write About Politics.  John writes:

International Women's Day

March 8th, yesterday, was International Women's Day. In Russia, the day is seriously celebrated with flowers to the women in one's life. In the U.S., the celebration seems to be taken less seriously... perhaps because of its historical socialist roots.

That said, it is an internationally recognized holiday, celebrated on March 8 since 1913. NASA recognizes it, in part due to the cooperation that makes the International Space Station possible.

For the curious, International Men's Day is November 19. However, Google results show that it's existence only matters in March.

Why do we have an International Women's Day?

The purpose of religion - advice for seekers

At the airport last week, I heard quite a bit of concern about seekers looking for information about religion, and not always knowing how to sort out the good from the bad.

Honestly, I've had that concern myself, which is one reason why I listed many of the links from my series as "what I found on Google" rather than a specific recommendation from me.

One book that I found that had good advice, was this old edition of "Chop Wood, Carry Water." I believe I first read it from the St. Louis County public library. While it might at first glance seem "New Agey," there are several insets about avoiding cults, finding a good teacher, and staying grounded in one's search for meaning.

From a more existentialist perspective, I also recommend Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning," as it discusses many of the hard questions of life that came out of his experience in a concentration camp.

Marriage Equality

Yesterday was a beautiful day, here in Madison County, Alabama.

I have talked about Intersectionality several times recently. Intersectional feminism is a branch of feminism developed by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. From my perspective, this looked like a good article to start with: "Why Our Feminism Must Be Intersectional (And 3 Ways to Practice It)".

A bit of history

From my perspective, the 1990s were an era when culture began to make a significant shift, so that around the year 2000 significant change was happening.

Over the 1990s, the evidence that global climate change was caused by humans came pouring in, and by the year 2000 environmentalism was mainstream. I began to see more business-environmentalist partnerships, as the economic value of nature began to be calculated and recognized. As the economic impact became measurable, businesses began to address the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit.

In Global Political Economy, the results of the Structural Adjustment Policies came in, and criticism of the IMF, WTO, and World Bank had an effect. Those organizations began to shift their purpose toward the Millennium Development Goals and programs that might *actually* help the less developed countries, instead of punishing them for crises.

The UN also got on board with the (likely independent) realization that Catherine McAuley was right,"there is nothing more conducive to the good of society than the education of young women," with their Girls Education Initiative.

The global SuperClass seems to be talking about the issues.

Before these changes, in the 1990s, taking the kind of work that I did, felt a bit like "selling out" my values for a just and sustainable world in order to follow my dreams. After these changes, I could begin to feel more comfortable in the corporate world. The financial evidence suggests that environmental and social responsibility are profitable.

Are we there yet? No, most definitely not. Sometimes corporate and government initiatives conflict and contradict each other, saying one thing but resulting in the opposite. There is significant resistance to change, as many of the ideas and research contradict "common sense" and/or disrupt the status quo.

 But I have certainly seen changes. Tomorrow, I'll tie this in to thoughts on leadership and followership.

Creating Context and Background

One of the reasons that I identify with Intersectional Feminism, is because my own life is such an uneven grouping of privileges and poverty.

My family got our first home computer (privilege!) soon after we moved to Omaha. An Apple IIe, with a modem, so that my father could send data back to St. Louis University for his Master's capstone (thesis or project, I'm not sure).

I grew up with a computer in the house, and for my generation, that is a privilege. I remember reading odd jumbles of letters and numbers out of a computing magazine, in order for Dad to type them in and create games that we'd save on floppy disk. NOW, I presume that the odd letters and numbers that made no sense in English, was Assembler for the Apple.

Internet culture has been around for a very long time. We had a computer, and a modem, so my Dad showed me a Bulletin Board System (BBS) once. However, I didn't really play on the internet until I reached college.

September 12, 2001

Last year, The Dance Company's recital theme was Heroes. The dances reflected all kinds of heroes, and even the Dads got in on it.

In the evening show, the Company dancers did two back-to-back pieces: September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2001, that were very affecting. I still haven't found the music for the first one, but the second was Coldplay, "Fix You."

The September 12 choreography, reflected how people came together, to look out for each other. When "how are you doing?" was a standard greeting, and people understood if we weren't always at our best and happiest all the time. That there are some things so awful, that even professionals cry.

A is for Art

I discovered my passion for space history in COMM 114, the required Freshman Communications class.  In 2002, I attended a Lunch-and-Learn on Space History, which rekindled my interest in the subject.  I always learn something a little new, and the engaging speaker reminded me that there was more to unpack from that era.

Soon after the Lunch-and-Learn, I became aware of a course being offered at the nearby University of Houston - Clear Lake (UHCL), titled "International Space Politics and Technology."  The course was part of the Space & Exploration Studies concentration for UHCL's M.A. in Humanities.

Question everything, including this

I've hit the point in both my "becoming an engineer" and "path to social justice concerns" stories that I can't avoid discussing my spirituality. I'm pondering a post about "the far side, where the fringes meet," but this will not be that post.

My parents were conservative, Catholic, Charismatics.  There's a lot to unpack from those three words.  One of the blogs that I subscribe to and periodically read, is Love, Joy, Feminism on Patheos.com.  Things were a little different in my family, where she was homeschooled by Evangelical Protestants, we went to Catholic schools and Catholic church... but that also is another post.