Sheffield Fems

There was:

• A question which starts with the words “fifteen individuals who attend a weightwatchers’ clinic are each to be assigned at random to one of the treatments A, B, C to reduce their weights”, and goes on to list “differing amounts of weight” that they need to lose.
• A question that starts “a surgeon wishes to compare two possible surgical techniques for curing a specific heart defect…” and goes on to list 24 patients, together with “sex: M/F” and “age”.

Why am I highlighting this?

Well, actually, there’s a few reasons.

Firstly, diets don’t work. So the first example grates on me. Secondly, both questions are about changes to the human body. One of them merits the sex of the individuals being known. The other one apparently doesn’t.

Are we meant to assume that weight loss will occur (assuming it does occur, for which, see my first point) at the same rate for men and women? At this point, I’m not getting into discussing the gender binary, because we’re dealing with statistics, and one of the things that statistics does is identify trends. The problem occurs when people start to take trends to be indicative of not only the whole population, but for each individual within that population.

So, if we can assume for the moment that people socially identified as male tend to have a different bodily structure to those socially identified as female, surely it would make just as much sense for the weightwatchers trial to be stratified by sex as it was for the heart defect trial.

In which case, I’m surprised that the question didn’t make that clear. Yes, I know that in the real world there are many factors that ought to be accounted for, of which sex is only one. And the questions that we do are, of necessity, very generalised, as they exist mainly as a way for us to show that we understand the concept. But this is a strange omission, as it is the only question, out of four, which does not in some way mention the sex of the person(s) in question.

Are we, then, meant to assume that there is no need to specify the sex of the people dieting? And why?

I know what I think. I think that the underlying assumption is that dieting is for women. And I know that I don’t like this assumption. In fact, I think that when I hand this homework in, it will have a note to the effect that the sex of the participants was not included, and that this could have made a difference.

Once upon a time, I used to believe my teachers when they spoke of the objectivity in science. Now, more and more, I feel that belief slipping away*. And these aren’t even real studies.

*It’s the small things as much as anything. One of my tutors has a habit of referring to all of the people in our questions as “he”, even when on the sheets they are explicitly gendered female. I’ve also noticed that women in our examples sheets tend to do things like diving and gymnastics, whilst men drive cars. This frustrates me, because when we’re in a parallel universe in which a car is doing a totally constant speed, and the speedometer does not lie, surely we can mix things up a bit and get rid of some patriarchal assumptions whilst we’re there!

Yes, it is Sunday, and yes, that means I ought to have a Weekend News-Surfing post lined up. But, you know, I’m not feeling up to dealing with the myriad of nastiness that’s around in the news this week, so instead, I have taken inspiration from the long-suffering sidekick of Captain Obvious:

I’m going to give you three quotes that have appeared in the news this week. And then, if you haven’t already guessed, I’m going to point out why one of these things is not like the others.

Pope ‘distorting condom science’:

“the London-based Lancet said the Pope had “publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine on this issue”. It said the male latex condom was the single most efficient way to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV/Aids.”

School lunch rules too strict:

“The government had been working with local authorities and schools to create better dining facilities and organise lunch breaks better because it knew students were put off if there was nowhere to sit, long queues, unattractive dining rooms or no time to eat.”

Sex attack on woman in alleyway:

“I would advice ladies in the area to take reasonable precautions and if possible avoid walking alone in that vicinity at this moment in time. If they are walking around during the hours of darkness I would urge them to be with a friend or something like that.”

Have you guessed yet?

In fact, there are two right answers. The first is that one of these things is not held to be “conventional wisdom” – and that would be the second story, which says that students don’t want to stand in long queues to get their lunch.

The second, and the one which I was going for, was that, while the quotes from the first two stories are clearly true all the time, the third story is one of those rare occaisions where the “conventional wisdom” for women is actually relevant.

Here’s what gets to me, Detective Inspector Dilly*: if women in our culture don’t know by now that they’re not meant to walk around late at night without some suitably muscular man to look after them, they never will. You saying “don’t walk around in the dark” isn’t anything new or helpful.

I know I’m not meant to walk around in the dark on my own. I know I’m not meant to go out clubbing in a short skirt, but then on the other hand, if I go out in jeans and get raped, the judge won’t believe me because my jeans will have been too tight for the man to get them off without my help. I know I’m not meant to get drunk, because if I do, I can wave goodbye to that rape conviction – after all, just because I was unconscious, doesn’t mean I didn’t consent! I know I’m not meant to use public transport to get home – but then, if I take a taxi and get raped, who will believe me? I know I’m meant to take my boyfriend with me everywhere I go, so that potential rapists know that I’m somebody else’s property, but then, if my boyfriend rapes me, it won’t even get to court because the police will label it as a “domestic incident”. After all, I don’t normally object to having sex with him, right?!

Of course, if you were honest you might have said, “face it, ladies, whether a man rapes you has nothing to do with what you do, and everything to do with whether that man is a rapist”. But that doesn’t make for nice, friendly police officer advice, does it?

Don’t get me wrong – I want women to be safe. I want to feel safe, as a woman. But let’s face it – the only time I could ever consider myself completely free from the threat of rape is if I was the only person left alive. Being pre-pubescent doesn’t mean I won’t get raped. Being post-menopausal doesn’t mean I won’t get raped. Being lesbian… well, in some places, being lesbian might actually increase my chances of getting raped.

I hope they find that man in Portsmouth. Maybe when they’ve done that, they can work on challenging rape myths so that women actually feel confident in reporting rape in the first place.

*yes, his name really is Dilly.

When you’re too drunk to give consent!

This story highlights what for me is a very important issue : that there are different ‘forms’ of rape, but they all amount to the same thing –  non-censusual sexual activity. Examples:

Date rape: even within this category there are variations. You can just be out in a club or bar, and someone you are most certainly not with can spike your drink. You can be out on an actual date with someone, and they can spike your drink. You can be on a date with someone who believes that consenting to a date means relinquishing all rights to your own body, and will force themselves on you.

‘Out-and-out rape’: the form people are most likely to be sympathetic towards the victim, where an attacker stalks you, forces you into a secluded area and rapes you. What is frequently used against those who are raped is the fact that you are likely to at least casually know your rapist in almost every circumstance – somehow you are meant to have a magically ‘rapist’ sensor that alerts you to someone creepy, so you can what? avoid them? prevent them from following you home? Or maybe no one should be allowed to walk home on their own ever again – that’ll stop the rapes! Oh wait! But you also shouldn’t get into cabs, because someone might drive off and rape you! So… stay indoors if you don’t want to get yourself raped. The solution couldn’t possibly be educating people that just because they WANT something, doesn’t mean they can HAVE IT. Your dick will not fall off if you do not have sex. Deal.

Statutory rape: sex with someone under the age of consent. Obviously a tricky area. The law is designed to protect vulnerable young people from predators, and to have a means of prosecuting them. Sadly, it also means that my first boyfriend was technically a rapist, me being only fifteen and he seventeen. It just shows how many variables have to be taken into account when discussing rape. And they ALL focus around consent. I most certainly consented with my boyfriend, fully aware of the nature of my own desire. An eleven year old being groomed by a forty year old man: they might ostensibly ‘consent’ to sex, but they do not know what that means – they are consenting to satisfy the desires of someone they want to please, not to mutual sex.

I don’t really know what to call this last one – I welcome suggestions. This is the one that fits the article above. It is the ‘too drunk to say no’ rape, and causes such controversy. Quite why, I am uncertain – if someone is too drunk to speak, to articulate their desires – DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH THEM. They cannot want it. If, as the man in this case claims, you ‘mis-read’ the signs – TOUGH. Deal with the consequences. Accept responsibility for the fact you had sex with someone against their will. This is not rape in the Big Bad Rapist sense, as with that disgusting taxi driver Rachel wrote about. It is the rape of female desire. If the man wants it, and she can’t refuse it, then he deserves it, and should not be punished for taking what he thought he should have. It sickens me, because it is contrary to everything I believe about sex: mutual enjoyment, desire, trust…

There needs to be more awareness about the different forms rape can take. More than anything, the victim-blaming needs to stop.

Sorry for all the long posts – its been an angry day. They’ll be some light entertainment soon 🙂