Hypatia's Girl cautiously returns to blogging, and begins quietly without all that swearing and shit

My Master’s thesis was born, like a phoenix, in a fire.  A fire that did not, directly, consume anything in my life, but took rather the worldly possessions of two good friends of mine. Including, in the case of one friend, all of the documentation that proved that he was, in fact, who he claimed to be.  There are all these interesting moments in life that offer a chance to suddenly confront an aspect of privilege that had heretofore been obscured.  The loss of a friend’s ability to politically appear, however briefly, was such a moment.  The privilege that I carry with me in my wallet filled with plastic and paper and my name and my picture and a host of other numbers and letters that are somehow me-as-I-am-politically, or digitally, was not one I had thought of before.  I was never worried that the systems of politics that arch over everything we do as a community would be unable or unwilling to recognize me.  Realizing that such a lack of recognition could be possible left me wondering about identity and the construction of the person by the state.  (We might ask how much of this precise thought was rolled into my actual thesis, but let’s not)

The text message I got this morning was of a similar kind of privilege check.

Hypatia's Girl Angrily Reads the Apology of Socrates

"Apology" in Five Dialogues 2e, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. John M. Cooper (Hackett, 2002)

I'm preparing for the Grand Move, and realized that this book is packed away, oops! So, you know, it might be a little short.

The trial of Socrates is one of my favorite stories in philosophy.  Which says something as I got into philosophy for the stories.  There is something enormously compelling about the image of this pug-nosed old geezer daring Athens to put him to death.

What we have in this dialogue is the "transcript" of Socrates' defense at his trial.  Before a 500 man jury, Socrates is expected to defend himself against the fairly serious charges of corrupting the youth and atheism/worshiping false gods.  It is also in this dialogue that we see the formulation of the idea that Socrates is the wisest man because he knows that he knows nothing.

The First Post in what will be a Series on Women and Skepticism

For those of you who have skipped reading between the lines, I'm something of a skeptic.  I've also been known to dabble in the odd bit of feminism and other social justice ideas here and there.
(See what I did right there? It was humor based on understatement.  Hilarious, I am that.)
For me, my feminism, antiracism, and other various social justice passions (fellow LGBTQQIers, we need a better catchphrase, also, the acronym is getting long, just saying) are intimately interrelated with my skepticism.  There are few branches of pseudoscience that do not intersect with social justice.  There has recently been a kerfuffle on the interwebs about the visibility of women in (ugh so tired of this language) "new atheism" and in the skeptical movement in general.

Seriously, we're out there.

So I thought that I'd spill a few words about it, before launching into why feminism and skepticism, antiracism and skepticism, social justice in general and skepticism, just naturally go together I thought I'd indulge in my own coming to jesus er skepticism story.

How I became a protest organizer in two days, and why you should too!

It started simply enough.
I have kind of a reputation as being . . . opinionated?  A staunch, social justice oriented feminist?  Consistently livid about something or other?  Hypatia's Girl is angry after all.
And so it started simply.  A facebook chat message pointing me toward a link on someone's page with the request that I keep it on the radar.  The link was to an announcement that Rep. Bart Stupak was coming to my university to talk about the Great Lakes.  Stupak! In my university!
See, I'm angry about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.  Deeply, deeply angry.  Much of that stems from coming to the realization that the anti-abortion forces aren't necessarily synonymous with "pro-life."  That is, if their sincere desire were to curb the incidence of abortion they would be doing things other than limiting access to abortion, and other reproductive services.  A sincere, honest and moral goal of reducing the incidence of abortion would be informed by knowledge about why women choose abortion, largely unplanned pregnancy, and what can be done to reduce the numbers of unplanned pregnancies.  See, reducing the numbers of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies would, almost by definition, reduce the number of abortions.  So genuine, sincere, honest, moral pro-lifers do not spend their time trying to limit women's access to reproductive health options, they instead work to increase people's access to contraception, sexuality education, rape prevention and they try to better the situation of women and ease the burden that motherhood very really represents for a woman.  The latter approach shows a genuine concern and empathy for women as actual human beings.  The Stupak-Pitts Amendment is a petulant example of the overt misogyny that has characterized (Sen. John Kyl, I'm looking at you) the entirety of the health care reform conversation.  It is an insincere and uninformed platitude toward the minority of the country who do not believe that women are people.  But more on that later.  In short, I was angry.
And so I thought, you know what, Stupak has a lot to answer for, and I bet I'm not the only one who has questions about this amendment he and his little friends in the House have attached to my health care reform (!).  So I reposted the link.
And then I thought some more.  Facebook is a fantastically flexible medium.  You can do all sorts of things on Facebook.  Like create events.  And so I started an event page, initially just dispersing it to my local friends, a little community action is always a good time.
Initially the invites were limited, no more than 20 of my nearest and dearest (although primarily nearest geographically) friends.  However, there are all sorts of groups and organizations on the Facebook, populated by people who are empathetic and concerned, sincere, ethical, good people.  And they took the event and reposted it, and invited their friends, and so on and so forth.
We, combined, invited something like 140 people.  That felt good.  Clearly, they were not all going to come, however perhaps 30 people were people I knew.
And since there are these lovely organizations and groups on the Facebook, when I realized that it could potentially be larger than just the Phil Dept and some Ann Arbor friends hanging out with some crudely drawn signs, awkwardly in the College of Law, but instead real live strangers could be there, I decided to ask for help, a little guidance.
I really needed the help when I realized that I could get media coverage.  Some nice concise talking points.  So I asked for help from the local Planned Parenthood (please give them lots and lots of money), and got the help I needed.  Did you know that anyone can just write up a press release and email it to a news organization?  Or just call up a local news organization and say - "hey, um, I just wanted to let you know that there is going to be a protest at the College of Law tomorrow at 8am, opposing Stupak."  There are people sitting at news organizations right now just waiting for you to call them.  This is amazing.
And then I just posted the event everywhere on the Facebook I could think of.  And harassed like-thinking friends into doing the same.  And made signs.
And then I went to soccer and was up far later than I intended.  And tried to sleep.

There is something thrilling about walking into a building, seeing people you don't know, standing there with signs.  All because you all agree that something needs to be done, and someone needs to have some answers ready.  It's really, really cool.

And I wander into the building and am greeted by lovely women and men with signs and stickers and flyers and t-shirts.  And we organize ourselves near the entrance to the conference, where Stupak will shortly be speaking.  The director of conference very nicely approaches us to find out what our plans are, and I do my best to reassure him that, seriously dude, I'm from MI, I want the nice conference on Great Lakes water issues to go well.  However, Stupak needs to be confronted by the terrible things he's done.  We just want to hold our nice signs, hand out some information, and ask a question or two, if that's cool.  And it was.  And then the TV cameras showed up.  And I found myself giving a couple of interviews, trying to stay clear and coherent, hit the hightlights, speak in soundbites.  You know, behave well.

The middle bit of the protest I missed, because just as Stupak started talking and some of us went into the room, I had to duck out and run off to teach a quick class on feminism, then it was right back to stand in for the Q&A (we got one question off, and about a half an answer back).

What I really want to stress in this post is a: people are wonderful, wonderful beings.  Very helpful and caring.  People out there do care.  And we can use our social media, the vast amount of technology that we (privileged ones) can take for granted, to bring us together.  And b: you can organize a protest very quickly.  Mostly because of (a).  And if you can, and it's a cause you care about, do it.

I bravely wade into the server/diner war

100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1) - You’re the Boss Blog - NYTimes.com



I worked in restaurants for years. Long, tortuous, evil years filled with all the misery that one would assume is found in working as a server. Worse, the restaurant that I worked at for the longest time was a place known for its salad bar and frequent foibles of the franchisees getting sued for some form of sexual discrimination/harassment or another. Good memories. It's not that I hated every minute of it (just most), but it did give me a particular perspective on the service industry.

Dear Al Franken - I <3 you!

This is just a quick hit, as I'm furiously finishing my thesis this week, AND, ZOMG, Elizabeth Minnich is coming in for the Philosophy Department Conference and busy, busy, busy . . .

At any rate - every once in a while there is a news story that on the one hand seems to talk about the progress society is making toward not being horrifically misogynistic, which is nice what with all the talk about domestic violence being a pre-existing condition, women losing access to reproductive health care under the health care reform, pretty much everything attached to the health care debate really just emphasizes how much this society hates women, like a lot! However, I habitually over-think things and wind up instead feeling a little sad that this is even under debate.

(Trigger warning)

The problem of language

I have a lot of interesting conversations. It's kind of a hobby of mine. As in, it kind of replaces breathing for me most days.

The conversation I had on Friday (just before seeing Capitalism: A love story) and the spirited debate I'm in right now seem related to me. And seem related to another item that's been in the news recently, that is actually the reason why I really for really wanted to start a blog, and did!, this time.

This is why we can't have nice things

Being in a philosophy graduate program is interesting, especially if you do political philosophy, and particularly if you are a political philosopher trying to teach medical ethics while there is a health care reform debate raging around in the background. You wind up having a lot of arguments in the offices. Which is nice, it distracts you from the fact that you are inhaling new forms of mold with every breath.

This current health care debate is a fascinating peek into what has happened to politics and political thinking in America. I wasn't able to put a finger on what the difference was until discussing nationalized health care with a fellow grad student on Wednesday.

What struck me in the conversation is the different understandings of the role, in fact of the ontology, of the government in the lives of the people. We have a peculiar sense, it seems, that the government is against the people, rather than the government being part of the people. Now, this is not necessarily a mistaken sense. One need only look at the difference between the desire of the people to have a public option (however that is understood) and the willingness of the politicians to utterly ignore that desire and instead vote it down to further the interests of their corporate sponsors.