Vagina Dentata

It is distasteful to see a number of anti-vax headlines (which have subsequently been taken down) reporting the tragic death of a 15 year-old girl after she had received the cervical cancer jab. Of course we learnt soon after that Natalie Morton had a malignant chest tumour but that was after the vaccination programme had taken a hit.

None of this furore really leads to a conducive atmosphere in which we can talk about possibly extending the vaccination to boys, but I’ll give it a go.

This week the British Medical Journal published a study into the cost-effectiveness (or not) of extending the HPV vaccine programme to boys as well as girls. Of course, cervical cancer is not the only cancer associated with HPV 16 and 18, which the Cervarix vaccine covers, but also vulvar, vaginal, and oropharyngeal, anal, and oral cancers.

The vaccine would therefore not only have direct health benefits for males but also to indirect health benefits (for sexual partners) through reduced transmission of HPV.

To be clear (unlike the Sunday Express) this was research done in the US on Gardasil not on Cervarix which is being rolled out in the UK. There has however, been similar research in the UK by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which lead to the current recommendation that the vaccination programme should only cover girls (cost-effectiveness of vaccine to girls here).

The BMJ research continued that:

Given currently available information, including boys in an HPV vaccination programme generally exceeds conventional thresholds of good value for money, even under favourable conditions of vaccine protection and health benefits.

Put simply, there would not be enough benefit from boys being vaccinated to make the extension to the programme value for money. What is interesting is that it does highlight where a pure cost-effectiveness analysis can miss important social policy aspects.

The British Medical Association voted at its last Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) for the vaccine to be rolled out to boys as well as girls. The arguments did not rest only on the effectiveness of the extended coverage but also on the impact that limiting the vaccine to girls – namely, that both men and women should take responsibility for eradicating HPV from the population rather than women taking sole responsibility.

This is not just a political point or an abstract notion of ‘fairness’, it is also a public health one. Due largely to the risk of pregnancy, women routinely take more responsibility for sexual health then men (I won’t go into it here but this still has implications for lesbian and gay people). Therefore, gender discrimination and inequality impacts on sexually transmitted infections when for example, women are not in a position to insist on condom use. This is not just the role of sexual or public health education, our systems and programmes need to support the principle of men and women taking responsibility for sexual health matters.

This is why the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo spawned the ‘Cairo Consensus‘ which acknowledged the need to increase male responsibility for family planning and recommended expanding services in ways that protect the reproductive health of both men and women. However, cost is always going to be a barrier.

Before I’m accused of being in the pocket of Big Pharma on this one (er, unlikely) it is important to acknowledge the well-founded concerns regarding Merck’s aggressive marketing of Gardasil in the US and the suspicion that Merck would be behind any extension to the vaccination programme. Believe me the last thing I want to do is contribute to Merck’s profits.

I am not arguing that Cervarix should definitely be rolled out to boys as well as girls, simply that (rather ironically) focusing on evidence-based medicine can be overly simplistic if it fails to take into account important social factors and the cumulative impact of focusing sexual health interventions on women and girls. I also acknowledge the economic need to ration health care and that cost-benefit analyses are important but necessarily cannot factor in every eventuality.

Vaccine policy based on QALYs alone? Unfortunately society’s a bit more complicated than that.

This is cross-posted on The Lay Scientist.

I thought I’d cleverly launch my new site by guest blogging somewhere else. I’ve helped hijack The Lay Scientist which is run by my good friend Martin Robbins who is too busy being lofty and writing for the Guardian. I’ve cross-posted the article below – but this is by way of an explanation for why it sounds like I’ve never written about vaginas before….

Waiting for clitoromania

I’m very excited to be guest blogging at The Lay Scientist and have to say its a bit like being in someone else’s flat without them being there. I obviously don’t do that too often and am just managing to keep myself out of Martin’s knicker drawer.

I thought I might start as I mean to go on, by writing about vaginal orgasms. Call me an attention seeker.

I was sent a study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine by the fabulous and recommended Dr Petra Boynton and have to say that, however angry it made me, I will be forever in debt to Prof Stuart Brody for introducing the word ‘clitoromania’ into my life.

Needless to say, the study is more than a little Freudian. Feminists have frequently had a problem with Freud, mostly on the basis that he was talking bollocks (heh), but also because he was often hugely simplistic and lacking in evidence. Somewhat like our new friend Prof Brody.

Dr Petra makes some excellent points about the flaws in the methodology of this study, notably that it was a questionnaire which was asking the female participants to estimate and recall such things as partners’ penis length, duration of penetrative sex and what they had been taught about female orgasms. Questionnaires asking for estimation and recall may return interesting information on attitudes but does not lead to very credible factual information. For example, you may be likely to say that your lovely partner has a larger than average cock because you’re a nice person not because its true.

But I can’t shrug off the feeling that Prof Brody has an agenda here, most notably because of his reference to women’s studies courses (codeword for hairy-armed, feminist, lesbians):

Many North American university courses, including women’s studies courses, promulgate texts that falsely claim that vaginal orgasm does not exist, is very rare, or is essentially the same as clitoral orgasm.

Really? Do they really? Really, do they? There is no evidence offered to support this statement or indeed most of the statements made in the discussion of this paper which specifically do not follow from the evidence reported by the survey.

There is an illustrious history of ‘scientific’ fascination in female sexuality and genitalia; from hysteria (meaning literally disturbances of the uterus, hence hysterectomy) to the widespread myth (for I’m afraid it is a myth) of the vagina dentata. The problem is how bad science, and bad science reporting, can be irritating but also damaging – to health, sexual satisfaction, and relationships.

This study generated the headlines “Women’s ultimate fantasy: Size not foreplay“, “Wait. Size Matters, After all?”, “The elusive orgasm” and “Oui, la taille du sexe, ça compte’ (roughly translates ‘Yes, the size of the sex counts’, but check out the less than supportive accompanying picture).

So there’s pressure to orgasm, to have multiple orgasms, to not take too long and now according to this study, have the right sort of orgasm. Listen Stuart Brody – back off.

It is a concentration on “doing sex right” which leads to the medicalisation of male and female sexual ‘dysfunction’. I don’t deny that sometimes drugs and treatments for sexual dysfunction are necessary and beneficial to individuals but often, and certainly historically, we are being told that there is a right and wrong way to have sex and if you’re not doing it right then you have to be corrected.

Humans, together with other animals notably the bonobo (great article, doesn’t link to animal porn. Honest), have sex for pleasure not simply procreation. By sex, I don’t share Brody’s fixation on heterosexual penetrative sex (believe me it is a fixation, see here, here, here) I would include oral sex, same-sex sex and all number of sexual practices which I’m not going to list here because you all have access to the internet.

Focusing on heterosexual penetrative sex is therefore frankly boring, unrealistic and makes us less adventurous than our ape cousins.

Instead let me recommend this study to you, which is also survey-based but is explicitly collecting data on attitudes, on the health impacts of women having positive attitudes towards their genitals. Debby Herbenick the lead researcher draws attention to how our culture portrays women’s genitals as dirty and in need of cleaning and grooming and how this impacts on sexual health and satisfaction.

Although the point of science is to check for biases and strive as far as is possible for objectivity, it still takes place – and importantly is reported – within a cultural context. A cultural context which is full of inequality, prejudice and discrimination.

This is why when you read the headline “scientists say size does matter” followed by a story of a flawed study that certainly doesn’t prove penis size increases the prevalence of vaginal orgasms; stop and think – I wonder why? When you do, you would have taken your first step on the path to feminism 😉

Naomi Mc blogs as Vagina Dentata. She was dragged by our over-centralised economy to London from Scotland and finds it to be “not that bad”. She’s a human rights activist and hearts epidemiology.

”]

Inspired by a blog sent to me about EA Games ‘Booth Babes’ at ComicCon, I thought I’d write a blog about spanking. You know, as you do. Issues of Bondage, Discipline/Dominance, Sado-Masochism (BDSM), pornography and objectification are so huge I’m not going to pretend that I’ve done them justice here, but these are my initial thoughts so lets get, erm, cracking….

I’ve written before about misogyny in the gaming industry (here and here frinstance), which is ridiculous when 40% of (US) gamers are female. There was also a lot written recently about EA Games employing ‘Booth Babes’ and then asking for them to be sexually harassed by ComicCon delegates. But the most interesting blog (not worksafe) I have read on this was from a submissive model on the UK spanking scene.

This was interesting because it challenged me and my preconceptions about women engaged in BDSM. It wasn’t what she said on the EA Games issue, all of which I agree with: this objectifies women, ‘Booth Babe’ is a demeaning term, it encourages sexual harassment not just of the ‘Booth Babes’ but all women attending ComicCon etc.

There are two things that I find challenging about this: empowered feminists being sexually submissive and BDSM models criticising the objectification of women.

Now I’ve read a couple of blogs by sexually submissive feminists (such as the very good Girl With a One Track Mind) and it’s something I’m really trying to get my head around. It seems counter-intuitive to me because my instinct is to encourage women to be powerful and assertive against a historical backdrop of oppression. But this blogger dresses up in school uniforms and other costumes, and is spanked, dominated, tied-up and sexually submissive.

Plus she is a model on the BDSM scene and so is photographed in these situations and yet identifies the fact that encouraging men to get dodgy pictures with some ‘booth babes’ crosses a line into objectification.

I realise that finding these two things ‘challenging’ is an emotional response rather than an intellectual or philosophical one. So here’s why my emotional response is wrong….

What is definitely unfeminist, is a feminist telling another woman how to have sex and what she can and can’t get her kicks out of. I want my feminism to include, for example, those women who have a gendered analysis of the world, they campaign for women’s rights, they challenge people’s everyday sexism and yet they’re also down with consensual arse-slapping.

The counter argument is: these women are perpetuating rape myths, they’re playing out their own internalised misogyny and they are making it harder for other women who are fighting against patriarchy. I simply do not think that this is true.

Firstly, I have found that those involved in the BDSM scene or burlesque tend to have far greater social rules and sexual etiquette than in society at large. Because of the nature of the activities, trust, self-awareness and boundaries are far more strictly defined. These are people with a greater awareness of their own sexuality and the concept of empowerment through sexuality than your average non-handcuff owner.

Secondly, if you believe in the empowerment of women you have to accept that they should be empowered to do things you personally wouldn’t want to do. This sometimes manifests itself as ‘feminism going too far’ or ‘women just acting like men’. Well yes, because if you want to give women choices you can’t then try and make those choices for them.

If a woman chooses to engage in a bit of ol’ spanking then that is her choice. To say that I have a greater analysis of her motivations and am more aware of her sexuality than she is herself is deeply patronising, condescending and simply wrong. And it is particularly wrong when the women in question clearly demonstrate their political awareness, identify themselves as feminists and critically engage with debates around consent, sexual freedom and privacy.

This doesn’t mean that non-spankers can’t engage in debate about the issues, but it does mean you have to do so from an informed position and with a sophisticated understanding of human sexuality which goes beyond ‘sexual practice A is wrong, sexual practice B is alright – says me’.

Finally, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that individual women are responsible to women at large for their personal sexual proclivities. Women regularly bear the burden of their gender; if they succeed they are personally responsible for breaking down social barriers. If they fail, it in some way implicates all women in that failure.

The second ‘thing I found challenging’ was a BDSM model criticising the objectification of women in the EA Games example. The simple question being “isn’t that what you’re doing?”. Again this needs a little more sophistication on my part.

Two (linked) issues involved in the ‘pornography: right or wrong’ debate are female sexuality within the broad context of patriarchy and whether all porn is therefore objectification.

As a society we tend to make a direct link between female sexuality, what women wear, how they behave and how the rest of society should therefore react to them. This is the basis of the ‘she was asking for it’ rationale for rape, as though an outfit can consent to sex on behalf of its wearer. Just try and think what a man would have to wear in order to be asking for rape or sexual assault.

Putting aesthetics and scaring little children aside, a woman should be able to walk down the street naked without the risk of being raped. Clothes, lack of clothes or the wearing of sexualised clothing (for want of a better phrase) does not over-ride your ability to consent to sex. Your clothes do not remove the ability of another human being to stop themselves committing an assault.

Plus, I don’t think there is something intrinsically wrong with looking at sexual images of people. Yes there is a historical legacy of oppression of women, of women exploited by a male-dominated porn industry. That is context, not intrinsic so we try and change the context. This comes down to what sexual objectification means and its impact. Do all sexualised images, female or male, necessarily separate the physical appearance from their existence as an individual?

I think not. And while I understand the corrosive effect that pumping out degrading images of people can have (whether women or indeed, starving Africans) that is not true of all representations or all ‘consumers’. There is no getting away from the class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age etc etc aspects of this. But they simply make this more complicated rather than less as many marginalised groups, identities and sexualities find great empowerment in representations of their sexual liberation.

All pornography and/or erotica is exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, size-ist? I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.

In sum, if there is any walk of life where I want there to be feminists it’s in the BDSM scene.

So, ahem, more power to your elbow.

I am genuinely interested in debating this issue and am open to different points of view on it. Just don’t be pervy – I’ll just not publish your post and regard you a sad wanker.

I think we get the artists we deserve, which is why our money-grabbing, commercialised, shallow, turn of the millennia, Western society has produced Damien Hirst.

Last century, and for century’s before, most artists died in poverty usually syphilitic, earless, reputationless – apart from a reputation for opium and shagging prostitutes – they were on the fringes of society. OK not the court artists, but you get what I mean.

Now they are multi-millionaires, who employ people to produce their art in three factory workshops for them and swagger around threatening to sue 17 year old artists who make collages of their work and then getting them arrested.

Art has always involved copying and appropriating. It’s how the Greats learnt their craft. Mentors would encourage their protege to learn from them.

But not today. Today we live in a world where art is brand and brand is money and all that matters is how much Saatchi will pay for your pile of shite (which is my idea fuckers – any of you try and sell your own pile of shite I’ll sue!). In 2009, we get a multi-millionaire shitty brand artist like Hirst with a righteous desire to stamp on a 17 year old street artist.

So what happened? Street artist Cartrain made some collages using an image of Hirst’s disgustingly expensive diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God. These collages were put up for sale on an art website. Hirst reported him to the Design and Artists Copyright Society and sent a bundle of legal letters to Cartrain’s art dealer, Tom Cuthbert, at 100artworks.com.

After the legal threats, 100artworks.com surrendered the offending pictures to Hirst with a verbal apology. Cartrain, the artist in question took this all very well, and in the spirit of the Dadaists went to Tate Britain and stole a box of pencils part of Hirst’s £50m Pharmacy installation. Cartrain was arrested, released on bail, and is waiting to find out if he will be formally charged with causing damage to the artwork. His father was also arrested in connection with the theft from Tate Britain, on suspicion of harbouring stolen pencils probably.

It doesn’t feel a lot different from McDonald’s stopping local family-run businesses using the name ‘McDonald’s’. In fact there are a lot of similarities, as the McLibel Two will tell you.

So Twitter has been buzzing with #hirstisacock and some have been debating whether Hirst is a shit artist or Cartrain is a shit artist. Both may be true but neither are important. What is important is a rich, establishment, art figure trying to stamp on a child artist because he can. This is why Hirst is a cock. He is a bully, a hypocrite and a sickening anti-competition capitalist.

Cartrain and 100artworks.com have asked that bloggers and twitters bring attention to this story. Woop here it is.

Ah, Harriet Harman. I really wish I could support you, but you are far too crap (great analysis on this from Laurie Penny). Harman has reignited the debate about representation of women in politics which after years of looking at gender balancing political party selection procedures, makes me want to gouge my own eyes out.

It really is this simple: we live in a society governed by a form of democracy which is tasked with responding to the needs of the population. That population has women in it, therefore those tasked with governing need to represent that population. While there have been great successes brought about by feminist men, giant leaps in social policy positively affecting women has been put on the agenda by women MPs.

Equality campaigners of all equality strands see political representation as an important part, albeit only one, of their struggle. Indeed the representation of women in the governments of the world is cited by international human rights instruments (CEDAW and committee recommendations) as an objective in the campaign for equality.

Strange then, that a call for equality always gets dragged down into a discussion of either female intelligence (or lack of) or the ‘fact’ that women just aren’t cut out for politics.

I won’t get into the in-depth debate about the nature of intelligence here and will just stick to IQ. The evidence obviously varies often depending on how the test is weighted but in general there is no mean average difference between men and women. Where there is evidence of a sex difference it is in IQ variance, where there are findings (such as this 2006 study) of more men than women in the top and bottom 2%, although this could also be due to sampling bias.

As with a lot of science, it doesn’t give people the definitive, unchanging and universal answer that they want. At the moment the very most that we can say is that there is some gender variation at the extremes and some gender differences in different cognitive abilities, but even that may be refined by new evidence.

What is the real problem, as ever, is not the science but its interpretation. Specifically, the dumbass reduction to ‘men are cleverer than women’. It is as silly as using the same ‘logic’ at the other end of the scale and saying ‘men are stupider than women’, interesting how this flip side is never used….

There are such things as female geniuses*, there are just more male ones. Conversely, there are females who are cognitively, er, challenged (?), there are just more males who are.

There is a greater difference in IQ within sexes than there is between them.

There are not many geniuses in politics (believe me I know a lot of politicians, hopefully none of whom read this blog…), indeed nor should they be over-represented. Our democratic institutions are intended to consist of laypersons. There are no qualifications to be an MP (other than eligibility issues; over-18, British citizen, not a bishop – seriously…) which is to enhance the diversity and experience of our representatives.

So I get a little tired of the inference being made that because of a over-representation of males in the higher IQ tail, we shouldn’t aspire to gender balance within politics. That argument misplaces the significance of statistical significance.

The interpretation of information of this nature must be handled responsibly. We can’t look on wide-eyed and say ‘Look, I’m just saying there are more extremely intelligent men than women. It’s just a statement of fact, you are doing the interpreting not little ol’ me’ It’s like Fox News just saying that some of those responsible for the Glasgow terrorist attack were doctors in a socialised health system. Or The Sun was just saying that the numbers of swans in London had gone down in the same time-frame that numbers of asylum seekers had gone up.

In a society riddled with gender inequality, where women are paid less than men, where traditionally ‘women’s work’ is undervalued and where women’s infuriating habit of reproducing is getting them sacked and publicly bollocked, just saying that geniuses are more likely to be male than female is used by bigots to call women stupid and incompetent.

I’m not calling for censorship here and I am not trying to shut down debate. I am saying that facts and debates do not happen in a vacuum unfettered by discriminatory attitudes and values. We have learnt the need to contextualise a debate about young black men and crime and not cherry pick statistics and pretend that the stats we use will not have insinuations and ramifications.

Primarily, I’d like to point out that its unlikely that those who use the stat on male IQ are in the upper tail themselves and that you can’t get there by association. The Dunning-Kruger effect frequently takes hold.

*I’m using the (yes, sloppy and lazy) shorthand ‘genius’ to signify the top 2% on IQ variation.

I have reproduced the article below as part of Sense About Science campaign to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science. As a human rights activist I am well aware of the problems libel laws present for the work I am involved in, particularly when it involves private companies. It is vitally important that we have a society where people can critique scientific claims and subject them to scrutiny – that’s how science works. So please read about the campaign and sign the petition.

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that ‘99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae’. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: ‘Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.’

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher. If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

[I like your sleeves. They’re real big]

This post is inspired by a really really good thread on the often fabulous MetaFilter about geek feminism. Its not often that you get intelligent, articulate and thoughtful threads on gender issues. They very quickly descend into aggressive defensiveness and apoplectic rage. A bit like….

Person M: oh here we go – playing the gender card. when u chicks gonna to get over it??? we re all equal now!!!! Stop MOANING.

Person F: Great, out come the MISOGINISTS! Yeah, try being a woman in AFGANISTAN – women r made to where burkas!!!!!!! and they cant even go out of their home!!!!

You also by and large get 3 Person Ms to every 1 Person F. You get the picture…

Can I first draw your attention to some fascinating links from the MeFi thread:
Nerds and Geeks – book reviews on Pandagon
Feminist Geeks
How People Explain Female Geeks – Geek Studies
Cerise – Female Gamers website

I don’t want to reiterate all that was said on the thread – it really is worth reading – but I just thought I’d show my solidarity with the female geeks and nerds out there (for I acknowledge the difference betwixt nerd and geek) and echo their frustrations with geek/nerd men. It boils down to this: we expect more from you.

Yes we live in a sexist world, a society that objectifies women and where the pay gap hangs on stubbornly. But sexism, as with racism, homophobia etc, is borne out of ignorance if not a concerted effort to maintain supremacy.

Nerds and geeks should therefore understand power dynamics and – after years of having your head shoved down toilets – you should understand bullying and marginalisation. You are intelligent, often leaders in your obscure nerdy field, you should be able to comprehend the concept that equality does not mean ‘the same’ and that there may be a theory that draws together gender stereotyping, the pay gap, the lack of rape convictions, the glass ceiling, and the way that what women wear has almost become an international crisis.

You are scientists (or at least you look like one) so you should be able to interrogate evidence rather than fall back on lazy stereotypes. There are women involved in opensource software, that know their Petri dish from their agar plate, know the difference between mode, mean and median, and watch songs about PCR on YouTube. AND IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY HAVE A ‘MALE BRAIN’.

But most of all, you must not believe that your special exclusive little subculture, which skilfully excludes all the jocks, the stupids, the popular kids and quacks, is immune from the machismo that excludes women and turns them off even more than your lack of personal hygiene.

As mentioned in the MeFi thread – rape jokes in WoW, soft porn images in software presentations and sexually violent anime are the same as titty calendars, sexually violent porn and rape jokes in the locker room. What makes it worse is that female geeks and nerds expect more from you.

This guy has the right idea…
*Disclaimer: contains massive geekiness and schmaltz. Apologies*

[from xkcd]

I’m really only linking to this study about penis length and shoe size to a) insert the cartoon above and b) remind everyone that there are people dying in the world.

But at least now we know: “The supposed association of penile length and shoe size has no scientific basis.” No can we please as a culture move on?

[Lady scientist AKA a scientist]

I hope this is the only post I will ever do on the cosmetics industry. Mostly because to be honest, I really don’t care about make-up and really don’t think it’s the biggest feminist issue facing the world today. That’s not to say that I don’t think the Beauty Myth is alive and kicking but I do not think make-up is the fundamental issue, rather the restrictive and often exploitative female body images perpetuated by our consumer-based culture.

I don’t have a problem with women or men wearing make-up even if it is feeding into a $197 billion dollar industry. I would wear it more if I knew how to put it on but I think I missed that day at school.

That aside, I do find it fascinating that L’Oreal are so heavily involved in promoting women in science, to the extent that they have gone in with UNESCO on an annual global women in science prize.

Now there are much better analyses than I could do on the claims of cosmetic companies – (e.g L’Oreal having to pull an ad campaign on anti-wrinkle cream). However, it is also a highly regulated industry (by European Cosmetic Directive for example) and therefore the claims they make tend to be worded in such a specific way so as to make no claim whatsoever. Handbook of cosmetic science and technology is great on this.

So instead, rather than make actual specific scientific claims, some cosmetic companies seek to brand themselves as ‘sciencey’. Rather than make a choice of products on the basis of the scientific claims consumers will simply associate them with the noble cause of scientific endeavour. This is why adverts will be chocka with ‘sciencey’ sounding words.

To illustrate the dubious devotion to science from the cosmetics industry I’ve picked my top ten sciencey words and phrases. I think this might become my new hobby.

1. Aqua-spheres
   Er, water.
2. Dermapod
   This is the name they gave to the tub it comes in. And no its not pod shaped or from the future.
3. Vitafibrine
   I think this is means ‘vital’ and ‘fibres’ which apparently “fight against the distension of the mesh of the skin by reconstructing the structure of elastin by consolidating the network of fibers (in vitro test)”*
   * Ah, the all important ‘In vitro test’ which (as of course you know) means testing cell cultures in a Petri dish rather than on human volunteers. This is probably the most widely used method for making scientific claims in the cosmetic industry.
4. Fruit micro-waxes and active fruit concentrates
   These are in a styling gel and a shampoo apparently. I know what these words mean separately but not together. And I love how its not just fruit waxes its fruit ‘micro’-waxes. Just as meaningless but smaller.
5. Collagen biospheres
   I presume they don’t mean an ecosystem or one of those greenhouses, bio-dome things. Probably just collagen drops.
6. Formula
   This is used all the time. You don’t get ‘recipes’ or ‘concoctions’ or ‘mixtures’. You get formulas with numbers and letters and shit.
7. Minerals
   Such as; ‘enriched with minerals’ (hair gel, foundation) ‘mineral water’ (mousse blush) ‘made with 95% natural, skin-loving minerals’ and ‘light-diffusing mineral powders’ (powder blush). Obviously no indication of what minerals or why.
8. 3D magnifying lipgloss
   This is getting out of chemistry and into physics. I’d be far more impressed with something that you smear on our face which was 2D or even better 4D. Alternatively, I’d have to a Cyclops to be wowed by 3D.
9. PureSkin TM complex
   Ah, putting two words together into one! The canny trade-mark! The subtle use of the word ‘complex’. That’s pure distilled science right there.
10. Royal Jelly
    Royal Jelly just always sounds rude to me, but then I have the sense of humour of a 13 year-old boy. But I’m also interested that bee secretion should be used in shampoo. ‘Not honey, oh no, we use bee secretion’. Weird.

So is it OK for private companies to be involved in promoting women in science when their aim is to build their brand as one associated with cutting edge science? Is it OK for them to be supportive of women when also beating them into consumer-based submission and all to sell blobs of coloured fat? Hell isn’t science underfunded enough you’ve just got to get the cash where you can?

I certainly have a problem with brands as a concept, the idea of ‘having a relationship’ with a product is frankly weird (up to and including vibrators). It removes us a step from the functionality of the product and assumes that we make choices on the basis of font size, colour and packaging, which unfortunately is exactly what human beings seem to do. (This is particularly well illustrated with packaging for fags – really recommended study)

Indeed, most multinationals are involved in ‘philanthropic’ enterprises and have (up until the recession) had burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments. With restricted science funding, we can’t get too precious and increasingly private finance is the only option. There are many problems with transnational corporations’ involvement with CSR which I won’t go into here, but I think its fair to say they are the handmaidens of evil. (And before anyone says it I know it’s a little more complicated than that, here).

Ultimately, its our fault for buying into brands, letting them get away with stupid sciencey talk, leaving science funding to private companies and the little matter of gender inequality.

As an aside, in researching this post, I came across these disclaimers in tiny type at the bottom of some Rimmel TV ads:

‘Enhanced in post-production’ – Ad with Kate Moss.
‘Filmed with lash inserts and enhanced in post production’ – Mascara ad with Sophie Ellis Baxtor.
‘Everything in this ad is a complete lie’ – TruFact Ad in my head

[Oliver Reed in The Brood]

I could rant for hours about why I hate Oliver James but to spare you that I thought I’d just focus on a recent article of his in the Guardian as emblematic of his biased reporting of scientific research to primarily serve his anti-women analysis of mental illness.

In his ‘Family Under the Microscope’ series, James wrote ‘Do absent fathers trigger early puberty in girls?’ as a eulogy against family breakdown and claiming throughout that yes, indeed the absence of fathers is in fact the main reason for females entering puberty earlier (average age at which a British girl had her first period has gone from 13yrs 6ms in 50s/60s to 12 yrs 11ms now, average drop of 7 months in 50 years: not insignificant but lets have a little perspective).

He goes on to talk about the risk factors associated with early pubescence in girls as a signifier of anxiety, depression and teenage pregnancy etc. Now we’re in perfect epidemiology causation/association territory here; are we feeling a few confounding factors coming on?

Now as far as I can tell, these assertions being made by James are based on a longitudinal cohort study of 173 girls in Tennessee published back in 1999 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (As an aside, this was in the same volume where Dunning and Kruger first published their study, what a coincidence…) The Tennessee study made a link between negative-coercive family relationships and early puberty.

A more recent review study was published in Clinical Psychology Review in Feb this year which reviewed the empirical evidence of an association between puberty and anxiety. They found that:

There is some evidence that among girls, but not boys, a more advanced pubertal status (controlling for age) is associated with higher reported anxiety symptoms. Also among girls, earlier pubertal timing is linked to higher anxiety scores. It is unclear whether early puberty may lead to increased anxiety or if high anxiety influences pubertal timing.

(I’m afraid I can only get the abstract because my login isn’t working, I’ll try again at work and will update when I do)

So yes there is evidence that anxiety is associated with early puberty in girls but it is not necessarily causal and certainly not directly linked to father-daughter relationships. There are a huge amount of confounding factors and if James is correct and depression and teenage pregnancies are associated with early female puberty than I would suggest that there are a number of socio-economic factors at play here as with any association between parental split and health outcomes.

James pretty much dismisses the association between earlier puberty in girls and increased weight, despite the huge amount of evidence linking weight gain/loss to affects on menstruation. As James asserts “But by far the most important factor seems to be a girl’s relationship with her dad.”

Now, this article is in the Guardian so James is aware that readers probably also read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and so would be looking out for trifling things like ‘evidence’ and reports in academic journals. So at the end of the column, he helpfully references a journal article from Pediatrics billing it as “Evidence relating to decreased puberty age” – and the link to absentee fathers you’d assume. He doesn’t however, give you the title of the article safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people won’t actually look it up. Here’s the title: Weight Status in Young Girls and the Onset of Puberty

So evidence of weight status affecting early puberty then. And I think we can safely say that the average weight of children has increased in Britain since the 1950s. Yet, James is hanging on to absentee fathers being the “main cause”. Why? Because that’s how he makes his money. As you may know he wrote the book ‘They F*** You Up (Your Mum and Dad)’ and so generally sees parenting as THE primary cause of mental health issues. I will return to slagging this book off in the future, but for now I’ll stick to this article.

So herein lies the problem with so much science reporting, the way it is used to push a particular, usually socially conservative agenda. James bemoans the impact on increased divorce rates at every opportunity. Linking divorce and working women to everything from early periods to schizophrenia.

The implications of his agenda impact mostly on women as his message is ‘ending an unhappy relationship and mothers working will fuck up your kids’. He tries to imply that ‘blind feminism’ (whatever that means) has degraded the role of stay-at-home mothers and he is battling alone to defend the role of women. For ‘blind feminism’ read ‘straw man’ as feminists have always campaigned for the recognition of women’s contribution to society as care-givers.

The key is equality and choice rather than advocating stifling traditional roles through fear and scaremongering. And he dresses this up with sciencey sounding stuff, transforming associations into causes and making incredible death-defying leaps of logic.

I despair of this man.