Are All Men Really Pervs?

Eek! A Male! Treating all men as potential predators doesn't make our kids safer. 
By Lenore Skenazy

"Last week, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Timothy Murray, noticed smoke coming out of a minivan in his hometown of Worcester. He raced over and pulled out two small children, moments before the van's tire exploded into flames. At which point, according to the AP account, the kids' grandmother, who had been driving, nearly punched our hero in the face.

Why?

Mr. Murray said she told him she thought he might be a kidnapper...."

Read the rest of this piece......

And if you're new to these parts but are iterested in reading more on this topic, please check out the following posts:

Book Review: Self-Made Man

Gender Differences in Sex Drive

Gender: A Question of Diagnosis?

Defining Manhood

Better Than Thou

Boys Don't Cry

The "Real" Female Fear

This Post Has Been Brewing....

Some may think I'm being brazen, given that my child is still unborn and yet I have very strong opinions on this topic. Brazen or not, I have given a lot of thought to and done a lot of research on this issue.

First, to get you caught up, please check out this article.

Part One: The Parent Police

I hate people who think they have the right, responsibility, or reason to tell a parent how they should raise their children. FUCK you. That's my opinion on these assholes. Choosing not to breastfeed is not a mortal sin. Letting your 9 yr old child ride the subway alone in a city with the 297th (or some crazy number like that) lowest crime rate in the country does not mean you deserve to be in jail. Feeling a bit resentful that getting pregnant requires you to give up your body, your mind, drinking, smoking, and the other fucktillion things that warrant vigilance does not mean you're a selfish person and shouldn't have children. Fuck you assholes who believe you have the right to say otherwise.

The GUILT that has been imposed on parents in this country is the primary culprit for the insanity that has taken hold of parenting practices in the last decade. The secondary culprit is the spreading of the nonsense belief that there is such a thing as a PERFECT parent.

BULLSHIT.

Which brings me to....

Part Two: Fundamentalist Parenting

What is it with extremes in this world? When did we decide that we could learn how to raise children by reading books written by strangers?

The child-worshipping culture that has emerged is no doubt harmful and handicapping to an entire generation of children who can't handle failure and are unable to make their own decisions, and who feel entitled to having no boundaries. These kids are likely to be useless adults - with finger-pointing as their favorite hobby.

And now we have what's being called "Free Range Parenting." First, I should say that this particular parenting style is a gazillion times closer to the kind of parent I want to be than the so-called "helicopter" parenting.

But, The Hypocrisy!!!

"Become a "Free Range Parent! Learn why this is the BEST way to raise your child! Buy the book! Buy the CD! Read the blog and the newsletter! Buy the t-shirts and the 'best' handmade classic toys!"

Once again, we need someone ELSE to tell us how to raise our children! And we wonder why douchebags in the park feel entitled to judge your non-organic snacks!

Part 3: The Good Old Days

This is my favorite email forward ever. I've had it for almost 4 years and never fail to be reminded of it when I think about becoming a parent. Enjoy and please feel free to comment.

"TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, AND EARLY 80'S!!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because.....

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!


Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned....

HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL!"

Gender and Violence

The other day I was reading The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, a memoir of her childhood in Texas, when I came across an incredibly disturbing scene that made me start to shake with disgust and horror.

In this scene, 7 year-old Mary has just finished reading Charlotte's Web up in her bedroom and has this revelation about the importance of the book and its true meaning. She calls for her male babysitter to come upstairs so she can tell him about it. He comes upstairs and she starts babbling to him about what she had read, about the significance of Charlotte and Wilbur's friendship. He asks her if she would like to be his special friend, and at this point we know where this is going. In the next few paragraphs, Karr describes (very graphically) how this babysitter gets (forces) her to perform oral sex on him. At SEVEN YEARS OLD.

Now first of all, I read books like this all the time - I was not shocked out of innocence by this occurrence or anything. Second of all, she had already described being raped by a neighborhood boy at an even younger age earlier in this same book. But something about this particular scene - the way she described it or perhaps the vividness of the image in my head - this one had a very different effect on me.

I sat there stone-faced and shaking on the couch, book in my lap. My husband asks if I'm okay. I say "no," he asks why not, I explain the scene to him. He shakes his head in disgust/anger and says "See? That's why I don't want to have girls."

At this point I realize that my take on the situation is quite different from his. I get angry and ask quite forcefully, "Oh, you'd rather have the perpetrator of the crime be your child than the victim???"

I realize that this was a very sexist thing to say, and a very sexist feeling to have in the first place. But I have heard so many people express a preference for having sons because of similar reasons, claiming that boys don't need to be worried about as much, that I reacted viscerally to both the scene and my husband's statement.

What does it say about us and our culture if we would rather raise violent perpetrators than victims? What does it say about us and our culture that we associate a specific gender to one status or the other?

I have heard strong, independent females say things like "Oh, I'm so glad I never had a daughter. Boys are just soooo much easier." As if girls require some kind of high-maintenance parenting and boys just kinda take care of themselves.

My thoughts after reading the passage in Karr's book were essentially that I have to imagine it is much easier to teach a child how to never be a victim than it is to teach a child never to be a perpetrator. How do you teach your son (effectively) not to ever touch another person or force them to touch him against their will without making sex and sexual contact seem dirty, wrong and forbidden (Because we all know where those lessons lead.....Jeffrey Dahmer, anyone?).

Isn't it easier to teach a girl that she has rights, that her body is her own, that she doesn't have to respond to intimidation and that fear doesn't have to control her life? Isn't that easier than teaching a boy to control his hormonal urges, to respect females as equals, to respect female sexuality in a world where all the messages he is bombarded with are to the contrary?

I think the most disturbing aspect of that passage for me was the fact that I never once got the impression that this boy wanted to hurt Mary. He wasn't being mean, he wasn't malicious. I believe he had a strong sexual urge, he needed an outlet for it, he saw an opportunity and took it. I don't think he believed he was hurting her. I didn't get the impression that this boy was the type who would grow up to be a child molestor or a rapist. But nonetheless, he did what he did to her.

And I'm willing to bet this shit happens all the time and no one ever hears about it. The sick fuckers always seem to be adults and get caught because they do it over and over again. But what about the ones who, just once, lost control of their shit and no one ever finds out what happened?

We all know of ways to protect kids from bad people in the world. Sometimes we can't control it, but we all do our best.

But how can we effectively protect our kids from themselves?

Supersense

I recently finished reading the book Supersense: Why We Believe The Unbelievable by Bruce M. Hood. At the time, I had no idea how relevant the information in this book would be to a lot of the discussions going on in the blogosphere surrounding religion, science, and this whole "New Atheist" thing.

First, the author bio: Bruce Hood is the chair of the Cognitive Development Center in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol. He was a research fellow at Cambridge, a visiting scientist at MIT, and a professor at Harvard.

The man, quite frankly, is brilliant. And entertaining, which is a rare combination in my opinion.

I hope to blow your minds with some of the information from this book, or at the very least get an interesting discussion going.

Here is the basic thesis of the book: Humans are pre-programmed to believe in the supernatural, whether that takes the form of religion, superstitions, or other beliefs that, if true, would violate the known laws of science.

A good number of you who read this blog consider yourselves to be Atheists, as I consider myself. We also consider ourselves to have scientific minds, to be so-called skeptics, etc. In other words, we feel that we only look at facts and evidence when it comes to existence on this planet.

But for 99.9% of us, that simply isn't the case, as you'll soon see.

First, let's talk about science and the layperson. Hood uses Noam Chomsky's language example "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" to demonstrate that even though the sentence perfectly follows the rules of grammar, it does not make any sense to us because of what we know about the words used. Hood says:

"So any new idea has to fit within existing frameworks of knowledge. This is why some ideas can be so difficult to grasp. Science, for example, is full of ideas that seem bizarre simply because we are not used to them. It's not that people are being stupid when it comes to science. Rather, many scientific ideas are just too difficult for many of us to get our heads around. On the other hand, folk beliefs about the supernatural seem quite possible. That's why it is easier to imagine a ghost than a light wave made up of photons. We have seen neither, but ghosts seem plausible, whereas the structure of light is not something we can easily consider." (p.8)

Notice that he says "imagine" rather than "believe in." His point is simply that for the average person, we can place the idea of a ghost into a framework, but the idea that light is made up of particles just doesn't make any intuitive sense. Think about this in terms of evolution. Yes, the Christian debate is more complex than this, but at the very heart of it is this idea that it is easier to imagine a divine being creating life on earth than it is to imagine man emerging from primordial soup only to gradually become the homo sapien we are familiar with today.

Hood's next major point is that as adults, we think that when we learn something new we abandon any previously held misconceptions. But this isn't entirely true:

"Consider an example from the world of objects. Imagine two cannonballs of exactly the same size. One is made of light wood and the other one is solid iron that is one hundred times heavier. If you were to drop them both at the same time from the leaning Tower of Pis, what would happen? Children think that heavier objects must fall much faster than lighter ones. Heavier objects do land before lighter ones, but only just, and that's because of air resistance....As a child, I did not believe this until a physics teacher demonstrated that a feather and a coin fall at exactly the same speed in a vacuum. Most college students make the same mistake. The amazing thing is not that adult students get it wrong, but rather that these are students who have been taught Newton's Laws of Object Motion and should know better. They should know the correct answer. Somehow the scientific knowledge they have so painstakingly learned loses out to their natural intuition about weight and falling objects." (p. 19)

I got that one wrong. Why? Because if I imagined a feather and a coin both falling off the table, I could not imagine a scenario in which the coin didn't land first. I don't experience life in a vacuum. So even though I KNOW what the correct answer is, the fact that it intuitively seems less plausible overpowers my learned knowledge.

Now here's where Hood starts to blow my mind:

Would you wear a sweater that belonged to a serial killer?

Would you rather own an original work of art or one that is an exact replica created by an expert forger?

Have you ever felt the desire to have an admired person autograph something?

Could you drink out of a glass after it has been touched by a sterilized cockroach?

Would you slurp your favorite soup after it has been stirred by a brand-new fly swatter?

Why does spitting on your own food make it disgusting despite the fact that you need saliva for digestion?

Some triggers for disgust have to be learned, as we know from cultural variations. But many of them seem to be hard-wired. And while the value of things such as art and signed items are culturally determined, nearly all of us tend to subscribe to some measure of preference for originals, old items, and things that someone of importance to us has touched or been in the presence of.

For now, let's concentrate on disgust:

"For me, the really interesting aspect of disgust and the associated contamination fears is that they all show the hallmarks of supernatural thinking. This is because they trigger psychological essentialism, vitalistic reasoning, and sympathetic magic. For example, sympathetic magic states that an essence can be transferred on contact and that it continues to to exert an influence after that contact has ceased. This is known as the "once in contact, always in contact" principle.....There's an old saying that a drop of oil can spoil a barrel of honey, but a drop of honey can't ruin a barrel of oil. This is the negative bias that humans hold when it comes to contamination. We intuitively feel that the integrity of something good can be more easily by contact with something bad rather than the other way around.

However, it's difficult to be reasonable about contamination once it's occurred. It's as if the contamination has energy that can spread. For example, imagine that your favorite dessert is cherry pie and that you have the option of choosing between a very large slice and a much smaller piece. Unfortunately, your waiter accidentally touches the crust of the large slice with his dirty thumb. The same thumb that you just saw him pick his nose with. Which slice would you choose? Given the choice, most of us would opt for the smaller slice, even though we could cut off the crust where the waiter touched it and still end up with more pie. As far as we are concerned, the whole slice has been ruined -- as well as our appetite." (p. 162)

I think most of us feel this way, despite the fact that it is not rational, reasonable, or logical. Now let's look at what Hood has to say about valued objects:

"We all treasure sentimental objects from within our lifetime that do not necessarily have any intrinsic worth other than their connection with a family member or a loved one. These objects are essentially irreplaceable. For example, engagement or wedding rings are typical sentimental items that are unique. If lost or stolen, most people would not regard an identical replacement as a satisfactory substitute, because these objects are imbued with an essential quality. Psychologically, we treat them as if there were some invisible property in them that makes them what they are.

But what if it were possible to make identical copies? Imagine that a machine existed that could duplicate matter down to the subatomic level, such that no scientific instrument could measure or tell the difference between the original object and the duplicate - like a photocopier for objects. If the object was one of sentimental value, would you willingly accept the second object as a suitable replacement? For most people, the answer is a simple no.

Identical replacements are not acceptable because psychologically we believe that individual objects cannot be replicated exactly even by a hypothetical perfect copying machine. This attitude is based on the assumption that originality is somehow encoded in the physical structure of matter. We intuitively sense that certain objects are unique because of their intangible essence. However, such a notion is supernatural." (p. 205-206)

Can any of you truly say that you would accept duplicate copies of objects that have sentimental value for you, without a moment's hesitation or any lingering doubt? And we're not even talking about living things - simply inanimate objects. I think all of us, Atheists or no, have certain things in our lives that we can't help but hold supernatural beliefs about. There are certain things and certain scenarios about which even the most rational, logical mind cannot escape supernatural tendencies.

One more example from Hood:

"Imagine that you are a hospital administrator and you have $1 million that can be used for performing a life-saving liver transplant operation on a child or to reduce the hospital's debt. What would you do? For most people, this would be a no-brainer -- of course one must save the child.

The economic psychologist Philip Tetlock has shown that people are appalled when they hear that an administrator would make the decision to benefit the hospital, even though more children would gain in the long term from such astute financial planning. What's more, they are also outraged if the hospital administrator decides to save the child but takes a long time to arrive at that decision. Some things are sacred. You should not have to think about them. You can't put a price on them. Likewise, if the choice has to be made between saving one of two children, this decision must take a long time. The choice should not be made quickly.

We intuitively feel that some things are right and some things are just plain wrong. Some decisions should be instantaneous while others must be agonized over. Decisions can haunt us even when there really should be no indecision. Every choice has a price tag if we care to consider relative worth. There are no free lunches, and so while we may be outraged and indignant about some choices and decisions, the reality is that all things can be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis.

However, a cost-benefit analysis is material, analytic, scientific, cold, and rational. This is not how humans behave, and when we hear that people think and reason like this, we are indignant...Likewise, when we hear that people could wear a killer's cardigan, live in a house of murder, collect Nazi memorabilia, we are disgusted. We feel it physically. Though a cost-benefit analysis may reveal our reaction to be out of balance with the actual costs, we still intuitively feel a moral outrage and violation of society's values." (p. 251)

So what's the point of all this? Well first of all, you should read the book. Second, we all subscribe to supernatural beliefs in one way or another. Some of us are more susceptible to them than others, but it is nearly impossible to function as a social being without having some of those beliefs, otherwise there would be no group cohesion.

It is very interesting to examine the way the mind works, especially in this particular subject. If we believe that a hat or a scarf that once belonged to a long-lost relative is special and priceless, unique and irreplaceable, imbued with some invisible quality or essence that makes it what it is, is it really such a huge leap to go from that belief to subscribing to alternative medicine or something as pervasive as religion?

Atheists are not completely exempt from supernatural beliefs. We just have fewer of them. And many aspects of science are so complex and counterintuitive that they run contrary to our existng frameworks. What seems to you, as an expert, as indisputable fact may seem just as far-fetched and supernatural to a layperson as belief in the effectiveness of prayer is to an Atheist. And this, in my opinion, is what allows scientists to also be theists.

I don't know what the fuck a "New Atheist" is, nor do I really care to. In my opinion, the entire notion is ludicrous and pointless. You either are an Atheist or you're not. To make further subdivisions from there is to turn it into either a religion or a political movement, neither of which it should be. But I digress.

If we can further understand the mind's tendency to believe in supernatural things and to revert back to childish notions of how the world works, we may be able to, if nothing else, teach science more effectively and without this need for debate. Do I believe that creationism should be taught in public schools or that evolution should not be taught in Christian schools? Absolutely not. But what this line of research is showing us is that maybe believers are born, not made, and that it is at least somewhat irrelevant what we try to teach people.

If you have even the slightest interest in these topics, I highly recommend this book.

In the meantime, discuss.

Ah, Snobbery In Psychology. So Funny.

Regarding the famous behaviorist John Watson, I just read the following quote in the book I'm reading:

"When he was not tormenting Little Albert, dangling newborns from pencils, or making out with his graduate student, Watson famously boasted...."

LOL. I see this stuff in psychology books all the time, and it never fails to crack me up. 

Somewhat Substantial HodgePodge of Bloggy Goodness

Nothing particularly substantial to blog about today, but have no fear - I just got my copies of JPSP and SPPB in the mail and I'm sure I'll have lots to share about some of the articles in there. 

I had a complete meltdown on friday afternoon after a member of a helping profession pointed out to me that "none of us have any control over what happens in our lives, despite the persistent illusion to the contrary." I don't think she knew I was an Atheist when she said this to me, because if she had she might have sugar-coated it or softened it a bit. The only thing that separates an Atheist from a Nihilist (in my opinion) is the belief that we have at least some measure of control over our lives. In essence, one could also say that this is the core difference between Atheism and Theism. 

In relation to the car accident, this was a relevant concept to explain that despite all of my efforts to be a safe driver (never caused an accident in 11 years of driving), and all of my efforts to be on the lookout for dumbass people behind the wheel, at the end of the day it means nothing because someone can always hit ME. And there isn't really a damn thing I can do about it. There was nothing I could have done to prevent the accident I was in. 

It seems so simple, doesn't it? But not for me. I started realizing that this explains why bad things happen to good people, why people who do everything they're supposed to do just can't get ahead, etc. She tried to make this idea a little more palatable for me by adding "The only things we can control are our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior."

But given all that I know about psychology, I'm pretty sure this is bullshit too. Implicit associations and priming, attempting to control intrusive thoughts, the daunting task of trying to self-soothe during an anxiety attack, trying to keep from crying, etc., - I think the only thing we really can control is our own behavior. Because our thoughts and emotions often have minds of their own. I have oodles of studies to back this up. 

So I found myself in a crisis, asking things like "What is the fucking POINT, then??" I am not a spiritualist by any means, but it took listening to Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart to calm me down. (Thanks AA, for the post title the other day. That's what made me think of it.)

Chodron talks about how life is filled with distractions to keep us from feeling emotions that have been labeled as negative. We don't want to feel bored, lonely, sad, etc., so we find things to distract us from feeling that way. Instead, she says we should try and sit with it for as long as we can stand it as often as we can, to build up a sort of tolerance for it. Just sit and feel it. 

So I figured, what the hell, and I tried it. I sat with the feeling of helplessness and anxiety. I sat with the sadness, the anger, and the panic. The only distraction was the sound of her voice telling me why I needed to do it. It took about 1-2 hours, but it went away. I didn't need to try and resolve it, think it through, find ways to fix it. I just acknowledged that I was feeling miserable, let myself feel miserable, and it went away like when one of my cats is desperate for attention but only wants it for 5 minutes before he or she is content to move on. 

I guess this post is more substantial than I thought it was going to be. LOL. Anyway, my point is that I recommend the audio version of Chodron's book for times of emotional upheaval like that. Her voice alone is very soothing. 

In other news, I got to video chat with my husband yesterday through gchat. It was awesome. Unfortunately he can't do it again today because the internet at the base is down. 

The Wii Active Personal Trainer is awesome, but it hates me. I went out dancing on friday night so my thighs were nice and sore yesterday. I turn on the Wii Active, and it made me do 6 sets of 20 lunges in all directions and variations. Now my legs really hurt. But on the bright side, I have lost 4 inches off my waist and 3 inches off my hips since I posted about being frustrated by my lack of progress, and about 6lbs or so since I bought that new scale. I have accomplished this through a daily combination of the Wii Fit, Wii Active Personal Trainer, and Zumba Fitness Latin dancing. I increased my calorie intake slightly by eating less food more often: 1 piece of whole grain toast with peanut butter and a glass of V8 Frusion in the morning, a yogurt or one of those Green Giant Steamers veggie things for lunch, my favorite sandwich ever for dinner (see below), a small bowl of macaroni salad with tuna after working out, and some Doritos for a nighttime snack. I also drink a shitload more water. 

Best Sandwich Ever:

I used to love this sandwich from Panera Bread until they posted their nutrition facts and I discovered that their version has about 1100 calories in it. I might as well eat McDonald's. I knew I could make a much, much healthier version of it at home. Here are the results:

Chipotle Mayonnaise - I bought a bottle of Chipotle hot sauce from the marinade/steak sauce section of the grocery store. I combined 1 cup of Helmann's mayo with 1 clove of minced garlic in a tupperware bowl (I didn't want to have to make this every day). I added the hot sauce to taste while stirring, then added Roasted Garlic & Bell Pepper seasoning and some Cayenne pepper until I achieved my desired level of spiciness. 

The Sandwich - 2 slices of Wonder 100% Whole Grain bread (total 160 calories), 1 tbsp of the Chipotle mayo (80 calories), 1 slice of Kraft Deli Deluxe american cheese (70 calories), thinly sliced red onion, lettuce (both with negligible calorie content), and 6 slices of Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh shaved turkey breast (45 calories). 

Fuckin YUMMY at a total calorie content of about 355 calories. Fuck Panera Bread.

Their version. Image from WebMD's article about the worst sandwiches ever.

***Update: Totally forgot to add this. When I started working out I could do like 2-3 push-ups (the real way) on a good day, 0.5 pull-ups, and couldn't run for shit. Now I can do 10 push-ups putting my nose to the floor, 3 pull-ups, and the Wii Fit is telling me I could probably run 1.5 miles in slightly less than 11 minutes. I feel diesel. ;)***

Chippers, Smokers, & The Tipping Point

Last night I finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I am not going to do a full review of the book, but I will say this - very interesting read, hard to put down, a fascinating look at the social psychological aspects of epidemics and trends. I loved it.

Unfortunately, I have already returned the book to the library so my discussion of the content is going to be without specific names, references, and page numbers. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience - I just didn't think about it. 

Smoking, and teen smoking in particular, is the main topic of the last chapter of the book. The main question posed by Gladwell (and many, many others) is this: Why, in the face of years and years of anti-smoking campaigns, higher-priced cigarettes, falling adult smoking rates, and tons of new health information about the negative effects of smoking has the teen smoking rate been increasing in ridiculous amounts?

***Disclaimer - this book was published in 2000, and I feel like teen smoking has declined since then (I could be wrong), but I still think this is a very interesting discussion.***

In an informal survey with a large but unrepresentative sample, Gladwell found a common theme among the responses given when people were asked about their first experience with smoking. He sums it up in a single word: sophistication. The respondents had come into contact with a person they saw as grown-up, mature, rebellious, independent - the very characteristics that most teenagers strive to exhibit. This person was a smoker. In some cases it was a parent. But it also could have been an exchange student, an older or admired peer, a person they had a crush on, etc. It doesn't really matter who. 

And Gladwell makes a very striking statement in response to this:

"It's not that smoking is cool. It's that smokers are cool."

The psychologist Hans Eysenck discovered what he calls "the smoker's personality type." Smokers tend to be very social, always in need of someone to talk to, rebellious, risk-taking, sensation-seeking, have a lot of friends, more honest with and about themselves, and in general care very little about what other people think of them. 

Think about those descriptors and then compare it in your mind with the average teen. Those are the characteristics they WANT to have if they don't have them already. In modeling themselves after an influential person in their life who has that personality, taking up smoking is a byproduct - much like choosing to dress like that person. 

I can personally attest to the truth behind this idea. The people in my life who were most like the kind of person I wanted to be as a teen - in short, badasses - were always smokers. My outgoing, outspoken, devil-may-care sarcastic mom, the girls at school that nobody fucked with, etc. The first time I smoked a cigarette I stole one from my mom's pack - it was a Misty Ultra-Light 100 menthol. Yuck. But I smoked it by myself to see what it was like. There was no peer pressure. I knew it was really bad for me (in fact, it turns out that most smokers overestimate the harm it causes, not underestimate), but none of that mattered. I got an awesome head rush even though it tasted gross. I liked the feel of smoking. I felt more grown up and definitely cooler, even though there was no one around to validate that feeling. 

Evidence suggests that whether or not you experience a head rush the first time you try a cigarette can predict whether or not you will take up the habit. A similar line of evidence suggests that there is a genetic predisposition for your body's ability to handle and process nicotine - if your body is good at it, you'll get a head rush. If it isn't, you'll just think it's gross. 

This is fascinating if you think about it, because it suggests that family lines of smokers has much more to do with genetics than with social modeling - without the genetics model, it is puzzling to realize that children of non-smokers are just as likely to smoke as children of parents who smoke and vice versa. My sister and I grew up in the same environment full of smokers - parents, grandparents, cousins, everyone. I became a smoker at age 12. My sister doesn't smoke and never has. She finds it disgusting. 

Now when a teen starts smoking, they are never regular, hardcore smokers. They are what has been termed "chippers" - people who smoke fewer than 5 cigarettes a day on average of about 4 days per week. There are a lot of adults in the world who never go beyond being a chipper. They often label themselves social smokers and are not by any means nicotine addicts. This brings about a new question: why do some people remain chippers and others move into the realm of addiction?

The foremost researcher on smoking (whose name I can't remember, dammit), estimates that the "tipping point" of nicotine addiction is a daily intake of (I think, could get the numbers wrong but it's irrelevant for the point) 5-6mg, which I think equals about 10 cigarettes per day. If you never cross that threshold, you will never become addicted to nicotine. You will remain a chipper. 

A couple of scientists (again, sorry) took this information and wrote an article suggesting that the tobacco companies be forced to lower the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to make it nearly impossible to intake the threshold amount in a given day, thereby reducing the likelihood that a person would become addicted. Gladwell thinks this is a good idea. 

I think it's a good idea, sort of. The reason I have reservations about this is because the existing smokers would be screwed. The actual health problem of smoking has nothing at all to do with nicotine (the patch doesn't give you cancer). It is about the shit that you are taking into your lungs in order to GET that nicotine. If cigarettes suddenly didn't contain enough nicotine to sustain your addiction, you'd just smoke more and more and more to try to get that "hit" you need. We'd be putting even more shit into our lungs to get the same amount of the drug. And you can't come up with a "hardened smoker" brand of cigarettes, because then teens will just want those instead. But I digress. 

We have talked about the social factors that get teens to try smoking, the genetic factors that likely separate the continuing smokers from the experimenters, and the tipping point of developing a nicotine addiction. But what might separate the chippers from the chain-smokers? Why do chippers never feel the need to smoke more than 5 cigarettes per day?

The answer, research suggests, is mental illness. There is a significant correlation between smoking and depression. Alcoholics smoke at a rate something like 13 times the national rate. 90% of schizophrenics smoke. Nicotine is believed to act on dopamine and norepinephrine in the pre-frontal cortex, associated with pleasure. When the antidepressant bupropion (wellbutrin) was being tested, there were tons of reports coming in from patients saying "I no longer feel the need to smoke," or "I just don't like the taste of cigarettes anymore."

I can say from personal experience that wellbutrin does, in fact, have this effect. It's very logical - cigarettes are gross. They don't taste good. Just like how almost no one would drink if alchohol didn't provide desirable effects, if suddenly your cigarettes aren't doing anything for you, you're not going to want to smoke them anymore. It is believed that wellbutrin mimics the neurotransmitter effects of nicotine, that the increase in dopamine relieves the desire to smoke and the increase in norepinephrine reduces the withdrawal symptoms. 

It is probably a safe hypothesis to suggest that maybe those of us who become true smokers have a deficit in dopamine and norepinephrine in our brains that may or may not also result in depression. The chippers, on the other hand, probably have closer-to-normal levels and therefore simply enjoy the occasional increase. (This is just me talking now, this wasn't in the book.) When you combine this with the genetic component dealing with nicotine tolerance and processing as well as the social aspects, you can get a pretty clear picture of how a smoker becomes addicted and why others don't even smoke at all. 

I find all of this incredibly fascinating, particularly because nicotine doesn't have a conscious "high" associated with it, unlike all other drugs. I don't feel "good" when I smoke - I feel normal. When I am otherwise occupied with activities I find pleasurable, I don't feel the need to smoke. Yes, there is definitely a classically conditioned habit addiction in this for me as well - driving, for example, invokes a need to smoke. I used to believe that there was also an oral fixation thing going on, because I can distract myself from wanting to smoke by eating, which made sense given the typical weight gain that people experience when they quit. But now I'm thinking of it differently - eating is also a pleasurable activity, which is why there are food addictions. So maybe the reason eating tends to be a natural substitute is the neurotransmitter effects. Because if it was just an oral fixation, then drinking beverages and chewing gum would also work, but they don't. 

In a couple of weeks I will be seeing my doctor about quitting smoking and asking for an rx for wellbutrin because it has worked for me before. Now that I have a much better understanding about what is going on, I think I have a much better chance of successfully quitting. This topic and the new information that came along with it has given me a lot to think about. Expect me to post on this subject again sometime in the future. 

Combat Psychology

The timing of this post happens to coincide with a weekend during which I am spending a lot of time on a major military base. This, to some extent, has made this issue very personal for me. 

Many of you may be familiar with the recent trial of Steven Dale Green, a 24 year-old Iraq veteran who was convicted in a civilian trial of raping and murdering a 14 year-old Iraqi girl and her family in 2005. The death penalty has been taken off the table because the jury could not unanimously agree on the sentence. He is therefore going to be sentenced to life in prison in September. 

The story is mainly being highlighted for its exemplification of the effects of combat stress on our young men and women. The Army is being criticized for not discharging him when he expressed homocidal thoughts and for putting his unit through in inordinate amount of strife without supervision. The story is also conjuring up mostly-forgotten  images of the horrors of Abu Ghraib. 

Which brings me to the purpose of writing this post. I am a major advocate of blurring the lines that exist between the branches of psychology. In the case of combat psychology, the primary blend that needs to occur is between social and clinical psychology. To my knowledge, the military does not recruit or train social psychologists for the purpose of caring for the troops. They do, however, actively and aggressively recruit clinical psychologists with attractive signing bonuses and salaries and fantastic internships, even when the psychologist remains a civilian employee of the military. I think this is great. 

But the problem is that clinical psychology largely focuses on issues that arise within a soldier after the fact. Clinical psychologists are great for diagnosing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illness issues that may affect soldiers. But they only have a minimal working knowledge of the types of circumstances that create these conditions and the mechanisms that underly them in terms of social climate. 

It is my belief that we cannot improve conditions for our military personnel until social psychology becomes a valuable core component of our service branches. As many of you know, Phil Zimbardo is one of my heroes. Many people find this odd given the egregious ethical breaches of his most famous research. But he discovered something incredibly important about human nature - there are social circumstances that can easily and quickly cause a normally "good" person to act in "evil" ways. The Stanford Prison Experiment is the backbone and essence of social psychology - person x situation. 

The Green case perfectly illustrates the person x situation equation. Not every soldier will commit the atrocities that this young man did. In fact, most soldiers won't. But some of the things he experienced in Iraq created a fissure in his moral core, and arguably PTSD. We cannot examine one of these components without the other. If somehow social psychologists could consistently consult with the military regarding the social conditions under which soldiers like Green operate, we could likely prevent many heinous war crimes. The clinical psychologist who treated Green and was aware of his confessed homocidal urges is quoted as saying "I had no reason to believe that he would act on them." Perhaps if she had consulted with a social psychologist, that person would have said "Given the social history of this soldier in combat and given what we know what about possible effects of this type of social history, it is my strongest recommendation that he be discharged before it escalates." 

I have mixed feelings about Green's story. I'm glad that he was sentenced to life rather than given the death penalty. It is difficult to discover where who he was initially begins and when it becomes who we created. Though I would never discount societal factors that influence murderous behavior, the military is a particularly complex case. The entire purpose of their training is murder, just framed in a different way. The military culture is a culture of violence. Without the violence, it's just the boy scouts with better uniforms and fancier patches. 

We cannot continue to ask our young men and women to sacrifice so much on our behalf without in turn giving them the best we have to offer. It is my belief that the combined resources of social and clinical psychology is something we should offer to them. Let's not continue the cycle of creating and punishing criminals.

Backlash by Susan Faludi: The Full Review

I finally finished it last night, and I'm tired of whining about grad school. So here it is. 

Backlash by Susan Faludi, copyright 1991. 

Faludi's book is about what she calles the "Backlash Era" of the 1980's. Her thesis is basically that all of the strides the women's movement made in the 1970's were met with a fierce backlash in the following decade that spread throughout all facets of American life in an attempt to undo all of the progress that women had made. 

It was a bit surreal for me to read this book. I was born in the early 80's, and therefore I was largely blind to everything about the world I grew up in. When you're 4 years old, no one is talking to you about a woman somewhere who was forced to undergo a c-section after a court decided that the rights of her fetus prevailed over her own. At 5 years old, I wasn't flipping through Vogue magazine and seeing all of the ridiculous little-girl fashions that designers were trying to force on women. At 6 and 7 years old, I was not aware of lawsuits being brought against chemical companies that forbid women to work unless they were sterilized because of supposed fetal risks. In other words, this book introduced me to a world I didn't know existed. 

Faludi appears to be incredibly comprehensive and thorough in her examination of women's rights and issues in the 80's and prior. In places, the book hammers you over the head with the same point so many times that you begin to feel dizzy. If she were making a case in a courtroom about whether this backlash existed, an opposing attorney would have a hell of a time proving her wrong. 

I spent many moments in incredible anger and bewilderment while reading this book. She shows instead of tells the hypocrisy of many of the public fugures that played prominently in the backlash. For example, she interviews a man who spent years trying to convince the public that women belong in domestic roles only and should defer to their husbands in all matters. When Faludi visits him at home, she describes how he must negotiate childcare with his wife, who works full-time, and as he sits there and tries to convince her that men should never perform domestic chores, his young son comes in the room with a frying pan and begs his father to show him how to cook an egg (or something), until the father gets up, dons an apron, and saunters into the other room to cook. All the while his wife is sitting there saying how she supports her husband's work. Faludi doesn't comment on this in the book - she doesn't need to. She brilliantly puts it all out there for us without casting her own judgment on the situation, and rests assured that we are all thinking "How do these people reconcile their beliefs with their reality?"

I was frustrated while reading this book. Throughout the entire thing I felt desperate for her to either write a new, updated edition, or write another book that looks at what has happened in the past 20 years. I wanted to know what I have been missing this whole time. I thought to myself "No woman would ever lose a lawsuit nowadays over being forced into sterilization only to lose her job anyway." But am I right? Do I actually know this to be true? No, I guess I don't. 

I wanted her analysis of the life I have known, not the life that came before my awareness of the public sphere. In the 80's, clothing companies and fashion designers suffered because they couldn't get women to wear the feminine clothes they refused to stop producing. Jockey for Women came out in response to female feedback that said they wanted comfort and practicality, not lace and bows, and the company took the vast majority share of the market because they listened. But I think about life now, and the women I know. Many of us eventually gave in - but how and when did that happen? Did it actually happen, or did we just compromise somehow?

I look at my closet, for example, and I see a decent amount of sexy, feminine clothing. I think to myself, "Yeah, we must have given in." But when I look at what I actually wear - tailored suits, jeans, basic cotton shirts, capri pants that are the most comfortable things I've ever worn in my life - what I'm wearing right now and what has become my at-home uniform: sweatpants and a t-shirt - I think "Have we really given in? Or have we just taken it as an option?"

I think about the election last year. A woman ran for president and had a very real chance of winning. I didn't vote for her in the primary because I didn't believe that she was the most qualified person for the job. But I was proud that she was in the race. I don't believe she lost because she was a woman - I believe she lost because when all was said and done, we just liked Obama a hell of a lot better. I think about Sarah Palin. I don't believe she was railed against because she was a woman. I think she was railed against because she is a fucking idiot, and we all saw through what the Republican party was trying to do by putting her on the ticket for VP. Did she face sexism? Yeah, of course. But we didn't vote for her and McCain because she did not represent us - she was against abortion rights and spoke about traditional values even as she supported her deadbeat husband. She represented to us all of the things that are wrong with the right-wing - if abstinence is the only way to go, for example, why is your teenage daughter knocked up and being forced to marry her high school boyfriend? 

As I read the book I wanted to know what Faludi thought of all this. I wanted to know - does all of the progress I believe women have made since I was a child really exist? We're not even remotely there yet - true equality is a long way off. But are we at least still moving in the right direction?

I highly recommend that everyone read this book if you haven't already. It casts light on all the ways in which women's rights can and have been challenged, and will hopefully make us all more vigilant. It's not a man-bashing book. It does not call out any specific enemy that we need to fight. Indeed, she says multiple times that the backlash was not a conspiracy. But she says at the end of the book that the backlash occured because the men knew just how much power the women were gaining and how their world could have been overthrown had we remained organized and focused. The problem, she says sadly, is that the only people who were unaware of this power were the women themselves. 

I finished this book feeling stirred, angry, and hopeful. If we want government-mandated paid family leave policies, we need to fight for them. If we want goverment-sponsored daycare and in-house nannies, we need to fight for it. If we want equal pay for equal work, we need to fight for it. The book reminded me that we are half the population, and the only thing that keeps us from having the things we want and need is ourselves. 

The takeaway message from this book, for me, was to stop being afraid to be labeled a feminist, and to recognize that push-back is a sign of progress. I think we all need to be reminded of that every so often. So do yourself a favor and go get your hands on a copy of this book. Maybe you will be the one to write the next installment. 

As for me, once I finish reading the book I am on right now, I will move on to Stiffed - also by Faludi only the focus this time is on the men. 

Q&A #2 - Mrs CH's Questions

In my recent post asking for questions from readers, MrsCH offered up the following (my answers are beneath each quoted question):

1. One of my office mates just left to start a new job. The week before he left, he put up stuff around the office, gave everyone in the group a hat with the group's logo, and even gave us a framed copy of his letter of offer. What do you think possesses someone to leave things behind, while others don't?

I'm not sure that anyone has actually studied this, and seeing as my journal access is nonexistent right now, I can't answer you using any scientific basis. Disclaimer in place, I would venture to guess that it has to do with the level of connection a person feels to his/her place of work. He may have felt as though he was closing a chapter in his life that was very important to him, and didn't want to forget it or be forgotten. The people who did not leave things behind or make a big deal of their departure may have had more of the "Good riddance!" mentality. 

2. I bought a book recently called Women Don't Ask, and it's about how women are not as good at negotiating as men. What do you think about this?

This has been scientifically investigated, and there is some merit to this. Women consistently undervalue themselves. If a woman is asked to give her desired salary for a new job, for example, their $$ amounts are often significantly lower than a man would give for the exact same job. Women are also less likely to flat-out ask for a raise. 

Jost, J. T. (1997). An experimental replication of the depressed entitlement effect among women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 387-393.

Major, B. (1994). From social inequality to personal entitlement: The role of social comparisons, legitimacy appraisals, and group membership. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 26 (pp. 293-355). New York: Academic Press. 

Steil, J. M., McGann, V. L.,  & Kahn, A. S. (2001). Entitlement. In J. Worell (Ed.), Encyclopedia of women and gender (pp.403-410). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

3. I'm reading a book right now called The Female Brain, and it describes what our hormones do to our thoughts/actions throughout our lives. Do you think our thoughts/actions are governed more by our biochemistry or by our environment?

The Female Brain is bullshit. If you look up the referenced articles in the back of the book and read them, you'll find that none of them actually support any of her claims. It was a very ballsy move on her part to do that - assuming none of her readers would actually look up her sources.

The only part of her book that I found interesting was the idea that hormone exposure in utero might determine levels of masculinity and femininity. However, rather than consider that in terms of gender, I was made to wonder if it might have implications for sexual orientation. But there is no way to ethically test that. And even then, it would assume a link between sex hormones specifically and sexual orientation, which I'm not sure that's even remotely valid. 

But beyond that book, you're referring to the nature/nurture debate, which is moot at this point. It is always a combination of both influences, and it is ethically impossible for us to scientifically sort out the level of influence of each. For example, I would love to take an infant and raise it in a lab under controlled conditions to find out to what extent nature plays a role in determining gender. But no IRB on the face of the earth would let me do that. But it's the only way to really know the answer to that question. 

I have long been vocal against the idea that hormones dictate behavior, but I had no hard and fast evidence. Ambivalent Academic referred me to a scienceblog and the subsequent journal article it referenced dealing with this very issue. Find it Here. There is much more work to be done in this area, but this is a fantastic start. 

4. What is the deal with people one-upping each other when they talk about negative things in their lives?

I have no evidence-based answer for you here. But using speculation only, I would say that it might have to do with misguided attempts at expressing empathy. As in, "I know how you must be feeling, because I went through X, Y, and Z." In most cultures, a high value is placed on experience. People we believe to have more experience are sought out for guidance. It's logical. So maybe in our desire to help someone, to position ourselves as a guide and a mentor, we feel we have to demonstrate that we have more experience than they do with these negative events and emotions. But in truth, I have no idea. 

5. Why are women their own worst enemies? I find this to be the case especially in the blog world when sexism comes up - why do women have a hard time agreeing to disagree?

I think I need you to be more specific with this question. Otherwise I risk assuming what your question is about when I could be totally wrong. And the idea of women versus women is a very broad subject with tons of applications to different circumstances. 

Very interesting questions, Mrs. CH. I've really enjoyed answering them, and I hope that if you have more that you'll share them! :)

Q&A Series?

Okay, folks. I need to hop back on the blogging wagon to help keep myself focused on something other than drinking and watching House and Fringe. (And Rescue Me, and Lie To Me, and the Daily Show, and......)

Ambivalent Academic and I have a very sexy series of posts coming up for you in May dealing with sociobiology and social psychology. We will be talking about sex. That's right - S-E-X. It's gonna be awesome. 

But in the meantime, what Hot Social Psychology would you like to hear about? Is there a question you have about human behavior that you'd like to know the current theories on? (I know you do........)

Test me, folks! The vast majority of you are not in psychology, but all of us have questions about the behavior of the people around us and sometimes about ourselves. PhizzleDizzle, for example, recently asked about the assumptions we make about people we have never met.  

I don't claim to be an expert. But I am a big fan of generating discussion and answering questions to the best of my ability. So lemme have it. If I can't answer your question, I will say so, but in most cases I should be able to provide you with a decent amount of knowledge on the subject. 

(In case you can't tell, I anticipate boredom this weekend.)

The Answers

Here are the research-based answers to the questions I asked in my previous post. It's Saturday and I don't feel like digging up all the citations, but if someone wants them drop me an email and I'll be happy to give you that info. 

In the meantime, I think you'll find it interesting to look at what the science has to say versus what you and the other commenters believe to be true - especially when contemplating why that might be the case.

1. How do the infertility rates compare in women in their twenties versus in their thirties? 

    Infertility rates in women in their twenties are no different from those of women in their thirties until you reach your late thirties. Interesting to note - fetal Down's Syndrome rates for women in their early twenties are higher than for older women. Second interesting note - women in their twenties also seem to have growing rates of infertility at younger ages. Some suspect that at some point it will equal the rate of the late thirties, making late twenties and early thirties the easiest time to conceive in a woman's life. 

2. When women are asked what brings them the most satisfaction in their lives, what is the #1 response?

Career. Every single time this question has been asked since women entered the workforce in huge numbers. The second highest f response is friends. Interestingly, spouse and children are often much, much lower on the list than one might suspect. ***Keep in mind however that this data is nearly always colored by the fact that most respondents are white, middle-class women with "careers" and otherwise nuclear households.***

3. Which group reports a stronger desire for marriage, men or women?

Men. For a very, very long time. There is data that suggests after the first time having sex with a partner, a surprising majority of men report their first thought as "I wonder if this means the relationship is really going somewhere." Men also report higher desire for children, and more of them, than women. There are much higher rates of men on dating service sites such as match.com, and higher rates of personal ads placed by men in newspapers and magazines. Nowadays, the majority of women report that marriage is not a high priority for them, as cohabitation rates climb. 

What might surprise you - while marriage has been shown time and time again to have resounding positive effects on nearly all aspects of men's lives (socially, emotionally, financially, physically, etc.) and married men make up the 2nd healthiest, happiest group - marriage has the opposite effect on women. In terms of mental health issues, the two groups in America who are in the most trouble are single men and married women. The healthiest and happiest groups are married men and single women. 

Think about that for a second. Now think about the original question I asked you and what your answer was. For those of you who said women, what factors led you to that answer? Why do you think that might be?

4. How do women's prospects for marriage fare when they have higher levels of education and career achievement while still single?

They are better. Marriage rates in women compared to education creates a U curve when plotted. There are a bunch of women who get married right out of high school, and a bunch of women who get married in their late twenties and early thirties. The statistics can get a little muddled here based on agendas, though. You need to look at rates of "never-marrieds" to get an accurate number. And there are very, very few people in this country who have never been married. And of those who haven't? The majority are men. 

It seems to me that the reverse of the general belief is true - it is the men who have worsened prospects for marriage the older they get. Haven't we all been fed the idea that a man in his 40's who has never been married must have something wrong with him?

5. What effects do you think divorce has on women versus men in American society?

Emotionally/mentally: Women's mental health dramatically improves almost immediately. They initiate more divorces than men, report higher life satisfaction, and are less likely to say that the divorce was something they regret. Men, on the other hand, report plummeting mental health after a divorce. Higher rates of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide attempts. 

Financially: In the short-term, women experience a mild loss financially while men experience a small gain. However, it has been shown that within 5 years of the divorce, women's financial status equals out (and in many cases exceeds) what they had when married whereas the man's financial growth tends to stagnate.

In all aspects, men have been shown to be affected much more negatively by divorce than women, including socially and physically. 

And finally, a question that occured to me today while I was putting gas in my car:

6. Why might women be told from a very early age that men are dangerous, only after "one thing," have sex drives that they are unable to control, want to avoid marriage, and are presented as a group that needs to be "tamed" by women?

This is the one question I don't yet have a full answer to. Those of you who were surprised by the answers I provided above - would you change your answer to #6 at this point? I want to hear if anyone has anything to add or change before I post my thoughts on this question. 

Food for Thought

I am currently reading a book that I should have read a long time ago - Backlash by Susan Faludi. In my defense, my study of gender has tried to focus on work by scientists and scholars, not journalists. 

But sometimes, I think, the journalists can be more comprehensive in their analysis than researchers. Why? Because scientists are trained to narrow their scope, which might explain why Faludi's book is soooo fucking big, whereas most gender texts tend to fall a bit short of 300 pages. Backlash is 460 pages long - large pages with small fonts. I'm a pretty fast reader, but 2 hours or so of effort has only got me to page 53. 

I will do a full review of the book when I am finished reading, but for now I wanted to get a discussion going about some questions I find interesting. I will also get to her book Stiffed, but I have another text that will come in-between. 

First, a quote from page 8 of the text that I find to be incredibly important:

"The statistics the popular culture chooses to promote most heavily are the very statistics we should view with the most caution. They may very well be in wide circulation not because they are true but because they support widely held media preconceptions."

I want to ask you folks some questions, and I don't want any of you to look up the answers. I just want you to answer based on your own beliefs. I will provide some answers in future posts. Think of it as an informal survey so I can see where current belief systems lie. 

1. How do the infertility rates compare in women in their twenties versus in their thirties? 

2. When women are asked what brings them the most satisfaction in their lives, what is the #1 response?

3. Which group reports a stronger desire for marriage, men or women? 

4. How do women's prospects for marriage fare when they have higher levels of education and career achievement while still single?

5. What effects do you think divorce has on women versus men in American society?

And finally, a question that occured to me today while I was putting gas in my car:

6. Why might women be told from a very early age that men are dangerous, only after "one thing," have sex drives that they are unable to control, want to avoid marriage, and are presented as a group that needs to be "tamed" by women?

Book Review: Self-Made Man

So last night in my infinite boredom I decided to go to my local library for something to do. Yes, that's right. I went to the library to hang out. 

Not to knock it, because I love my local library. Though I prefer to hang out at Barnes & Noble because of the newness of the books and bigger selection, I can't walk into the place without dropping $100+ on books I really don't need. Since my husband isn't here to moderate my spending, I decided to go where the books are free. 

I found a title that I have been eyeing for awhile on amazon.com: Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent.

I immediately jumped in upon returning home and ended up finishing it in a single sitting. I am now pleased to recommend this book to all of you who are interested in issues of gender, but who would prefer to stay away from the scientific (or not-so-scientific) side of things. 

Norah Vincent is a journalist who decided to spend a year and a half living the life of a man. She is not transgender or transexual. She is a lesbian, which gave her a unique point of view for telling this story because she was able to truly get inside the life of a heterosexual male. 

I say get inside the "life" rather than get inside the "head" of men, because most of her story deals with how other people treat men. It would have been impossible for her to truly think and feel as a man does without the social cues around her. In other words, when she came home at night she was still a woman. (For the most part, but I'll get to that.)

Her journey was not as simple as taking on a male persona in her own daily life. She divided her experiment into several parts with the purpose of experiencing male culture as much as possible. She joined an all-male bowling league, frequented strip clubs, dated women, got a job in testosterone-fueled hardcore sales, spent some time living in a Catholic monastery, and even joined a men's support group and joined them on one of their retreats. The chapters of the book are split up according to each phase she experienced. 

I'd like to share some quotes with you from this book - ones that I thought were interesting, thought-provoking, and that I thought you would feel the same way about.

This first one is particularly relevant for the discussion that has been going on over at several blogs on the topic of the male gaze - see PhysioProf, DrugMonkey, SciCurious and others if you don't know what I'm talking about. 

Talking about the first night she ever dressed in drag (on a dare) and the night she conceived of the idea for this book, she writes:

"I had lived in this neighborhood for years, walking its streets where men lurk outside of bodegas, on stoops, and in doorways much of the day. As a woman, you couldn't walk down the streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren't pretty - that, or you were just another pussy to be put in its place. Either way, their eyes followed you all the way up and down the street, never wavering, asserting their dominance as a matter of course. If you were female and you lived there, you got used to being stared down because it happened every day and there wasn't anything you could do about it.

But that night in drag, we walked by those same stoops and doorways and bodegas. We walked by those same groups of men. Only this time they didn't stare. On the contrary, when they met my eyes they looked away immediately and concertedly and never looked back. It was astounding, the difference, the respect they showed me by not looking at me, by purposely not staring. 

That was it. That was what had annoyed me so much about meeting their gaze as a woman, not the desire, if that was ever there, but the disrespect, the entitlement. It was rude, and it was meant to be rude, and seeing those guys look away deferentially when they thought I was male, I could validate in retrospect the true hostility of their former stares. 

But that wasn't quite all there was to it. There was something more than respect being communicated in their averted gaze, something subtler, less direct. It was more like a disinclination to show disrespect. For them, to look away was to decline a challenge, to adhere to a code of behavior that kept the peace among human males just as surely as it kept the peace and the pecking order among male animals. To look another male in the eye and hold his gaze is to invite conflict, either that or a homosexual encounter. To look away is to accept the status quo, to leave each man to his tiny sphere of influence, the small buffer of pride and poise that surrounds and keeps him" (p. 3).

This passage is a great illustration of both the tone and the content of this book. 

Here is another great one that deals with the issue of Norah dating as a heterosexual man (Ned was her name when in costume):

"Yet as much as these women wanted a take-control man, at the same time, they wanted a man who was vulnerable to them, a man who would show his colors and open his doors, someone expressive, intuitive, attuned. This I was in spades, and I always got points for it, but feeling the pressure to be that other world-bestriding colossus at the same time made me feel very sympathetic toward the heterosexual men, not only because living up Caesar is an immensely heavy burden to bear, but because trying to be a sensitive new age guy at the same time is pretty well impossible. If women are trapped by the whore/Madonna complex, men are equally trapped by this warrior/minstrel complex. What's more, while a man is expected to be modern, that is, to support feminism in all its particulars, to see and treat women as equals in every respect, he is on the other hand often still expected to be traditional at the same time, to treat a lady like a lady, to lead the way and pick up the check" (p. 112). 

Vincent writes with incredible sensitivity, clarity, and insight into how men and women differ. She is not a scientist and this was not a scientific experiment, but her observations are in line with what current gender research tells us about gender orientation. 

I urge all of you to read this book. Women will gain insight into how the men in their lives think and operate in the world around them, and how that world operates on them. Men may find validation in the things they experience but have never verbalized. I would think that, as a man, it would be very interesting to find out how women see them from the inside out. 

Norah Vincent experienced what can only be described as a nervous breakdown from this project due to the incredible amount of cognitive dissonance she experienced. She describes it as "holding two mutually exclusive thoughts in my head while trying to ride a bike and juggle at the same time." The implications of what she experienced, I think, may be incredibly important for understanding transgender and gender dissonant conditions. I would love to see this book more widely circulated so it can get the attention from the scientific community that it deserves.

Shouldn't Be This Difficult

New England is the Higher Education Capital of the World. I can't even count the number of colleges and universities within a 1 hour drive from my house. There are Ivies, Little Ivies, WannaBe Ivies, state universities and colleges, etc., etc. Lots of R1s around here. 

So why the FUCK is it so difficult to find a summer research opportunity? 

I spent most of my morning and early afternoon today trying to find internships, fellowships, etc that I could engage in during the summer in order to gain more research experience before heading off to grad school. 

The NIH gave me nothing. The NSF basically said "Fuck you and your psychology." A more general google search brought up lots and lots and lots of biomed internships, but diddly-shit for psychology. 

Now as far as I know, it would be fruitless to start emailing professors from the Us and Cs nearby, because they generally do not take RAs that do not attend the school. That leaves me with my former MRU, which I really, really want to avoid. I had a hard enough time getting an RA slot when I was a student there. 

There are also no graduate courses being offered this summer. I don't even have that option. 

I don't need to be paid. I don't need co-authorship. What I want is some hardcore methods and stats training so I can go into my grad program with a killer skillset under my belt. Because at this point, it's the R2 U or bust. If I can go in ahead of the game, I am more likely to graduate ahead of the game. 

So I'm asking for ideas and advice. I would love to do a research project of my own this summer - I may be able to do that at my former MRU, but I'm not sure. Unless I finish it and get it published or presented, there would be no official record whatsoever of what I accomplished because I am no longer enrolled there. I don't think I could do it on my own without an institutional affiliation. 

I would really prefer to work under a researcher from another college or university or get an internship/fellowship. But all of my searching so far has been fruitless. 

Any thoughts?

Gender Differences in Sex Drive: Top 25 Part 1

Many of us would probably agree that it is considered common knowledge that men have a stronger sex drive than women. But what kind of science exists to back that up? This is the question that Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Catanese, and Kathleen Vohs set out to answer using a meta-analysis of the literature on sex drive: 

Baumeister, R. F., Catanese, K. R., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Is there a gender difference in strength of sex drive? Theoretical views, conceptual distinctions, and a review of relevant evidence. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(3), 242-273.

Differences in sex drive can lead to problems in relationships. If one person wants it all the time, while the other partner is willing to do without for long periods of time, friction results. (Pun intended.) The authors consider this an important implication of studying sex drive - if we can figure out what's going on, we may be able to improve romantic relationships in that area, leaving couples to focus on other things. Other issues they list include the reliance on norms and societal expectations in self-evaluation, and deepening our understanding of social exchange and interaction in relationships. 

For the purpose of this study, the authors defined sex drive as the motivation for sex, more precisely defined as desire. They write, "A person with higher sex drive would be one more intense or more frequent desires, or both, for sex." They caution that they are not using the term "drive" to refer to instinct or an innate mechanism, writing "Any findings of gender differences in sex drive (motivation) should not automatically be interpreted as reflecting innate differences and especially not immutable differences."

They also delineate sexual capacity as the maximum amount of sex a person is capable of having, and sexual enjoyment (which on the face appears self-explanatory, but how does one measure this? More on this later). 

The authors performed a massive search of all articles published on the above concepts since 1965. They excluded studies on nonhumans, unpublished dissertations, case studies, narrowly-defined populations, and most studies that included only one gender. 

So, what did they find? Originally I wrote this post with a summary of every sub-topic they looked at, but then I decided it was not only BORING and predictable, but it was way too freakin' long. Therefore, I will summarize more succinctly (without the proper use of semicolons, I know).

The authors examined the following areas: Thoughts, Fantasies & Spontaneous Arousal; Desired Frequency of Sex; Desired Number of Sex Partners; Masturbation; Willingness to Forego Sex; Emergence of Sexual Desire; Seeking Versus Avoiding, Initiating versus Refusing; Liking for Various Sexual Practices; Sacrificing Resources to Get Sex; Favorable Attitudes Toward Sex; Prevalence of Low Sexual Desire; and Self-Rated Sex Drive. 

Across all of these areas, evidence strongly supported that men have higher sex drives than women. If you want specifics, ask me, but it was a 33 page article and summarizing it just got way too cumbersome. 

Some of the data cited in this paper that I find interesting:

• Women tend to report that they are satisfied with the amount of sex in their marriage. Men, on the other hand, on average wish for a 50% increase. 
• Gay men report a much higher frequency of sex than lesbians, regardless of length of relationship or other variables, eliminating risk of pregnancy as a possible confounding variable. (Theoretically.)
• When college students were asked how many partners they would like to have in their lifetime if disease, legal implications, or anything else were not a factor, women on average said 2.7, while men said 64. 64!!!! Outliers were not deleted for this study, and the median for both groups was 1, but that still means that the "promiscuously-inclined minority" of men was still significantly different from that of the women. 
• When asked to report actual numbers of partners, men consistently report higher numbers than women. Some believe this is due to men tending to overestimate to obtain higher numbers, where as women may undercount in an attempt to keep numbers low. 
• 47% of women report that they have NEVER masturbated, compared to 16% of men.
• 20% of men report orgasm as the most important part of the sexual experience, compared to only 2% of women.
• 8th grade boys, on average, report having twice as many sexual experiences as 8th grade girls.
• When men and women were approached by a moderately attractive confederate who invited them to have sex later that evening, 100% of the women refused, compared to only 25% of the men. 
• 80% of men report having gone beyond kissing and hugging with a person they met the same day, compared to 59% of women.
• 72% of men report having sexual intercourse with a person they met the same day, compared to 49% of women.
• 45% of men, but only 29% of women said that they find receiving oral sex "very appealing."
• 34% of men, compared to 17% of women, said that giving oral sex was appealing.
• Men rate their penises and partners' vaginas more favorably than women rate their own sex organs and their partners.
• Men report being slightly more eager than women to have to a baby, regardless of whether they are single, in a relationship, or married. 
• The authors did not find a single study that found women to have a higher sex drive than men. Not one. 

So, WTF Ladies? 

The first thing that strikes me about some of the data included in this study is that numbers don't add up/make sense logically. For example, 80% of men are going beyond first base with someone they just met, but only 59% of women are. Either someone's lying, or there are some very busy women out there. Same thing with the 8th grade boys. 

The authors contend that societal standards are harsher against boys masturbating than girls, etc. They eliminate fear of pregnancy as a possible explanation by studying lesbians and gay men. 

No matter which way you slice their data, it looks like men have a higher sex drive than women. 

The question is, WHY? 

I want to open this up for discussion. My thought is, if evolutionary forces have anything to do with it (which they likely do), it doesn't matter if you're a lesbian or not. Evolution has reduced a woman's sex drive due to pregnancy investment. What I wonder is when the advent of birth control is going to affect evolution - will the Pill stop being as effective? Will women get super-duper sexual to counteract the effects of using birth control?

But I don't think it's that simple. Why aren't women masturbating? Sure, you could use the same evolutionary argument and say that it's to keep a woman's sex drive in check, but that's the simple explanation. 

And here's the kicker - women are capable of having sex more often, for longer, and experiencing multiple orgasms without a refractory period. Why would we have this ability if it wasn't meant to be used? 

AND - you can only get pregnant ONCE at a time - WTF would it matter how many times or with how many different partners you had sex? 

The authors talk about prostitution, the porn industry, the sex toy industry, and magazines when referring to sacrificing resources to get sex. One thing I noted - most magazines talking about sex to women have headlines including lines like "How to Please Your Man" and the like. 

I THINK (as the social psychologist that I am) that women are socialized to believe that sex is something we do for men, not ourselves. I think that's why there are so many who don't masturbate (or don't admit to it), why we report not liking oral sex as much, why most of us don't watch porn, etc. If you watch movies that are considered "sexy" or even pornography, most things that women would do for pleasure are done for the benefit of men. Think of "Girls Gone Wild" - all these college girls getting it on with other girls for the cameras - rather than enjoying it as sexual experimentation, they do these things to get attention from the guys. 

I think many of us are stopped by the idea of being a "whore" and don't engage in things that we might enjoy because of this label. But I do believe that it is very likely a combination of biology and socialization - not one or the other. 

What do you guys think?