aesmael

Yesterday seems less good in retrospect.

Afternoon shift at the quiet branch library with another casual co-worker, relieving the permanent staff who were required to attend a formalised Xmas party.

Inauspicious beginning with pre-shift socialising and staff getting repeatedly shushed by a patron (my supervisor and and the person I was on duty with tend to default to loud speaking voices), even to the point of calling the town council to make a complaint.

My supervisor is planning on visiting Portland a couple of months after I will be there, so I brought some information from the river tour I took last time for her.

Observed conversation between colleagues remarkable for touching on so many ways I feel vulnerable to attack. Supervisor joking about herself as trans, conversation joking about furries, about kinky folk and stereotyped attire of same. And of a patron who had complimented my work to a senior librarian, describing me as the woman with the glasses and long hair, which they joked about being an absurd way of interpreting my presentation on account of visibly existing facial hair (in the sense that immediately post shaving it can be seen, anyway).

But I am a little buoyed by the source of that conversation, since it suggests maybe I am doing a bit better at becoming able to present myself in such a way as to be interpreted as female by persons I am interacting with. Not perhaps the centre of my self-esteem, but not either anthithetical to it.

Library itself was expectedly quiet - it is only a couple of not so big rooms - except one span when we actually needed two people at the desk to keep with demand. That has never previously happened when I have been at that location.

At the end of the day when we were closing up, we found that someone had left the stall in the men's bathroom empty but locked. Tried various small devices to unlock it, including coins and pen lids, but ultimately I had to slide under the door to unlock it from the inside.

Had several seconds of worry at nearly getting stuck under the door, including after I'd got it open. Then reminded myself this is not a sitcom and therefore even if we needed to call for assistance to get me out I could just laugh it off.

I got to help some people so it was not all bad. Just disproportionately the non-good incidents are more interesting to talk about.

Being warned by my sister that a friend of hers will be over today, understood as a warning to dress and present myself in male-coded rather than female-coded fashion so as not to be met with harassment or possibly physical assault by her friend if he should notice me.

A couple of days ago I made a post (NSFW thanks to the subject of this post) pointing at some interesting discussion on religion. Being tired at the time I mostly wanted to show people so if I had something to say later they would be familiar, or leave their on thoughts on the subject.

Instead, what I found the next morning was this comment, titled 'Silly':

You're a silly little skirt, aren't you?

This is why we shouldn't let the girls in.

I do not know this person. I do not know how he came across my journal or what the point of this comment was except apparently to belittle me. I do not even know how he came to the conclusion I am female as I am not in the habit of claiming a gender (userpics perhaps?). I do know he self-describes as a misogynistic, would-be pornstar (speaking of which, the userpic used to make the comment is pornographic).

The comment itself does not particularly bother me except as a driveby whose author I do not get to dismember; what infuriates me is what it signifies. People do not get to live their lives without being harassed. There is no formula women can follow but good fortune to avoid being belittled or worse by strangers who think one fact about them undermines the entire worth of their existence.

And they should not have to. People should not have to take special steps to avoid being victimised by others. It ought to be a rare and shocking occurrence, if it must be one at all. This enrages me. This disgusts me. This is unacceptable. People should not have to fear violence and violation on the basis of who they are. People should not have to worry that others will treat them as less of a person because of the kind of person they are. And people should not have their voices silenced or dismissed just because the matter at hand affects them personally and they are therefore biased.

From Zuska|Thus Spake Zuska via Julianne|Cosmic Variance:

This paper describes a statistical analysis showing clear discrimination by gender among postdoctoral researchers participating in a particle physics experiment. So far as I am aware it has not been published, nor is scheduled to be published. Nor am I capable of evaluating the rigour of the analysis, having only one mostly-forgotten class on statistics in my past (if anyone reading this can do so, that would be appreciated). Such constitutes my disclaimer.

For people interested in getting straight to the results, here is the most straightforwardly worded portion of this paper:

We find that females were allotted 40% more service work than males, and that the chances of this occurring in the absence of gender bias are less than 1%. This observation that females are significantly more often shunted into service work roles echoes the results of a study performed 27 years ago by Mary Gaillard (1980) on the status of of female physicists at CERN, a very large European particle physics laboratory. Particle physics has not progressed very far in this respect in the last three decades.

We also find that females were significantly more productive than their male peers in both
physics and service work, yet were awarded significantly fewer conference presentations; all 9 females in our sample were more productive than 24 out of the 48 males, yet the females had to be on average 3 times more productive than their male peers in order to be awarded a conference presentation. The chances of this occurring in the absence of gender bias are
less than 1%. This result is in remarkable concordance with the research of Wenneras and Wold, who found that females in their study had to be on average 2.5 times more productive than their male peers in order to receive a postdoctoral fellowship.

We note that this dearth of allocated conference presentations appears to hinder the ability of otherwise highly qualified females to become faculty members.

On a personal note, this study is one of many things convincing me I made a right personal choice not to pursue a research career. Although I still believe myself entirely capable of the work, I simply lack the drive required to overcome the obstacles of the non-scientific portions of the profession.

It seems some political parties will be getting a bit of what they wanted after all. Yesterday, new Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that the government will indeed be introducing mandatory internet filtering. This is something that has been rumbling around for years now on both sides of Australian politics and which I was hoping would never go forward.

"Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material."

The mention of schools seems manipulative to me, to make people think of poor defenceless children and to panic. Unless the connections of businesses and other locations will be exempt from filtering? Also worrisome is the mention of blocking this undefined "inappropriate material", which is what?

His response to objections is rather inflammatory:

"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."

I am fairly confident that making or owning child pornography is in fact already illegal. Is Mr Conroy aware of this? I do not think he should be Telecommunications Minister if he is not aware that Australian law enforcement already takes steps to track and shut down this kind of material, which involves harming people considered incapable of consent.

Pornographic material, in case Mr Conroy does not realise this, is actually legal in Australia, Unless it involves BDSM.

( Part of what I wrote last time this came up )

I should perhaps add, though I think it obvious (except what people think obvious is often shown not to be) that I do not non-consensual material should be allowed. However, we are talking about a blanket ban on "pornography and inappropriate material" passing through Australian ISPs, -

It is at this point I realise I may be guilty of inadvertent sensationalism myself. People will be given the option of opting out of this 'service'.

-not anything to do with the enforcement of bans on currently illegal material. I would hazard a guess that it is already illegal to make available to minors pornographic or highly violent material, informed by such evidence as the fact my sister's copy of Fight Club is rated R18+ and not allowed for sale to anyone under the age of 18. Yep, an official part of our existing rating system (which incidentally requires any video game that would be rated 'R' be 'Refused Classification' instead). I would further hazard that laws covering the making available of such material to minors extends to the internet, or could easily be made to do so.

Further, there is already existing software for the purpose of filtering such content from computers. Parents can set it up for themselves if they make the decision that they do not wish their children exposed to such material or hire someone to set it up for them or the government could subsidise the cost/provide software and installation for those who wish it.

What I try to ask myself when questions such as this arise is, is there sufficient justification for removing this freedom from people? I do not think there is.

• There already exist tools for this purpose which do not involve restricting the access of anyone who does not ask for it (and those who are their dependants, I suppose)
• People who know computers better than I do tell me it would not even work
• So far as I am aware there already exist laws intended to prevent minors from accessing the content which would be blocked
• I do not want the government to have a list of banned internet content which, even though it probably will not directly affect me, might be expanded to do so
• Any talk of child pornography or similar in relation to this is a diversion intended to produce a hysterical reaction and demonise opponents. Such material is already illegal.

    I just tonight decided to make more use of my MySpace account because it is there, right, and I may as well get something out of it. My first attempt was cross-posting the entry I just wrote and I quickly discovered what prompted me to give up in disgust last time: there is no category for talking about science, nor technology, or have I found a way to create one yet like I could at my old MSN Space.
    Science is part of our culture, an important part. That people would not realise this to the point of not even thinking to include it as an option for discussion, or to make the assessment that so few others would ever use that category it is not worth creating... it is almost enough to kill the excitement I feel at discovery.

    Watched it for the first time last night. It was just as tangentially related to the source material as I expected and bore, in my opinion, closer resemblance to Caves of Steel and Caliban than I, Robot. Very surprised to discover the central character was not named Elijah Bailey (just looked it up; I am terrible with character names in film).
    What I think annoyed me most was that they made Susan Calvin into the sidekick. She is a brilliant robopsychologist, not someone who needs Hansel & Gretel explained to her, nor a person who needs constant saving. She was one of my childhood heroes and it was painful seeing her made a foil to the protagonist.
    I suppose there is no market for science fiction detective stories.
    The truth is, I did not actually pay much attention to the film. It simply was not interesting. I only watched it to compare with the original collection

    Now I suppose I should scrounge around for a copy to reassure myself that Susan really was intelligent, perceptive, sharp... I remember her as being middle-aged too, although she has been older and younger in stories. *sigh* She did have a nice coat.

    The rest of the film is very rantable too. I do not think I can consider this film for what it is or tried to be; it reminds me too much of what it is not.

    Orac|Respectful Insolence provides a list all the academic medical centres which offer woo, as it is put. List is here.

    Mike Brotherton|Science Fiction & Fantasy Novelists makes his complaint about the lack of scientific literacy that allows people to ignore errors with the refrain 'only a movie'. I happen to agree, except that I do not think high culture gets off much better. I think people are more likely to profess admiration for less scientific parts of our culture because they think it is easier, all opinion and you 'can't be wrong'. I know that is how we often joked about English class in high school.
    But as I said, apart from the nitpick that high culture does not get significantly higher respect, but only lip service, I agree completely.

    Oh, I keep thinking I should put the phrase high culture in scare quotes but I am not up to tackling that tonight.

    Oh, such things you would not wish to know. It leaves me gaping like an outraged goldfish.