Two posts sit side-by-side at “the Volokh conspiracy”:http://volokh.com at the moment. In one, Eugene Volokh updates a post “making fun of some women”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_14.shtml#1103132740 protesting about not being picked for parts in a production of _The Vagina Monologues_:
Auditions Are So _Patriarchal_: Early this year, I blogged about a controversy related to The Vagina Monologues, in a post titled “Life Imitates The Onion.” An excerpt:
… In flyers handed out to audience members at the show, University graduate Nicole Sangsuree Barrett wrote that while there was “diversity” in the show, it was minimal. Women of “a variety of skin colors, body sizes, abilities and gender expressions” were not adequately represented, she said. …
… It turns out that variety of abilities really did mean variety of abilities …:
… Pete said the committee will select people who are “not necessarily drama-oriented” in favor of “people who work (toward) ‘The Vagina Monologues’ mission of ending violence against women.” … “The fact that they had auditions means that some people are automatically excluded,” [Women’s Center spokeswoman Stefanie Loh] said.
Not just some people — some vaginas! “Not all vaginas are skinny, white + straight,” or, apparently, have acting ability.
But just to show that identity politics is a game anyone can play, Orin Kerr “raises an eyebrow”:http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=http%3a%2f%2fvolokh.com%2farchives%2farchive_2004_12_14.shtml%231103130461 at the “sad tale of an oppressed conservative assistant professor.”:http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/12/2004121501c.htm Forced to sit through the odd joke about Michael Moore, park his Honda alongside Volvos and Subarus, and endure a “semiotics of exclusion” (i.e., Kerry-Edwards and anti-war bumper stickers on the Volvos) he suffered grave emotional pain when “anti-Republican tenor” at the lunch table “ached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, ‘I’m not even going to watch [the convention]. I can’t stand it’.”
*Update*: The going theory in the comments is that our “oppressed conservative”:http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/12/2004121501c.htm is a hoax. The internal evidence for this is pretty good.
Ain’t University life grand? Bliss it was on these campuses to be excluded, but to feel oppressed when your crew controlled all three branches of government was very Heaven. The social organization of opinion on university campuses ensures that all available identity niches will be occupied eventually. It might have to do with the way that student groups get funded. People are encouraged to create organizations that, in turn, help generate social identities, appropriate resources, and provide a toolkit of protest strategies. This isn’t anything new. When I was an undergraduate the Gay and Lesbian society on campus got attacked by the (notional) bisexual community for not being inclusive enough. So it became the GLB Soc. But then they worried about Transgendered people. So it became the GLBT Soc. It was then suggested (though not by society members) that they should just include heterosexual people as well and be done with it. While organizations founded on inclusionary rather than exclusionary principles are more prone to this problem, the proliferation of identities and the organizational technologies that foster them is quite general. This is why well-funded College Republicans began adopting the language of oppression some time ago.
Discrimination and oppression are quite real, of course, though the most compelling examples tend not to be found on college campuses. If our conservative professor was denied tenure on the basis of his voting record, we should be worried. And Eugene Volokh’s horse-laugh notwithstanding, it’s pretty well-established that auditions can be very patriarchal indeed. A “well-known study”:http://www.economics.harvard.edu/~goldin/papers.html by Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse found that blind auditions for orchestral positions increased women’s chances of making it past the first round by 50%, and of getting the job by 300%. (Though the number of jobs is so small that there was more uncertainty attached to this figure than the 50% one.)
{ 124 comments }
Deb Frisch 12.15.04 at 7:50 pm
Speaking of women, what percentage of posts to Crooked Timber (original, not comments) are women? Am I missing something, or is it approximately zero?
LizardBreath 12.15.04 at 7:57 pm
I certainly see posts from Belle Holbo and Eszter Hargittai here — have you not noticed them or are you making some more obscure point?
Chris Bertram 12.15.04 at 7:59 pm
Hardly approximately zero!
“Maria’s posts”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/maria.html
“Eszter’s posts”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/eszter.html
“Belle’s posts”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/belle.html
Maurice Meilleur 12.15.04 at 8:01 pm
Assuming Volokh reported the VM audition story factually correctly, the difference between that and the orchestral blind audition study you mention is that:
–in the orchestral audition study, the conclusion was that hiding the gender identity of the applicant would force judges to decide based on the presentation of the skills and qualities necessary to the job in question (i.e., musicianship), which presumably meant they would be better judges; but
–in the VM audition process, precisely the opposite is true. It would be as if the orchestral judges were forced to choose members for the ensemble without listening to them play their instruments.
Of course, there is some legitimate controversy over whether Ensler’s VM is in fact a “play” in the sense that Kushner’s Angels in America is a play or David Mamet’s Oleanna is a play. But, then, that might be another argument.
Lee Scoresby 12.15.04 at 8:08 pm
This piece in the Chronicle has to be a hoax. Not that I don’t believe that such conversations occur in academia — they do, all the time, and it is a real problem — but the line about the “semiotics of exclusion” just rings of satire.
Giles 12.15.04 at 8:25 pm
A well-known study ….(Though the number of jobs is so small that there’s more uncertainty attached to this figure than the 50% one.)
the study’s well known but empiraically meaningless?
Maybe the’re some material in that observation to!
bza 12.15.04 at 8:42 pm
the study’s well known but empiraically meaningless?
Holy tendentious summary, Batman!
On other notes: The Goldin link is broken as of this posting, and why does this post from the usually (verbally) meticulous Kieran contain such an uncharacteristic number of typos?
George 12.15.04 at 8:51 pm
Actually where I come from, it’s GLBTQ&Q. And probably a few others by now.
cloquet 12.15.04 at 8:53 pm
Vaginas and Volvos?
I am totally in the dark what this is supposed to be about. This is a play about vaginas that speak?
About beleaguered junior conservative faculty members? Who presumably have no vaginas? What exactly is going on here?
Kieran Healy 12.15.04 at 9:00 pm
This piece in the Chronicle has to be a hoax.
Hmm, I wonder whether you’re right.
why does this post from the usually (verbally) meticulous Kieran contain such an uncharacteristic number of typos?
I think the typos are fixed now.
harry 12.15.04 at 9:12 pm
It has to be a hoax. Not just the ‘semiotics of exclusion’, but the bathos of:
bq. The anti-Republican tenor at the table remained unbroken, but reached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, “I’m not even going to watch [the convention]. I can’t stand it.”
I said that about both conventions, and would have said it about any other. This was the zenith of anti-Republican feeling? Come off it.
Kieran Healy 12.15.04 at 9:49 pm
Yes, I think I’m coming round to the hoax theory.
Deb Frisch 12.15.04 at 10:07 pm
Well…okay. You’ve proved its not zero. Two posts by women in December out of how many? 15 days x approximate 5 posts a day = 75?
3%, not 0%. Sorry.
And Chris and Lizardbreath think things are hunky-dorey.
Okey-dokey.
catfish 12.15.04 at 10:34 pm
While we are on the subject, I have noticed that there are few posts (not comments) on Crooked Timber by Conservatives. Someone call Frontpage.
Matt Weiner 12.15.04 at 10:37 pm
I don’t see it as a hoax really; just not a very well-written piece.
But Kerr is definitely joking:
When the author became a professor, he had to sit through an entire sentence at a faculty meeting — yes, a sentence with a noun, verb, and everything – joking about a film by Michael Moore!
I am openminded enough to realize that you can be both a loyal American and yet not agree with everything said during the Republican convention, but to be so vehement as to not watch it is really, well, suspicious. And how else to explain the willingness to admit that curious decision to colleagues but as a sign of moral depravity?
Kieran, I believe you’ve been outsnarked.
(In all seriousness, your post makes it sound like Kerr is sympathetic to “Pilger,” and he ain’t.)
A. 12.15.04 at 10:58 pm
Odd that no one wants to discuss the gender asymmetry of the blogosphere, or of Crooked Timber.
Jackmormon 12.15.04 at 11:03 pm
Odd that no one wants to discuss the gender asymmetry of the blogosphere, or of Crooked Timber.
But on the internet, who’s to say who’s a woman?
Kieran Healy 12.15.04 at 11:10 pm
But Kerr is definitely joking
Yes, of course I know _Orin_ is joking — that’s why I said he “raises an eyebrow” at the guy’s column (hoax or no). I thought that was clear enough. Then again, people thought I was serious the other day when I said the Becker/Posner blog must be a hoax, because Posner’s post was so bad.
Rob 12.15.04 at 11:13 pm
Yes, why aren’t the female members of the blog being forced to write posts to make it more equitable?
Munch 12.15.04 at 11:32 pm
Has anyone considered that the Chronicle piece is simply a weak-hearted diatribe, lacking any issues beyond the same “I believe this, and you believe that” that would occur as easily on the facory floor as in academe? I would hate to get into the habit of looking for pointed sarcasm in the small-minded comments from the easily offended mind of a little man (or woman)
Matt Weiner 12.15.04 at 11:35 pm
OK, I was just being dense. At least I got the joke about the Becker/Posner thing. I should’ve preemptively given Kerr more credit (as well as Mine Host).
beware the squirrels 12.15.04 at 11:54 pm
“Odd that no one wants to discuss the gender asymmetry of the blogosphere, or of Crooked Timber.”
Yes, I agree.
It is amazingly odd that nobody wants to pick up a non-sequiter question whose factual premise was immediately proven inaccurate.
Odd indeed!
It reminds me of how there are all these squirrels outside my window who appear to be plotting against me. There are lots and lots of them, and they look kind of…. liberal.
But does Crooked Timber discuss them? Has Belle Waring said one word about the squirrel menace?
I think not.
But what else would you expect from the likes of Crooked Timber and its entirely male except for Belle and Ezter and Maria roster?
Squirrel apologists all.
Orin Kerr 12.15.04 at 11:57 pm
I doubt it is a hoax — but if it is, it’s an elaborate one. The same pseudonym was used back in May for an earlier column, available here: http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/05/2004051101c.htm
The May column has the author at the Minnesota school while interviewing for jobs. The blurb at the end says that “[n]ot long after he wrote this, he was offered and accepted a tenure-track position south of the Mason-Dixon line.” This week’s column fits that time line and bio pretty well. If this is a hoax, it’s a hoax with an careful set-up.
cloquet 12.15.04 at 11:59 pm
Nobody still has said very much about the male/female ratio on this liberal blog.
How about the male/female ratio of bloggers on the right?
I’m speaking as a commenter with a vagina, and I would say that the percentage of comment posts made my kind is closer to asymptotic to zero.
dsquared 12.16.04 at 12:04 am
deb, a: I would be right up for getting a few more birds in round here to raise the tone and look decorative. Do you have any suggestions as to how the CT staff could meet more women? I suspect it might not just be me who’s interested.
mcm 12.16.04 at 12:17 am
I doubt it’s a hoax. In his earlier piece, he admits to wearing a bow tie:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/05/2004051101c.htm
John Quiggin 12.16.04 at 12:51 am
Orin Kerr takes the piss, but his source, Glenn Reynolds, treats this piece as straight news.
Jim Harrison 12.16.04 at 1:34 am
There will never be a shortage of conservatives on campus until the state colleges run out of disappointed middle-aged assistant professors.
A 12.16.04 at 2:12 am
“It is amazingly odd that nobody wants to pick up a non-sequiter question whose factual premise was immediately proven inaccurate.”
16 bloggers on Crooked Timber. 3 of them female.
(Sorry if I mischaracterized Micah’s gender–not sure if the name is M or F.)
D-Squared: No one is suggesting affirmative action. I’d just like an end to the silence, the silly attempts to suggest the asymmetry doesn’t exist, and perhaps an analysis of the mechanisms that produce it.
Kieran Healy 12.16.04 at 2:36 am
16 bloggers on Crooked Timber. 3 of them female.
And one “dead white guy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagu_Norman, just to rub salt in the wound.
The gender imbalance in political blogging is real, I think, and probably driven by much the same mechanisms as elsewhere — the potential for pseudonymous blogging notwithstanding.
Barb 12.16.04 at 3:04 am
I teach at a Southern University and the faculty here is fairly conservative, and the faculties at most of the other southern colleges and universities I am familiar with are chock full of conservatives. Not too many women, though, to raise an apparently sore subject.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 3:08 am
The squirrel:
“Odd that no one wants to discuss the gender asymmetry of the blogosphere, or of Crooked Timber.â€
Yes, I agree.
It is amazingly odd that nobody wants to pick up a non-sequiter question whose factual premise was immediately proven inaccurate.
—
Thanks for the lob:
Squirrel, you’re nuts. You might want to ask Dr. Quiggin to give you a lesson in Probability 101. The fact that approximately 3% of the December posts are by women is strong evidence for the hypothesis that CT has a comical, embarassing, hypocritical white-male bias for a blog that portrays itself as hip and leftist.
Sally 12.16.04 at 3:08 am
There are women friendly blogs by and for academics, this just isn’t one of them.
Sally 12.16.04 at 3:09 am
There are women friendly blogs by and for academics, this just isn’t one of them.
Sally 12.16.04 at 3:10 am
There are women friendly blogs by and for academics, this just isn’t one of them.
Giles 12.16.04 at 3:32 am
Deb
first of all I don’t see why you think “hip and leftist” = “woman friendly”
Secondly I think you’ll also find similar skews one way or the other on Right wing blogs.
Thirdly, well crooked timber just aint that woman freindly – you’d be better off with smooth pine!:)
vagina 12.16.04 at 3:34 am
Some people just love to say the word “vagina.” Vagina.
Jon H 12.16.04 at 4:06 am
“The fact that approximately 3% of the December posts are by women is strong evidence for the hypothesis that CT has a comical, embarassing, hypocritical white-male bias for a blog that portrays itself as hip and leftist.”
Deb, is it your contention that women are inherently less productive than men?
Why do you hate women?
Mill 12.16.04 at 4:20 am
Come on, you guys are making fun of Deb, but I think she has a point. And I hate to even imagine the self-righteousness that would erupt here if, say, a right-wing organisation not only denied that 97:3 is a gender imbalance but actually responded to the accusation with condescending amusement.
It’s true that Crooked Timber is just a blug with a dozen and a half members, but that doesn’t mean Deb isn’t right when she points out that it’s mostly a boy’s club. If you don’t have a problem with being mostly a boy’s club, fine, but surely you should accept and own that instead of hiding behind a tiny number of posts by women.
Mill 12.16.04 at 4:24 am
Er, blog, not blug. I didn’t mean to descend to nonsensical name-calling.
david 12.16.04 at 4:32 am
You people are hip?
WeSaferThemHealthier 12.16.04 at 5:04 am
George,
What does the second Q refer to in “GLBTQ&Q”? Questioning and what?
Deb,
What would you like, posting quotas? 50% of posts must be made by women and if it dips below that, males aren’t allowed to post until the females members have gotten the average up to 50%. Would that be good enough?
Would you prefer that female bloggers who aren’t up to the standards of CT be asked to join or would you prefer that male posters who are up to those standards be told they’re not posters anymore? Perhaps both?
To you, are the terms “hip and leftist” synonymous with “equality of results”?
dsquared 12.16.04 at 7:12 am
No one is suggesting affirmative action
I bloody well am. As I say, we need a few more birds in to raise the tone. It’s like a bloody locker room round here some days. The CT offices are a sty, Kieran’s cooking is just abysmal and we never seem to do anything except sit around drinking lager and watching Sky Sports. Familiarity has rather bred contempt where it comes to the three honorary ladettes who post here at the moment, but I honestly believe that if we got a couple of decent sorts on the team it might sort of encourage us to make an effort.
Ladies! Send your application to:
“Men Behaving Badly”
c/o Crooked Timber
please include three passport-sized photographs and mark you envelope “BIRDSEARCH ’05”.
raj 12.16.04 at 10:12 am
WeSaferThemHealthier · December 16, 2004 05:04 AM
>What does the second Q refer to in “GLBTQ&Q� Questioning and what?
From what I have seen, usually, the first Q refers to “queer” and the second Q refers to “questioning.”
As far as I–a gay (male)–am concerned, “GL” was sufficient.
Matt McGrattan 12.16.04 at 11:20 am
wtf is ‘questioning’? :-)
Jamie 12.16.04 at 1:54 pm
That probably would be strong evidence, except that it isn’t evidence of any kind. It isn’t true. Careful readers will have noticed that Deb Frisch simply made up the numbers that she then divided to get the fictional 3%. (Mill obviously did not notice, since he repeats the figure as if it were a fact.)
In December, before the posting that heads this thread, CT had 60 entries. Seven of them were by women (Hargittai 6, Waring 1). Even lazy people like myself can easily find the number of women’s postings by clicking the links Chris Bertram provided in the comments.
It’s more fun to make up the numbers, I know.
Jamie 12.16.04 at 2:04 pm
That probably would be strong evidence, except that it isn’t evidence of any kind. It isn’t true. Careful readers will have noticed that Deb Frisch simply made up the numbers, then divided them to get a fictious percentage (Mill obviously did not notice, since s/he cites the 3% figure as if it were a fact).
In December, before the posting that heads this thread, CT had 60 entries. Seven of them were by women (Hargittai 6, Waring 1). Even for lazy people like me, it was very easy to find how many postings there were in December by women. I just clicked the links that Chris Bertram helpfully provided in the comments.
It’s more fun to make up the numbers, I know.
Jamie 12.16.04 at 2:08 pm
That probably would be strong evidence, except that it isn’t evidence of any kind. It isn’t true. Careful readers will have noticed that Deb Frisch simply made up the numbers, then divided them to get a fictious percentage (Mill obviously did not notice, since s/he cites the 3% figure as if it were a fact).
In December, before the posting that heads this thread, CT had 60 entries. Seven of them were by women (Hargittai 6, Waring 1). Even for lazy people like me, it was very easy to find how many postings there were in December by women. I just clicked the links that Chris Bertram helpfully provided in the comments.
It’s more fun to make up the numbers, I know.
beware the squirrels 12.16.04 at 2:41 pm
Darn, Jamie beat me to it. Yes, the 3% figure does fall into the category of “making shit up.” And the 1 post by Belle this month understates her ordinary participation rate, so “this month” might not be the best sample.
But empirical claims about CT aside, there may well be an interesting discussion to be had here. I just can’t quite figure out what Deb’s outrage is all about. Is the claim that something prevents women from blogging? Or that CT excludes women who do blog? Or that the wider blog world ignores female bloggers?
FWIW, it seems to me that the entry costs for blogging are roughly zero. If women want to blog, there’s nothing stopping them formally. There may well be workload or family issues, but wouldn’t that also apply to fathers with large teaching loads/tough jobs?
I’m skeptical, if that’s the claim. There are lots of great female bloggers that are fairly easy to find, and some of them – including the delectable Belle – can be found right here. (If Crooked Timber wants to invite some more women on to the roster, though, can I nominate Laura of Apartment 11D? A more perfect fit for CT – of beautiful writing with important substantive interests – is hard to imagine.) Perhaps these blogs tend to write about different kinds of things, but what’s wrong with that?
And then there is no obstacle to women bloggers being read, other than the generic obstacles that all new blogs face in reaching an audience. Unlike coursework, where a patriarchal professor can force you to read only dead white males, there is no blogging syllabus or required reading list. Heck, a few years ago, I decided that Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan were pompous, unreliable, and intellectually abusive, so I just stopped reading them. And no blog police showed up to force me to start reading them again!
So what exactly is it that Deb is asking us to be outraged about, and to stop ignoring? I’m not making fun anymore, I’m just curious.
arna 12.16.04 at 2:52 pm
Belle is “delectable”?
dsquared 12.16.04 at 2:55 pm
I think that women consider it to be an unfriendly atmosphere. I can’t fucking think for the fucking life of me why.
digamma 12.16.04 at 3:01 pm
Where I went to college, Republicans weren’t even within the bounds of discussion. The question was whether Democrats are intentionally fascists, or just unwitting pawns of fascists.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 3:10 pm
1.But on the internet, who’s to say who’s a woman?
Some of us have the balls to use our real names.
2. deb, a: I would be right up for getting a few more birds in round here to raise the tone and look decorative. Do you have any suggestions as to how the CT staff could meet more women? I suspect it might not just be me who’s interested.
If you blokes tried to tone down the condescending, sexist rhetoric (birds, decorative), it would be a start.
3. D-Squared: No one is suggesting affirmative action. I’d just like an end to the silence, the silly attempts to suggest the asymmetry doesn’t exist, and perhaps an analysis of the mechanisms that produce it.
Roger that.
4. Deb, is it your contention that women are inherently less productive than men? Why do you hate women?
I’m not sure blathering on Crooked Timber is “productive.†And the fact that it’s a club primary by boyz for boyz seems irrelevant to the question of women’s productivity. And for the record, I hate overconfident, smug, sexist, not too bright white men – not women. But thanks for your interest.
5. If you don’t have a problem with being mostly a boy’s club, fine, but surely you should accept and own that instead of hiding behind a tiny number of posts by women.
Exactly – the quibbling over the exact percentage of women – 0/3/10 is a way to avoid the real issue.
6.Would you prefer that female bloggers who aren’t up to the standards of CT be asked to join or would you prefer that male posters who are up to those standards be told they’re not posters anymore?
I reckon it would be easy to find women who are just as good as the current staff of CT. There’s diminishing marginal utility of JQ, Kieran, Henry, Harry, Chris, and the other blokes who monopolize this blog.
catfish 12.16.04 at 3:29 pm
This is an interesting question. What obligation do hobbiests (which is what blog writers are) have to insure a fair amount of sexual and racial diversity. Of course, there is no legal requirement. Since blogs are not “respectable” in an academic sense, I’m don’t think that there is a professional obligation either. Still, if you take “diversity” seriously as a moral charge, there might be some call to make an effort to promote it in every public facet of your life.
I’m pretty sure that most of the timberites don’t want a “male only” blog. However, much of the charm of blogging is the ameteurish, off the cuff quality, that if offered alongside more serious analysis. Would strenous efforts to promote diversity kill off the entire feel of the blog. I must admit, without the geeky posts about music, fantasy novels, and such, I would spend my time in some other way (which might be for the best, although I would be much less entertained).
Again, what are the moral obligations of hobbiests in male dominated fields (role-playing games, Civil War battle reenacting, blogging)? Should people simply give up these past-times?
dsquared 12.16.04 at 3:38 pm
D-Squared: No one is suggesting affirmative action
Once more, I am, and not just as a joke. I think you’re overestimating how easy it is to meet intelligent and articulate women when one spends all of one’s spare time arsing about on the Internet. I learned this one the hard way, I can tell you.
cloquet 12.16.04 at 3:59 pm
“please include three passport-sized photographs and mark you envelope “BIRDSEARCH ‘05â€.”
Dsquared before I enter the birdsearch contest, I would like to see you post an 8×10 revealing photo of your wonderful maleness. That will help me immensely in my decision making as to whether I will enter the contest, or make more comment posts in this male environment.
Notice I did not once use the “v-word.”
Walt Pohl 12.16.04 at 4:03 pm
Wow, Crooked Timber has been trolled from the left. I think this is an important step forward in the history of trolling.
Michael Zimmer 12.16.04 at 4:21 pm
97:3…. hmm… why is the “number of posts” considered the appropriate measure of involvement/representation? why not the number of words? number of active verbs? fewest split infinitives?
Matt McGrattan 12.16.04 at 4:54 pm
“2. deb, a: I would be right up for getting a few more birds in round here to raise the tone and look decorative. Do you have any suggestions as to how the CT staff could meet more women? I suspect it might not just be me who’s interested. [quoting from dsquared]
If you blokes tried to tone down the condescending, sexist rhetoric (birds, decorative), it would be a start.”
Talk about a case of really NOT getting the joke… i.e. the intentional use of words like “bird” and “decorative”.
The word ‘bird’ sounds better if you imagine it being pronounced in a Michael-Caine-circa-1963 mockney accent, or maybe given dsquared’s nationality (?) some kind of Goldie Lookin’ Chain/Richard Burton hybrid …
Matt McGrattan 12.16.04 at 4:55 pm
“2. deb, a: I would be right up for getting a few more birds in round here to raise the tone and look decorative. Do you have any suggestions as to how the CT staff could meet more women? I suspect it might not just be me who’s interested. [quoting from dsquared]
If you blokes tried to tone down the condescending, sexist rhetoric (birds, decorative), it would be a start.”
Talk about a case of really NOT getting the joke… i.e. the intentional use of words like “bird” and “decorative”.
The word ‘bird’ sounds better if you imagine it being pronounced in a Michael-Caine-circa-1963 mockney accent, or maybe given dsquared’s nationality (?) some kind of Goldie Lookin’ Chain/Richard Burton hybrid …
beware the squirrels 12.16.04 at 4:56 pm
“Belle is “delectableâ€?”
Oh, yes.
I offer you:
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/12/pecan_pie.html
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/10/cheese_snacky_c.html
and then (not work safe)…
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/06/pieblogging_the.html
Matt McGrattan 12.16.04 at 5:00 pm
Sorry for the double post…
aj 12.16.04 at 5:17 pm
To add to the gender bias complaint:
I object to the fact that all of the posts on Kieran Healy’s blog have been written by men. That he does not post about the undeniable fact that he is a man only indicates the depth of the problem.
cloquet 12.16.04 at 5:30 pm
Regarding bird search again.
Double blind studies have shown that female participation in blogging increases tremendously depending on the relative delectablility of the male participants.
Dsquared since you have most of the female interest on this site, perhaps you would like to provide us with your delectablity figures, and encourage your male compatriots to do likewise.
bellatrys 12.16.04 at 5:48 pm
Deb, were you trying to be subtly ironic by claiming to “have balls,” or are you just another woman with a colonized mind? Or is “Deb” a pseudonym for a male poster?
(Now, is there anywhere that will make book on how many people will make correct vs incorrect assumptions in re *my* gender? I’m thinking I could pick up a few extra bob this way…)
George 12.16.04 at 6:01 pm
Raj is right, the first Q is ‘queer’ and the second Q is ‘questioning.’ At least that’s the term out here in the Bay Area, which ought to be the OED for queer terminology. And though I can’t be classed in any of those categories, I’ve met quite a few folks who are indeed too queer for ‘queer.’
Matt Weiner 12.16.04 at 6:07 pm
Wow, Crooked Timber has been trolled from the left. I think this is an important step forward in the history of trolling.
Has Chun’s life work come to nothing, that someone can say this?
dsquared 12.16.04 at 6:16 pm
I would like to see you post an 8×10
The “enlarge” button on my photocopier is broken; would a 3×4 do?
dsquared 12.16.04 at 6:19 pm
By the way, I do agree that women are quite scandalously under-represented in the blogosphere and that CT probably doesn’t do as much as it should about that problem. I can only apologise for the fact that I am an intrinsically facetious and puerile person, and thus probably the wrong choice to do anything about it.
Walt Pohl 12.16.04 at 7:35 pm
I’d hate to take away a person’s life work away like that, so I retract my statement.
Was Chun really a troll?
Matt Weiner 12.16.04 at 8:24 pm
I recall someone saying, to mark Chun’s passing, that he (?) made trolling into a high art form. I trust he (?) would take that as a compliment.
See also this Chun-Henry exchange.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 9:38 pm
Frisch: Speaking of women, what percentage of posts to Crooked Timber (original, not comments) are women? Am I missing something, or is it approximately zero?
Bertram: Hardly approximately zero!
[Provides links to posts by Maria, Eszter and Belle.]
Frisch: Well…okay. You’ve proved the frequency of female posts is greater than zero. But since I said “approximately zero†I’m not sure what your point is. I suppose we should check with Quiggin, but I’m pretty sure that your clever demonstration that p(woman)>0 isn’t very strong evidence against my hypothesis (p(woman) is approximately zero.
Squirrel: “Odd that no one wants to discuss the gender asymmetry of the blogosphere, or of Crooked Timber.â€
Yes, I agree.
It is amazingly odd that nobody wants to pick up a non-sequiter question whose factual premise was immediately proven inaccurate.
[Insert inane blathering here.]
Frisch: The anonymous squirrel is even worse than Bertram. Att least Bertram was pithy and had a discernible point (frequency of women > 0), even though it was a pointless point.
The squirrel has a word/meme ratio that approaches infinity.
Comments like these from Bertram and “squirrel†are a little bit better than the porno, casino, etc. spam that blogs are susceptible but not much better.
I could go on giving examples of stupid, rude comments from other blokes on the list but I’m already spending more time on this list&thread than I deem optimal.
The fact that none of the big boys – Quiggin, Kieran, etc. stepped in and told their pathetic cronies that they were out of line (not to mention, out of their league) is further evidence in support of the hypothesis for the rampant sexism at Crooked Timber.
If one of the lovely ladies would like to chime in and tell me I’m wrong – that CT is ecstasy for for those of us of the XX persuasion, I’d love to hear from Eszther, Belle or Maria.
Randolph Fritz 12.16.04 at 10:08 pm
Deb’s a troll, folks. Making up easily available facts is a pretty reliable sign. May even be male.
Detached Observer 12.16.04 at 10:12 pm
Deb Frisch,
In your chronology of the debate above you have conveniently omitted your making up of the 3% figure. In fact, 7 posts out of 60 is not 0, and its not approximately 0 either. You then went ahead and, incredibly, accused those who pointed out your dishonest making up of figures of trying to “avoid the real issue.”
As other commenters here pointed out before, if you want to be taken seriously, honest arguments help. It also helps to admit your mistakes when you are caught making clearly false statements. That you did neither of those is sufficient justification for anyone to ignore your comments. When a more honest commentator comes along, and less prone to ad hominem arguments (e.g. accusing opponents’ of “inane blathering” or of being little better than porn spam) I am sure the topic of women in the blogosphere will get the discussion it deserves.
Mill 12.16.04 at 10:33 pm
I assure you I’m not trying to troll, and as a sign of good faith I’ll apologise sincerely for assuming that the 3% figure was real. So it’s actually about 11, 12%? Does that not still seem a little low to you?
It astonishes me that almost no-one is even taking Deb’s claims seriously. Again, I know Crooked Timber is an informal thing more akin to a hobby than a workplace, but do you honestly not see how this “well, nothing against women — we just happen to be almost all men– pity, eh?! ha ha ha!” attitude is the basic mechanism by which women (and other groups, even) are excluded from things?
Again, you’re just hobbyists, you have no real obligation to do anything, but it would be nice to see a little self-awareness.
And for people who talk about “affirmative action” as though it would be some huge burden to find half a dozen internet-connected women -in the world- who can write as well as the Crooked Timber men, and so hunting specifically for female posters would bring the quality down? — no offence, I really like this blog, but your posts aren’t -that- stylistically unmatchable.
Like I say, I personally don’t care if you find more women or not. I like CT enough to read it the way it is now. But I’m becoming a little fascinated by the extreme unwillingness to admit the plain facts about the place’s authorial makeup.
nic 12.16.04 at 10:34 pm
Er, Deb, you probably haven’t noticed, but the tone and content of your comments is not exactly doing much to advance the argument that a mere increase in presence of female contributors would necessarily, just by virtue of their being females, offer something interesting to read.
As opposed to something being interesting to read, regardless of the chromosomes of the writer. (What does it even mean to be of the XX “persuasion”? what is it, a religion?)
Anyway. I also believe CT should be a little less selective and meritocratic, because we the people demand so and they are obliged to comply. With all the taxes we pay to keep this site running… nevermind more women writers, the least they could do to please more readers is give away some free CD’s and holiday packages once in a while. Or, a subscription to Sky sports, even. But no. Elitist, leftist, sexist _and_ stingy.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 10:45 pm
So many men. So little time.
DO: In fact, 7 posts out of 60 is not 0, and its not approximately 0 either.
Deb: Okey doke, bloke. Whatever you say. 11.7% is too high for your taste. What’s your threshold for “approximately 0?”
2%? .01%? pi%? e%? 5%?
DO: When a more honest commentator comes along, and less prone to ad hominem arguments (e.g. accusing opponents’ of “inane blathering†or of being little better than porn spam) I am sure the topic of women in the blogosphere will get the discussion it deserves.
Deb: Aw, rats. I guess when I try to spread my memes in the blogosphere via comments to CT, my memes won’t land in the mind of a chap who goes by the alias of detached observer. I’ll cope.
What exactly is the operational definition of a Crooked Timber troll? I’m not really a left-leaning behavioral economist?
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 10:51 pm
You know, now that I think about it, the fact that I debunked Quiggin’s hypothesis that “Two rational agents will never engage in war.” inoculates me against allegations of being a troll.
https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002970.html
nic 12.16.04 at 10:53 pm
Why, do Crooked Timber authors go _hunting_? Oh god. I sure hope it’s not foxes.
Elitist, sexist, stingy _and_ closet Tories. That’s it. I’m cancelling my subscription to this blog right now.
another detached observer 12.16.04 at 11:01 pm
But I’m becoming a little fascinated by the extreme unwillingness to admit the plain facts about the place’s authorial makeup.
You mean, the extreme unwillingness to seriously accept a rhetorical frame which implies that the women who are already participating are not essentially individuals like all the other participants, but are essentially members of an oppressed group.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 11:17 pm
Wow – Quiggin closed the discussion. Not even Becker and Posner pull that kind of crap.
Why’d he go and do that, I wonder?
Yikes. Crooked is right.
dsquared 12.16.04 at 11:40 pm
Deb, CT comments threads automatically close when the post drops off the front page; it’s an anti-spam measure.
Deb Frisch 12.16.04 at 11:46 pm
Thanks d-squared. I didn’t think JQ was the sort of bloke who’d do something like that. Glad to hear I misunderstood the reason the discussion was closed.
So this discussion right here is just going to end randomly, when it’s off the front page?
Henry 12.16.04 at 11:49 pm
bq. Wow – Quiggin closed the discussion. Not even Becker and Posner pull that kind of crap.
bq. Why’d he go and do that, I wonder?
bq. Yikes. Crooked is right.
Deb – all discussions at CT are automatically closed after a set period. Otherwise, we’d forever be trying to get rid of comment spam. Absolutely nothing to do with you (why _would_ we want to censor your comments on the rationality of war?)
As to the main point (and there is an important point there – can’t say I care much for Deb’s style of argument, but she’s certainly not a troll, and Dan was certainly setting out to provoke), one interesting datum is the academic blogroll on the right of CT. Anyone who qualifies under the guidelines and comes to our attention somehow (or nominates themselves) gets into the blogroll – we don’t pick and choose – while there may be biases in the data, they’re not conscious ones on our part. I did a rough-and-ready count of the numbers of male and female academics, discounting group blogs, pseudonymous blogs, and others where I couldn’t figure out the gender. My quick-and-ready total (which could probably do with re-checking) was that there were 302 single authored academic blogs in total, of which 258 were authored by men, and 42 were authored by women. In other words, about 14.5% of the single authored academic blogs that we know about seem to be authored by women. I didn’t count representation in group blogs, but my hazy impression is that the ratio isn’t too different. If this is right, it would seem to suggest that there’s a general problem out there. You can argue about whether CT has a specific responsibility to address that problem or not – but it isn’t a problem that is particular to CT as best as I can tell. It’s an imbalance in the academic blogosphere as a whole.
Kieran Healy 12.16.04 at 11:58 pm
Wow – Quiggin closed the discussion. Not even Becker and Posner pull that kind of crap.
If you mean “this post, on the precautionary principle”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002970.html, you should know that all comment threads on CT are automatically closed (by a shell script) after seven days, to protect against comment spam. Sometimes this causes inconvenience to commenters on unusually long-lived threads — sorry about that — but John certainly wasn’t picking on you personally.
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 12:20 am
Again, I am sorry for accusing Dr. Quiggin of such unsportsmanlike behavior. But given the pathological sexism and denial that has been revealed in this thread AND his avoidance in the PP thread of admitting that om** and I had debunked him, it made sense for a moment.
Mill 12.17.04 at 12:23 am
I’m not arguing that the women who are on Crooked Timber are only worthwhile as tokens or Auntie Toms or however you want to put it. (If anything, I wish Belle in particular would post more, because I like her style a lot.) Making that kind of attack simply because I am stating the true fact that Crooked Timber has 7 or 8 times as many posts by men as it has posts by woman, seems alarmingly defensive to me.
Indeed, accusing advocates of gender equality of “not looking at people as individuals” as a way of distracting attention from the real issue is exactly what Kieren mentioned back in February:
https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001304.html
“When confronted with evidence of systematic racial or gender inequality, for example, [conservatives] go to considerable effort to argue that it’s differences in natural talent, acquired skills or personal preferences that are driving the outcome.”
Now, of course Crooked Timber is just a single, informal group whose practices can hardly be called “systematic”, but still — is it not possible, just POSSIBLE is all I’m saying, that there is some bias, somewhere, maybe not even within CT but as Henry says within the pool of potential writers it draws from, which makes CT itself an example, however unintentional and even unwilling, of the same sort of subtle, creeping inequalities it rightly decries?
Now, as another sign of good faith that I’m not a troll, I’m going to entirely give up on arguing the issue now. I genuinely didn’t want to start a flame war or anything. I was just shocked at how quickly, condescendingly and completely Deb’s very reasonable (if somewhat bluntly made, and irrelevant to the original post) point was dismissed.
A. 12.17.04 at 12:24 am
If CT *does* think that it has a responsibility to do better, an easy way to do so would be to invite academic women whose writing/thinking you admire, but who have not gotten into blogging for whatever reasons, to do some guest blogs. Point also holds for other kinds of less visible asymmetries–race, class, etc.
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 12:47 am
mill, i see your name’s an alias.
wouldn’t be a reference to john stuart, would it?
your posts have a jsm flavor, imho.
another detached observer 12.17.04 at 12:53 am
I was just shocked at how quickly, condescendingly and completely Deb’s very reasonable (if somewhat bluntly made, and irrelevant to the original post) point was dismissed.
But it was not reasonable, it set up an implicit frame that could very easily be transposed into a contentious, ultimately essentialist argument — i.e. a pointless religious argument. Hence the unwillingness to engage directly, and the later accusations of “troll”. Only the unsophisticated will usually walk into that sort of trap, especially if the person setting it up is not familiar to them.
Suppose the argument had been framed in practical terms e.g. “gee, there are only (correct numbers) posts by (correct numbers) women on Crooked Timber, which is such a great site. What are the group’s policies for admitting new participants? Are there any new candidates who happen to be women, because I’d like to see more contributions from women.”
It wouldn’t have to be that chirpy, of course, but if you don’t see a difference, well … George Lakoff has written a popular book recently about how the Democratic Party has lost power through not taking such things seriously.
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 12:54 am
Henry: My quick-and-ready total (which could probably do with re-checking) was that there were 302 single authored academic blogs in total, of which 258 were authored by men, and 42 were authored by women. In other words, about 14.5% of the single authored academic blogs that we know about seem to be authored by women. I didn’t count representation in group blogs, but my hazy impression is that the ratio isn’t too different. If this is right, it would seem to suggest that there’s a general problem out there. You can argue about whether CT has a specific responsibility to address that problem or not – but it isn’t a problem that is particular to CT as best as I can tell. It’s an imbalance in the academic blogosphere as a whole.
Deb: Thanks for your post, Henry. Glad to see a grownup Crooked Timberian has arrived on the scene.
Ah yes, the question of the most appropriate base rates. For an economicsish blog, CT is ahead of the game.
Brad DeLong: 100% white man.
Becker & Posner: 100% white man.
Max Sawicky: ditto
Arnold Kling: roger that
So for an econblog, CT’s doing smashingly (is that how y’all adverbize smashing?)
What about as an interdisciplinary academic social science blog? I haven’t caculated the boy/girl ratio at Left2Right. That would be the relevant comparison.
In either case, I think that the white male bias at CT is correlated with the low signal/noise ratio. Courting women might help you guys have a whole that’s as great as the sum of the parts.
J 12.17.04 at 1:27 am
Might not add much to the discussion – but gender ratios in blogging have gotten substantial attention over time, and it seems to pop up every 3 months. After you go through 2 of these cycles of “Where are the women bloggers?”, they get old an tired.
Here are the main viewpoints I’ve read:
1) Number of female bloggers actually much greater than calculated by surveys, and this fact is being denied. Women’s blogs are just not being recognized by “A listers” either because of sexism or because men focus on X issue or Y style of blogging.
2) Number of female bloggers is lower than male bloggers because of a myriad of gendered factors (i.e. double shift of child care, house work, and paid work)
3) Number of female bloggers is lower than male bloggers becuase of disparate technology backgrounds (which may also have a background in gender discrimination)
4) Number of female bloggers is lower than male bloggers because of differential preferences for leisure time activities (also may be connected to status and social networks)
5) Men are sexist and are stopping women from blogging and getting recognized
I subscribe to 2-4, and I think the best way to do something about it is to encourage women to start their own blogs and to read women’s blogs.
Deb’s comments seem to fall into category number 5, as “another detached observer” noted.
belle waring 12.17.04 at 1:30 am
God I’ve been slack this month. I better post something post haste. and Deb, it’s worth noting that dsquared is 100% “taking the piss” with his comments…
cloquet 12.17.04 at 1:47 am
There is a definite change in atmosphere when things go from a mostly all male group to a more mixed group.
Off topic, but research groups in the Antarctic used to be all male, then went to more of a male/female mix. Some people even wanted to bring children and have a school there, but I don’t think they ever did that.
Just some suggestions. Less use of the f-word and insider acronymns. More discussion right to the point. Males, when the discussion gets too heated, get off the computer for awhile and go check out what needs to be done in that job jar.
Single guys, like dsquared, if this is your main way you present yourself to women, then get that picture up and brag about your job jar, and other winning characteristics that we know must be there somewhere. Some woman will come along here and snap you up in no time flat.
A. 12.17.04 at 3:57 am
Hey, D-Squared: if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had a crush on you since I stumbled across your old blog ages ago. (Alas, I’m happily engaged, otherwise…) Cheers.
Detached Observer 12.17.04 at 4:50 am
Deb Frish wrote: “What’s your threshold for “approximately 0?â€
2%? .01%? pi%? e%? 5%?”
Its certainly nowhere near 10%. Your 3% comment amounted to nothing less than blatant misrepresentation. Your attempts to justify it are ludicrous – by the logic implicit in your reply, one could describe 100% as close to 0 because everyone has different thresholds.
The relevant point still stands: you were making shit up when you came up with your 3% figure. Obviously you feel that your invented figures werent too far off. Even if true – and its not – it doesn’t excuse the making shit up part.
Detached Observer 12.17.04 at 5:09 am
“…I think that the white male bias at CT is correlated with the low signal/noise ratio. Courting women might help you guys have a whole that’s as great as the sum of the parts.”
Is that a plainly ridiculous statement or what? Is there any evidence at all to support it? How would it sound if “white” were replaced by “black?”
John Quiggin 12.17.04 at 6:34 am
I’ve been off dealing with comment spammers at my own blog, but I see my name has been liberally invoked in the meantime. Deb, I’ll try and come back to the “rationality of war” issue some time in the future, and explain myself a little better.
On the general point about the proportion of posts by male and female CTers, one relevant consideration is that some bloggers (on CT at least, mostly male ones) feel some sort of obligation to post fairly regularly, while others (on CT, mostly female) are happy to wait until they have something they want to say. A couple of things follow if rather loosely.
First, I think that, quality- or impact-adjusted, the share of this blog contributed by women is greater than a count of posts would indicate.
Second, as with the relative numbers noted in the blogroll, I think this is a general pattern and not CT-specific.
nic 12.17.04 at 11:47 am
Deb (and mill), if I may attempt a serious response, you complain of pathological sexism on this thread but you have completely missed the humour in dsquared’s comments (Sky Sports and Men Behaving Badly, come on…) and despite your repeating that yeah ok it’s a weblog, you keep talking of a responsibility to include, represent, diversify as if it was a matter of job interviews and equal opportunities in the marketplace.
Let me add that, as a female, I find it a bit insulting when people start talking about women as percentages in such a fixed essentialist way as you do. You may not have meant to treat women bloggers as tokens but that’s exactly how it came across. How is that better than purposefully ignoring women, which no one is doing anyway?
I don’t see why a group of people who know each other and spontaneously got together to keep a group weblog should go “hunting” for women writers just because of their being women. If they do find more contributors I don’t see why the criteria have to be different than what got them started in the first place, whether they’re women or men, I see as entirely irrelevant. I enjoy the different individual voices here, don’t even notice the name of the author until after I’ve read the post, don’t pay attention to the gender but only to the content. There’s also been posts about these topics written by both the guys and the women, I remember Eszter’s post about women in the scientific academic fields for instance, but I don’t see Belle or Eszter or Maria’s name and think, oh, women bloggers, how amazing. Or expect some particularly different content based on their gender. I just read what they write, same for the men. There was a discussion on the top 100 list of British intellectuals and some complained there were too few women in there, now maybe that’s the kind of thing where there can be a selection bias because it’s a list. But a weblog? I get so bored by these ‘where are the women bloggers’ too. For one thing, there are more than the question assumes and yes, there may be a general selection bias in how “top blogs” lists and circles develop but it’s not down to single weblogs. For another, many people like to use pseydonyms and it’s got nothing to do with not having “balls”. Blogs afford the opportunity to be listened to for what you have to say, so some may prefer anonymity, also in order not to be pinned down in any category either way. Respectful of Otters turned her blog pink as a joke when her being a woman came up. I’m a woman, so what? how does that change what I write? Can you perhaps entertain the thought there is no “us” based on gender and that each individual has their own style and preferences and may disagree with your views and approach? Is that too much to ask?
You can always start your own weblog with your own views and approach and select your contributors accordingly, instead of expecting everyone to comply to your preferences. If you had also done without the psychoanalising and dating advice for other people based on their jokes, maybe your point wouldn’t have come across as obnoxious and trollish. Just saying.
dsquared 12.17.04 at 2:40 pm
I think it’s a bit much to accuse anyone else of trolling on this thread when I referred to “BIRDSEARCH ’05”.
cloquet 12.17.04 at 3:36 pm
Dsquared, what we women have in mind is more like “blogger studsearch 05.”
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 3:55 pm
“…I think that the white male bias at CT is correlated with the low signal/noise ratio. Courting women might help you guys have a whole that’s as great as the sum of the parts.â€
Detached Observer, a.k.a. Alex, a graduate student in applied math/engineering somewhere in Massachusetts, whose motto is “My limited knowledge does not prevent me from writing about subjects way beyond my area of expertise†writes:
Is that a plainly ridiculous statement or what? Is there any evidence at all to support it? How would it sound if “white†were replaced by “black?â€
AND
Deb Frish wrote: “What’s your threshold for “approximately 0?â€
2%? .01%? pi%? e%? 5%?â€
Its certainly nowhere near 10%. Your 3% comment amounted to nothing less than blatant misrepresentation. Your attempts to justify it are ludicrous – by the logic implicit in your reply, one could describe 100% as close to 0 because everyone has different thresholds.
The relevant point still stands: you were making shit up when you came up with your 3% figure. Obviously you feel that your invented figures werent too far off. Even if true – and its not – it doesn’t excuse the making shit up part.
Dear Alex,
If you’re going to attack someone, try to spell the name right. It’s Frisch. Got it?
I’m not sure why you are obsessively fixated on the fact that I underestimated the percentage of CT posts by women in December by 8.66667%.
Chris Bertram sent links to directories of three women. I quickly tried to see how many December posts were in each category. I counted two but there were really seven. I quickly tried to estimate the total number of posts. I came up with 75 but there were really 60.
The double whammy of underestimating the numerator and overestimating the denominator caused my estimate to be off. Mea culpa. My bad.
I was relying on a heuristic to estimate f(XX) because the algorithm seemed too costly. It seemed crazy to count up the number of posts by women at CT and the number of posts by men at CT to refute Chris Bertram’s inane objection to my claim that f(XX) was “approximately zero.â€
[In hindsight, of course, I see that it would have been MUCH more cost-effective to just do the ephing math right in the first place. C’est la vie.]
Anyway, I am sorry that my heuristic was inaccurate. But for you to say “you were making shit up when you came up with your 3% figure†shows you have no understanding of the speed-accuracy tradeoff in deciding between a heuristic and algorithm. Your “limited knowledge†doesn’t seem to be limited to areas outside your area of expertise – you seem pretty clueless about applied math.
You are trying to use the fact that I underestimated the frequency of women posts as an excuse to dismiss everything I say. This level of statistical ignorance and cheating is way below my threshold of worth responding to, so FYI, this is the last time I’ll respond to you, unless you take your act up a helluva notch.
One last thing – I’d like to comment on your attempt to refute my hypothesis “The low signal/noise ratio at CT is due, in part to the high frequency of white males by saying “How would it sound if “white†were replaced by “black?—
I agree that the hypothesis, “The black male bias at CT is correlated with the low signal/noise ratio†is silly, since there are no black males at CT.
You raise an interesting question, though. One reason white male bias would be correlated with low S/N ratio is that homogeneity in general is bad for intellectual debate. A mixed group is preferable to an all white or all male or all Christian or all pagan or all female or all black group.
But is there something especially bad about all white men? Is that worse than all black women?
I’d say yes – white men have created enormous barriers to entry in all intellectual areas of western culture. They had a monopoly for many years. The United States has never had a president that wasn’t white, male and Christian. Kennedy, a Catholic was is radical as it gets.
Given the historical lack of market pressure on white males, especially Christian ones, a white male bias is worse than bias toward groups that have evolved in competitive, even hostile markets.
cloquet 12.17.04 at 4:02 pm
To John Quiggen:
Why don’t the men just take it easy too and just post when they think they really have something to say?
I would rather see fewer posts and good discussions, and that would take care of a lot of the complaint about closing good discussions too soon.
Thanks Kieran, this was a great post, politics, sexism, and a lot of humor, all rolled into one.
asg 12.17.04 at 4:23 pm
After reading the entirety of this (hugely entertaining) comments thread, I am still not entirely convinced that deb frisch is not a parody poster. Does anyone really type “I debunked you” with a straight face?
nic 12.17.04 at 4:47 pm
but dsquared, I really thought you were totally serious when you were talking of the Birdsearch… now I’m disappointed…
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 4:55 pm
Alex: by the logic implicit in your reply, one could describe 100% as close to 0 because everyone has different thresholds.
DF: No, Alex, I don’t think “approximately zero percent” could mean “100%.”
One natural reference point is the percentage of men and women in the population – roughly 50-50. So “approximately zero” can only be between 0 and 50.
This isn’t quite fair to use as a standard to see if CT is biased, since the percentage of women in the blogosphere is much smaller than the percentage of women in the population.
Henry and JQ suggested that the base rate of women in this slice of the blogosphere (academic social science) be used.
In terms of the question, “Is CT biased?” I’d used Henry & JQ’s base rate. In terms of the questions “Is the XX/XY ratio at CT “optimal?” and “Would the utility of CT be improved merely by increasing the number of women who post?” I’m less sure than I was before, now that I’ve looked at more CT posts.
I realize that the signal/noise ratio (for me) is pretty low in general at CT. I like most of what JQ posts. Like Jon Baron (my dissertation advisor), he’s a member of my self-proclaimed blogtribe (left-leaning behavioral economist).
I liked Eszther’s piece on academic blogging. But other than that, I mostly just like JQ’s econ stuff.
Maybe it is irrational for me to assume and expect that CT could be as good as JQ, given my interests (axioms of EU, Allais and Ellsberg, Kahneman & Tversky, Keeney & Raiffa, cost-benefit vs. precautionary principle, etc.).
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 6:36 pm
asg: After reading the entirety of this (hugely entertaining) comments thread, I am still not entirely convinced that deb frisch is not a parody poster. Does anyone really type “I debunked you†with a straight face?
trust me as*, i’m real. did i have a straight face when I claimed to have debunked JQ? If by straight you mean heterosexual, no. If by straight you mean serious, damn straight.
catfish 12.17.04 at 6:39 pm
I must say that this is the strangest thread ever to apear on Crooked Timber, beginning as farce before transforming itself into the all too familiar tragedy of internal leftist argument. I was amused, but now I’m just depressed.
Also, I kind of hope the CT folks don’t add any more members unless some of the current ones retire. It’s getting hard to keep up with who’s who as it is. If you do insist on adding more folks, please limit the total posts per day. (/unsolicited advice)
asg 12.17.04 at 7:54 pm
trust me as*, i’m real.
For someone so touchy about people getting her name right, you sure seem to have a lot of trouble with mere initials.
Deb Frisch 12.17.04 at 9:48 pm
it was an ass joke, asg. sorry.
Maria 12.17.04 at 10:29 pm
oh Christ, now I feel even MORE guilty for not posting at all this month….
Deb Frisch 12.18.04 at 12:26 am
le poisson des chats: I must say that this is the strangest thread ever to apear on Crooked Timber, beginning as farce before transforming itself into the all too familiar tragedy of internal leftist argument. I was amused, but now I’m just depressed.
Roger that, catfish. Last night, I started thinking that if these are the good guys, there’s even less hope than I thought. it might be time to drink Jim Jones’ koolaid.
And you are right – the way that lefties piss on and scratch at each other is depressing, not to mention Pareto non-optimal, given our dire straits.
One of the best academic talks I’ve ever heard (and trust me blokes, I’ve heard a lot) was by Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky. He talked about some type of primate that couldn’t hunt as a group because when all the dudes started running and chasing some prey, they’d forget the distinction between mate and prey and start attacking each other. Sometimes, it seems like lefties are like that.
But right on the other side of the depression, the despair, the desire to cash in the 401K because we are surely in the endgame here is something like hope.
Here I am sparring and debating and maybe even sort of, kind of bonding with likeminded folks from the USA, England and the land down under.
So, catfish, I am sorry if this sparring caused you despair.
But the neutered, comatose left needs to wake up and rise up and part of that awakening process is bitching with each other.
dave heasman 12.18.04 at 3:03 am
Deb F says :-
“I’m not sure why you are obsessively fixated on the fact that I underestimated the percentage of CT posts by women in December by 8.66667%. ”
She said the percentage was 3. The percentage was actually 11 or so. So she underestimated it by 367%.
liberal japonicus 12.18.04 at 6:13 am
Look, why don’t you let D. Frisch be a guest blogger for 2 weeks or so? As a lurker, I’d really like to see what she thinks is blogworthy that is not being provided.
Kenny Easwaran 12.18.04 at 8:32 am
I didn’t realize how serious the gender ratio issue at CT was until a couple weeks ago when I realized that “Kieran” wasn’t a woman’s name. Oops.
I also think it’s funny that some people think this blog is generally economics-ish, some think it’s generally sociology-ish, and I thought it was generally philosophy-ish. I suppose that means there’s at least a good mix in terms of academic areas represented.
If the male-female ratio of posts here is 53-7, the number of female bloggers linked to on the sidebar is 268-42 (with 2 unaccounted for?), and the ratio of in-site posters is 3-13 (2-10, based on the ones I remember more than one or two posts by), then it seems like CT has a better ratio of participants but (possibly) a lower ratio of participation than average, for this reference class. Anyone have any numbers on the number of posts in December by males and females in linked-to blogs? More quantitative data can’t hurt. Even though they most likely wont help either.
Detached Observer 12.18.04 at 12:44 pm
Deb Frisch,
You were “making shit up” not because you gave an incorrect number for the total percentage of posts by women on Crooked Timber – which is the way you seem to understand the charge in your last comment – but because you gave the wrong number for December, the month you used to estimate total percentage. As you yourself put it “I counted two but there were really seven.”
You try to justify your error not as deliberate but as using a heuristic. Perhaps you are not aware of this, but miscounting is not usually considered a heuristic in applied math.
The reason this issue is important is that its pointless to have a debate when the parties are not fundamentally honest. After your repeated mischaracterizations I wonder why anyone bothers to continue debating you.
Deb Frisch 12.18.04 at 1:50 pm
Deb: I’m not sure why you are obsessively fixated on the fact that I underestimated the percentage of CT posts by women in December by 8.66667%. “
Dave: She said the percentage was 3. The percentage was actually 11 or so. So she underestimated it by 367%.
Deb: Brilliant point, Dave. I estimated p>.95 that some bloke would point this out.
If a professor gave a student an 85% on a test but the student really deserved an 86%, the student could either say:
a. you were off by 1% OR
b. you were off by .011765%
Both are acceptable. Similarly, my estimate could either be described as off by 8.667% (11.667-3) OR 367%. Both are kosher.
But thanks for the fourth grade math lesson, anyway, dude.
Another Damned Medievalist 12.18.04 at 9:21 pm
Hmmmm … dsquared, if I were a CT writer, I don’t think it would raise the tone, since I’d happily spend more time sitting around watching Sky Sports and drinking Stella. After all, I’m doing quite well in the CT fantasy football (quite well for me, that is). And I am a reasonably attractive (but not single … 10th anniversary on Monday!) female person.
But there are many of us academic female bloggers. Maybe it’s just that lots of us are pseudonymous for one reason or another. For me, it’s because I kind of like it, and because I’m on the job market. People can figure out who I am if they try hard enough, but I like the veil of the nom de plume.
Keith M Ellis 12.18.04 at 10:02 pm
Perhaps you are not aware of this, but miscounting is not usually considered a heuristic in applied math.
Hehe. Deb singlehandedly does more damage to the credibility of her cause (both regarding feminism and against economics) than her worst enemy. Astonishing. And very, very, sad.
Jon H 12.18.04 at 10:19 pm
Henry writes: “If this is right, it would seem to suggest that there’s a general problem out there. ”
It may be a fact, but why do you assume it’s a problem?
Maybe the problem is that men’s priorities are out of whack and they waste their lives posting impotent screeds to blogs instead of accomplishing something meaningful, while women don’t generally go for useless online pissing contests.
Maybe blogging is the disorder, not lack of interest in blogging.
It’s not like anyone’s being excluded from blogging due to their gender. That would be a problem. But Blogger doesn’t require a blood test before you can set up an account. There are no barriers to blogging.
Mattt Weiner 12.18.04 at 11:28 pm
For the record–not that anyone cares!–what I was thinking of was this:
I think Chun had a sort of playful malice that made his posts entertaining and also qualified him as a troll. In a good way!
dave heasman 12.19.04 at 1:10 am
Deb F
“my estimate could either be described as off by 8.667% (11.667-3) OR 367%. Both are kosher.”
“Interestingly”, they’re not. Yours is deceitful.
Say you estimate 3 oranges and the true number is 11.
Then you’re off by 8 oranges or 367%.
In your case the thing you’re estimating but off is “values expressed by percentages”. You appear to be an economist and when they act innumerate it’s invariably to confuse in their favour, so let’s try this two ways.
Firstly a comparison value expressed as a percentage should have zero dimensions. i.e 11 oranges divided by 3 oranges = 367%. The “oranges” top & bottom of the expression cancel out.
Likewise 11%/3% = 367%. The “percentages” at the top and bottom of the expression, being the units both values are expressed in, cancel out.
In the result of your subtraction there is no information, apart from the banal one that you got the numbers wrong and that favoured your position. The “8.667%” difference is equivalent to (11.667 – 3)% and also to (1 000 000 – 999 991.33)%. No difference, eh?
The other way of looking at it, and another way you attempt to mislead us, is that in the case of your quoting the difference as 8.667% is that the “%” here is the name of the units, rather than a percentage difference. There is a whole world out there trying to mislead people by blurring the distinction between the name of the thing and the thing itself, and here you’re at one with the “People’s” “Democratic” “Republic” of Korea. You can be proud.
Kevin Hayden 12.19.04 at 11:51 am
Economics-ish, sociology-ish, philosophy-ish? What, no fine-art-ish folks here to make it a perfectly useless fraternity? And who changes the lightbulbs, the illegal nanny?
This thread actually caused me to wonder about the dire shortage of women economists. And then I recalled that Echidne of the Snakes has that qualification, though she has the class not to flaunt her numbers in decent society.
Btw, what percentage of your comments come from women, counting all the repetitions? Or are they counted as 2/3rds of a person per comment?
I think I’ll refrain from touching the question asked of Mill, suggesting he had “the flavor of jsm”. My standards of humor are too low to rise to puns.
And Deb, I advise you to avoid the Kool-Aid. Every time I’ve had some, it leaves me feeling rather androgynous, akin to the feeling that befalls me during a thorough flogging of an obscure economics theory.
Finally, should the club decide to expand a bit and you take a vote to invite any elderly guys with Mick/Austrian-Jew/Brit/Dutch ancestry, a black second cousin, who’s endured the shame of white male poverty, has moments when he’s been convinced dementia has gotten the upper hand, has been known to fake an orgasm to forestall the relentless, and is in touch with his feminine snide, drop me a line. If I can recall who you are, and the pay is equal, I’d definitely consider joining, if it’s okay that I only come here for the pictures of the Page Three Bloggers.
YADO 12.19.04 at 7:52 pm
I am a sucker: I read the entirety of the comments. This is such a nonissue, it devolved rather quickly into also being unamusing. If you’re that distressed, Deb, go do something about it and start a group blog where you have yourself a 50/50 mix of posters. This isn’t some affirmative action crisis. It’s just a blog. A very good one, and funny, but in the end, it’s really just another blog with no obligation to anything at all beyond someone paying the hosting fees for it.
Comments on this entry are closed.