Why MBA courses are a feminist journalist's best friend

It's week four of an MBA course entitled "Global Economy," our midterm exam will be upon us in approximately 100 hours, and anxiety has tied my back and neck muscles into knots.  And I'm thrilled about it. The course, taught by Professor Michael Waugh, has enlightened me on so many levels.  Learning how to calculate GDP, manipulate formulas in Excel, and analyze factors contributing to productivity is not only illuminating, but empowering.  All of a sudden, I feel like I understand business news when I read it -- really understand it.  Not just the words, but the thinking (the math, even) behind it.  For someone who comes from a humanities background (and compounded it by going to Brown), this new knowledge is exhilarating.

Why does this relate to feminism?  Several reasons:

• Being "numerate" - a word I confess I hadn't heard until Reuters data journalist and all-around great guy Reginald Chua guest-taught a class and dropped that one on my head - is just as important as being literate; it's a way of understanding the world that can provide a lot of clarity, or, as Professor Waugh put it when referring to a growth formula, "it's a way to discipline our thinking."
• Clarity and disciplined thinking are often scarce in discussions about gender, sexuality, reproductive health and related issues.  Why?  Because these are deeply personal, emotional issues with very small slivers of black and white, and a tremendous amount of grey.   There are statistics and metrics on a lot of these issues -- on abortion rates state-by-state, for example, or hate crimes against LGBTQ people, or the incidence of domestic violence -- but for many people, there's something callous about evaluating an issue like abortion on the basis of a data set.  Is a fetus a life?  Is a woman's life more valuable than that of an unborn fetus?  I'd hazard that most people feel more comfortable turning to beliefs, not numbers, for answers.
• This is not to say that numbers provide answers to these questions.  But data is critical to forming policies, and to soundly critiquing them.  I learned this when I researched an article on the death penalty, which is currently losing favor in a lot of states on economic grounds: prosecuting death penalty cases through repeated appeals processes costs states a crap-ton of money that could be spent on other parts of the criminal justice system, like the police force.
• Thinking more mathematically and learning about how labor, capital and productivity interact are forcing me to challenge and refine my own long-held notions about feminism, and to think more creatively and rationally about how and why issues like education, work, reproductive choice, sexuality, and health fit together within a larger economic framework.

Of course, given how fundamental constructs of gender are to larger social structures like the family, or marriage or - perhaps especially - commerce, the challenge with which I am struggling right now is how to evaluate these statistics, numbers, economic indicators in light of or with respect to structural critiques of patriarchy or heternormativity.  Data is disaggregated by gender or sex -- where does that leave trans people?  The Census Bureau defines a "family" as "a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together" -- but who are they to define a family?  And where did that definition come from?

Forthcoming blog posts will explore more of these issues in depth.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned.  --ALS

Money or morals? Analyzing the AKP's assault on legal sex work in Turkey.

For recent story I did for the New York Times magazine, You Are Here -- Dimming the Red Lights in Turkey, I reported from just outside one of Istanbul's last remaining red light districts on the effect of the Islamist AKP government's campaign to slowly but surely rid the country of its long tradition of legal sex work.

The AKP government has presided over phenomenal economic growth in Turkey.  Earlier this year, while the rest of the world economy was spinning down the toilet, Turkey's GDP grew 11% in the first quarter.  Unfortunately, this economic growth has yet to empower women in a meaningful way.  Employment among women stands at 24 to 26%, depending on who you ask, but either way, it's the lowest among OECD countries.  Unlike in other developing countries, where women have flocked to work in factories and other low-wage employment, strong -- I mean, really strong -- patriarchal social norms discourage the hiring of women.  Unsurprisingly, women may find it easier enter other informal sectors such as sex work, which have a low barrier to entry and offer the chance of earning more than the minimum wage (currently approximately 630 TL after taxes, or around $350 per month).  However, they do so under extremely precarious conditions: they are vulnerable to violence, harassment, fines and extortion.

It's in this context that I will further explore what is motivating the AKP to clamp down on sex work, for a forthcoming story that will go into these issues in more depth.  Do they know that women find it extremely difficult to find work in the formal sector?   Do they care?  Do they disapprove of sex work, or are they merely angling to close down the brothels so they can gentrify those prime, centrally located patches of real estate?

These are some of the questions I hope to begin to answer in the upcoming story.  As with politics anywhere, it's very difficult to locate truth, or even truthiness (hat tip Stephen Colbert.)  But the reporting process was fascinating, and I was lucky to work with two of the most wonderful translators/reporting partners I can possibly imagine.  Looking forward to sharing the story with you in the near future.

The Laughing Monster

Despite the fact that I have a blog, and broadcast my thoughts to the internet every now and then, I’m actually a pretty private person.  My first instinct wouldn’t be to blow someone up or shout her or him out for doing something lame, if said person was a private citizen (public figures, by contrast, are fair game).  But on Sunday night I encountered one of the biggest assclowns I’ve ever met.  He is so assclown-y, in fact, that I would like the whole world to know. I was enjoying a convivial farewell dinner in London with a group of five vivacious, accomplished women writers and journalists at St. John’s Bread and Wine.  The entire night was wonderful, and I laughed the whole time.  At one point, talk turned to pregnancy, and the two pregnant women in the group had one of the more honest and hilarious conversations I’ve ever heard, prompting more uproarious laughter from my end.  Around twenty minutes later, a business card slid near my elbow.  I looked up to see the messenger, a tall man in his 50s sporting a bushy take on the Hitler ‘stache.

He neither winked, smiled, nor licked his lips like LL Cool J, so it didn’t feel much like a come on (note to men: slipping women your cards generally fails, anyway).   In fact, he rather glared at me.  I turned over the card to find this charming, charming message:

Note: this reads "Madame, You are a MONSTER, a laughing monster, very primitive!  I fear my ears are destroyed. W. W."

Now, here is a lesson for anyone who thinks they can silence a laughing woman such as myself with a hyperbolic 18^th-century putdown scribbled on a card: YOU MUST BE STUPID.  THIS IS ONLY GOING TO MAKE ME LAUGH HARDER.  ONLY NOW AT YOU.  So, laugh we did, and all six of us were laughing directly at him.

Happy ending: I ignored his glares till he left the restaurant, and the waiter, who was horrified at his behavior, gave me a compensation bag filled with baked goods.

Suggested pro-loud-woman activism:  Tweet a link or a joke of something funny today (and every day – why not?), with the hashtag #laughingmonster.  Make yourself laugh, make your friends laugh, make me laugh.  Or, send this guy an mp3 or .wav file of your laugh!  Remind him that women are not just to be seen, but heard, too.

Assclown of the Day: victim-blaming Libyan Gov't Spokesman Musa Ibrahim

In response to the plight of Eman al-Obaidy, a Libyan woman who rushed into a hotel full of journalists to tell of the brutal rape and mistreatment she had suffered at the hands of Gaddafi soldiers, the Libyan government spokesman Musa Ibrahim denied her story with the following:

After the episode, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said she appeared to be drunk and mentally ill. He said that the authorities were investigating the case, including the possibility that her reports of abuse were “fantasies.”

Drunk?  Right, in Libya, sometimes mistaken for Ireland or Russia, with its heavy drinking culture.  Good call.

Mentally ill?  Possibly -- it's called "post-traumatic stress disorder."  It sometimes happens after, say, things like this:

She said she had been raped by 15 men. “I was tied up, and they defecated and urinated on me,” she said. “They violated my honor.”

Fantasies?  Now that, sir, is bold.  Try this:

She displayed a broad bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, several narrow and deep scratch marks lower on her leg, and marks from binding around her hands and feet.

While her allegations of sexual assault have not yet been proven, those bruises and scratch marks sound a lot like reality.  Not, I'm sorry to say, "fantasies," Mister Ibrahim.  It is a reality that I sincerely, sincerely hope you, your scummy boss-man Gaddafi and the people who hurt Ms. al-Obaidy are held accountable for.

What else?  Was she wearing a short skirt?  Makeup?  Did she bat her eyelashes seductively at the guards while they handcuffed her?  Please do not disrespect or injure her further in the "investigation" that you have promised.

Libyan woman tells story of her rape. How unimaginably brave.

Reading the news that Eman al-Obeidy, a Libyan woman who claims to have been raped by 15 of Gaddafi's men while in their custody, made me cry. As I'm sure it did others, it also got me wondering -- how many other women and men is this happening to?  How many more times will it happen to her?

Once you're done reading the story and watching the video -- the video was really what made me cry -- please join me in getting angry that, no matter what country or what amount of warfare is currently raging, victim-blaming in rape cases never goes out of style.

After the episode, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said she appeared to be drunk and mentally ill. He said that the authorities were investigating the case, including the possibility that her reports of abuse were “fantasies.”

And....I think we've just hit on our Assclown for the day.

The New York Times finally covers the abortion $@&#!storm in South Dakota

The New York Times finally did its bit on the anti-abortion legislative madness happening in South Dakota.  According to the article:

A law signed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Tuesday makes the state the first to require women who are seeking abortions to first attend a consultation at such “pregnancy help centers,” to learn what assistance is available “to help the mother keep and care for her child.”

The story is very "balanced," which is to say, both sides get equal airtime.  The reporter also tastefully ended with a quote from the pro-choice camp.  However, I would have liked to see more of a description of what the actual places are like -- what goes on in a pregnancy crisis center?  What kind of (mis)information are they peddling?  How does this contrast with the medically sound information that is offered by trained physicians at clinics such as Planned Parenthood?

Information like this would help the reader decide if it is a good or bad thing that women be sent to these centers before being allowed to execute her own, difficult decision to go through with an abortion.  I watched an excellent documentary last year at the IFC called "12th and Delaware," about a pregnancy crisis center and an abortion clinic that are across the street from one another in Florida.  The filmmakers spent a year with the staff of the crisis center; their footage shows a tremendous amount of inaccurate information being dispensed to young -- often very, very young -- women who in some excruciating cases do not have enough of their own information to evaluate whether or not this information is valid.  Pamphlets scattered around the centers tout a (totally bogus) link between abortion and breast cancer.  Employees coax women away from the abortion clinic by literally promising them "anything they need," as in, money, food, clothes (Are they going to pay for that child's college education?).  They drag one poor mother in and before the door shuts, you hear them saying "why don't you pick out a toy for your child?"  It's incredibly coercive and flat-out deceptive.

The article also curiously failed to mention a previous bill introduced in South Dakota that would have permitted homicide in order to save a fetus.  Thankfully, this bill failed, but it would have been worth mentioning in the story, in order to indicate how viciously hostile the legislature is towards women's reproductive autonomy: lawmakers would sooner sanction murder than let a woman choose.

So much other anti-choice nastiness is cooking in the Midwest; I look forward to more reporting on it in the paper of record.

What Nawal El Saadawi and a music teacher in Iowa have in common

A story out today in the New York Times on rising divorce rates in rural America surprised me for its incredibly old-fashioned kernel of truth inside: women's economic empowerment leads to happier, more liberated living. From a woman who went to college and got a master's degree, on divorcing her high-school educated ex-husband:

“As we get more education we get more confidence and more income,” Ms. Vermeer said, “women are saying, ‘Look, she finally had the guts to stand up and walk out.’

I will never get tired of hearing statements like that.  Compare it to leading Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi's thoughts in an interview I did with her for The Nation:

Within a household, the individual woman must have power. It’s not easy—it means political rights, economic independence, knowledge. A lot of women are afraid of loneliness, so when they see a woman who can live alone, then they think, “Hmm, I can do that.” But you need an example, and that is why I am proud to say I have divorced three husbands.

Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Nawal El Saadawi, Mohamed Yunus, Nicholas Kristof (I hate to say it, but he's been a very vocal proponent of the economic empowerment of women) and their ilk still rule the day.  As long as we're mired in capitalism, must we play the game?  Hmm...

And...you're live! Violent partners admit abuse on tape

The extraordinarily awesome Bill Glaberson of the NYT has a great story today on prosecutors in Queens who use prison phone call recordings as evidence against domestic abusers in their trials.  The recordings are critical, he points out:

The tapes overcome one of the biggest hurdles prosecutors face in such cases: that 75 percent of the time, the women who were victimized stop helping prosecutors, often after speaking to the men accused of abusing them.

....

In the Queens Boulevard courthouse where Mr. Kessler’s assistant district attorneys handle more than 6,000 domestic violence cases a year, the jailhouse recordings have become an appalling kind of reality radio, a fly-on-the-wall guide to the chilling intimacies of domestic violence.

Seeing the headline, my first instinct was that an article like this - assuming it winds its way back to the prison halls - is that it will give away the prosecutor's secrets, and the prisoners will figure out not to say incriminating things like this dumb a**hole did:

A defendant named Juan Mighty explained that it was jealousy that had led him to knife the woman “a little.” But he conceded that the scene had been gory. “There was mad blood in the house, T.,” he said in a call to his brother. “There was mad blood in the house.”

But according to the story, inmates are told their calls are taped.  So there's no issue of deceit or entrapment, just the one little problem of rampant stupidity.