I was in the self-help section of our local bookstore yesterday (I was actually looking for anything on anthropology, but I just drifted on) and there was a book called 'Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and reclaim Your Life'. (see Amazon for details). When I looked, however, this did not deal with females like myself whose thinking too much involves trying to work out whether it's worth reading Habermas, or what in the world (if anything) Lacan means by the Phallus, let alone whether there's any way of stopping George Bush. Instead, this book was all about women who over-analyse relationships/conversations etc. I'm the first to admit that this is a problem I sometimes suffer from, and so do some other people I know. But why is it supposedly just women? Is the idea of Men Who Think Too Much so ludicrous? If the author believes there are fundamental differences in male and female communications (as in the works of Deborah Tanner), shouldn't there be a companion volume about Men Who Don't Think Enough (or, even more to the point) Men Who Talk Too Much AND Don't Think Enough? I suppose in practice, this probably isn't really a sly bid to reinforce patriarchal control, but simply a marketing ploy. It is probably only Women Who (Possibly) Think Too Much, who can be persuaded to start worrying about whether they do think too much and thus buy the book. The lack of self-knowledge of (some) men may not only be a consolation to them, it may also come cheaper (at least in the short run).

There’s a very interesting article by Timothy Garton Ash on views of the Muslim world, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1570236,00.html which argues that deciding what the problem is says a lot about the speaker. He lists 6 possible views:

1) The problem is religion in general
2) The problem is Islam
3) The problem is Islamism
4) The problem is Arabian history
5) The problem is Western imperialism
6) The problem is the alienation of young Muslim immigrants in the West, some of whom then turn to extremism (his own view).

What I’ve been struck by recently is how acceptable the view is becoming that Islam itself is the problem, which seems to be an intellectually incoherent and often racist view. For example, Rod Liddle in the Spectator (http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=6618&issue=2005-09-17 (not free), said in a recent article (discussing a possible new symbol for the Red Cross):

The totalitarian flavour of Islam — the unshakeable belief in its own rectitude and a terrible paranoia directed towards serried ranks of enemies, real and imagined — makes the thought of firing on an ambulance carrying wounded infidel soldiers at least permissible and quite possibly, according to Islam’s more rigorous disciples, a beholden duty. And this is where I believe our Prime Minister has got it the wrong way around: it is the core ideology of Islam that is the problem, not a handful of incendiary preachers.

When Islam appears on the agenda, the goalposts are moved: the normal rational thought processes are not applied. Suddenly those Left-liberal shibboleths are not very important: they can be forgotten. Append the description ‘Muslim’ to anyone and all bets are off; he or she can get away with pretty much anything, be it the execution of homosexuals or the idea that Jews and Freemasons are running the government. This springs from the misconception, widespread on the Left, that being anti-Islam is in some way ‘racist’. It is not. It has nothing to do with race — as I daresay Mr Ahmad Thomson, that lawyer I mentioned earlier, would confirm. One is not born believing that the world is a Zionist conspiracy any more than one is born believing that we are all the subjects of giant alien lizards.

Just suppose that Rod Liddle had said ‘the core ideology of Judaism is the problem’ (given that the Old Testament also supports capital punishment of homosexuality, as well as a far more brutal treatment of enemies than the Koran does). Would he have got away with saying this wasn’t racist? Of course not. He would have been kicked off his column and become a pariah. But it is now acceptable to argue that 1 billion of the world’s population have the wrong core values. (What Rod Liddell and those like him always leave fuzzy is what Western government’s should do; they don’t have the courage of their intellectual convictions, which surely call for the conversion of all Muslims to ‘Western’ values).

My own view on the problem has shifted a bit over time. My view of Islam has been much coloured by being an early medievalist. If you look at Islam as an early medieval religion, it doesn’t look out of line. It is warlike, but probably slightly less so than Christianity at the period. Throughout the Middle Ages it had a better record on its treatment of religious minorities (particularly Jews) than Christianity. It also, arguably, had no worse treatment of women overall (women had property rights in Islamic law that some Western jurisdictions have only enacted very recently). Even today, I would say that as a religion, Islam is no more intrinsically intolerant than Orthodox Judaism or some forms of Christianity. [The difference is that there is no state that is governed by Mosiac or canon law, unlike Sharia].

So I am unhappy with saying that Islam is inherently problematic (rather than some cultural interpretations of Islam, e.g. on wearing the burkha). I think there are aspects of Islam that need to change, but denigrating the whole religion isn’t the right way forward. I have therefore wavered between seeing Islamism as the problem, and Western imperialism. Increasingly I am coming to see the combination of these two as key (which I think is what Ash is getting at in 6). Al-Qaida extremists cannot be negotiated with, and can only be dealt with via military/police actions. Simply getting out of Iraq is not enough (though it would be a good first step). However, it is disingenuous to say (as some people like Thomas L Friedman are doing that 'If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution’ (not free). Western leaders have made an awful lot of decisions that alienate Muslims. As well as international decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq, the toleration of Israeli occupation (and going further back, British and US support for the Shah of Iran and toppling of Mohammed Mossadegh), there has been little attempt to deal with the social disadvantages of Muslim immigrants, and hostility towards them has often been tolerated. Reaching out to alienated Western Muslims won’t stop all the fanatics, but it could greatly reduce the pool of those who are attracted to such appalling ideologies. But instead, for all Donald Rumsfeld talked of ‘draining the swamp’ that terrorists live in, (see http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/18/ret.defense.rumsfeld/), the US government has done their best to create new, bigger swamps.

It’s a challenge for a Christian like myself to come to a country which is publicly far more Christian than the UK (or most Western European countries) and yet which often seem to hold values that seem so un-Christian to me. As I said in a previous post, one solution is just to say that many Americans have got the wrong idea of Christianity and leave it at that. It’s easy to condemn some of the more blatant arguments of the Christian right. If New Orleans was hit by floods as an act of God for its sinful gambling, how come Las Vegas has been spared? (Perhaps because it’s in a desert?). Do those who condemn homosexuality on the basis of Leviticus also argue that a rape victim should have to marry her attacker? (See Deuteronomy 22: 28-29).

But I’m starting to wonder whether this is too easy an answer. Can you just separate out the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of Christianity so easily? In particular, how many of those who dedicate their lives to helping those in need also hold some very reactionary views? There have been many (often justified) criticisms of Mother Teresa, but where are the secular or liberal Christian Mother Teresas? There are some, but I’m not sure that there are that many. Roy Hattersley (an atheist, but not anti-Christian,) was saying the same thing a few days ago(see http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1567604,00.html) .Do you need a certain black-and-whiteness in your beliefs to commit yourself to this extent? I’m not sure of my answer at the moment.

Being in the USA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has given a curious view about the American response to poverty and the needy. The charity and helpfulness of local groups is impressive. At the Duke Chapel on Sunday, members of the congregation were bringing offerings of toiletries and many other things. We got given packs to take up with us, which was mildly embarrassing when it wasn’t stuff we had brought, but we did at least donate money. The local newspaper has a page full of details of how you can help in the aftermath, and there are numerous stories every day about those who are helping, sometimes in very substantial ways.

And yet... The same paper carries a syndicated column from the Washington Post (by George F. Will). (The full column is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201260.html.) This includes the following:

He [Senator Barack Obama, a rising Black democrat] might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.

Liberalism's post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious -- if an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately minorities -- stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the victims were women with children but not husbands.

The rescuer workers are still digging corpses out of New Orleans, but that doesn’t stop right-wingers blaming the victims. (Whereas the very suggestion made after Sep 11th 2001 that US foreign policy might have contributed to the attacks was a vile insult to those affected).

The right-wing lies about poverty are immediately obvious. This is from an article on homelessness in North Carolina (http://www.newsobserver.com/print/thursday/city_state/story/2795615p-9236374c.html):

Billie Guthrie, a housing coordinator for the OPC Area Program, said there are many root causes of homelessness, including domestic violence, sexual abuse and poor access to mental health care....James Newkirk, a homeless man, said it will take people caring for and encouraging one another to make a difference. He said a car crash put him in a hospital for 11 months where he had to relearn to walk and talk. Without a car, he lost his job as a manager at a Target store in Durham, which stays open later than the buses run.

A column in the business section meanwhile says that the costs of health insurance are spiraling upwards and fewer companies are offering health benefits to their employees (down to around 60%). Family medical insurance coverage now costs an average of $10,880, more than the gross earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker. Employees typically contribute about $3713 of this. In other words, if you’re on a minimum wage and you’re one of the 40% who don’t get covered, you could spend all your income and more just to get health cover (never mind silly little things like food and rent). And no amount of tax cuts is going to change that (the reference is to gross income, not net income).

Why isn’t the US public, which obviously includes a lot of individuals who care about poor people, concerned about a system which leaves so many people vulnerable to poverty? I wish I knew...

I once went to one of David Starkey’s lectures in which he claimed that the Church of England was developed not to worship God but England, and compared it to Japanese Shinto. I don’t think that’s now the case, and I’m not well up enough on Reformation history to be sure how valid the point was then, but after a few days in the US for the first time, I am coming to think that what the USA worships is more a religion of America than Christianity.
The idea that the US isn’t ‘really’ Christian, despite the vast majority of its population saying that they are, is explored in an interesting article by Bill McKibben (Extract at The Christian Paradox ). Before talking about America-worship, I’d better say that I am not anti-American (I’m having a great time staying in North Carolina with my American relatives) and that I’m not necessarily opposed to patriotism. (The best quote on patriotism I know is an American one: ‘My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right!’ (said by Carl Schurz in 1872, about whom I otherwise know nothing). What I am struck by, coming from England (and having also visited Canada) is the many, often minor ways, in which America and its symbols are routinely celebrated and even fetishised in ways that seem bizarre if not ridiculous. For example:

The Raleigh News and Observer was today reporting local schools’ involvement in the ‘National Anthem Project’ (http://www.nationalanthemproject.com). This is a 'campaign to get America singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while spotlighting the important role music education plays in giving Americans our patriotic voice.' You could also buy a CD which ‘includes 15 stirring musical selections that build pride while enhancing the knowledge of America's special place in history.’ At the college football game we went to, the National Anthem was played and sung before the match: this would normally be done only before an international football match in the UK.

A few days before, the paper had published the first part of a nine-part guide for children to the American Constitution. I can imagine a UK newspaper printing an educational guide to the House of Parliament (the most tangible bit of an otherwise unwritten constitution), but not that much.

All this does show more of an interest in the nation’s history than the UK still has. The problem is when such ideas move onto a more fundamentalist level. An article in the Raleigh News and Observer, arguing for more use of biofuels, recommends the use of E10 fuel so that consumers can ‘know that at least 10 percent of the money is helping to ensure the future of a Midwest farmer, not a Middle Eastern sheik’. Maybe patriotism can help combat global warming, but it seems an odd conjunction in an otherwise largely popular science article. There’s the same economic fundamentalism: I’ve seen several articles in the US papers saying how much better high fuel prices after Hurricane Katrina are than any attempts to ration fuel (which haven’t even been suggested). This completely ignores the fact that higher prices disproportionately affect the poor (as some letters pointed out).

At a local bookstore I started to see the paranoid, if not deranged side of such US-worship. Someone felt the need to publish the ‘Anti-Chomsky reader’, so dangerous was one (I suspect not that well-known) American leftist. (I am still trying to think of who in Britain might possibly consider it worth writing the Anti-Pilger reader, or the Anti-Pinter reader or the Anti-Tariq-Ali reader). Is it worth it? And then I got to Kenneth R. Timmerman, The French Betrayal of America. What?! This is apparently a complaint about French opposition to the Iraq war. But even if you deplore the French position in what sense is it a betrayal? And there are several more books on Amazon.com about French ‘betrayal’ of the USA. These are all presumably be authors who would deplore any restriction on US self-interest dictating policy: what’s wrong with French self-interest?

I’d better stop now before this post gets too long, or may be seen as too anti-American. Again, I’m against some current policies of the USA and some of its cultural beliefs, but I am not anti-American and I know many Americans are also speaking out on the things I’m discussing. If I feel depressed about the USA, it’s because I would like it (as the most powerful nation of the world) to be a beacon for the rights: equality, respect for human rights, democracy, Christianity, that it claims so loudly.

I’ve been glancing through Mary Roth Walsh (ed), Women, men and gender: ongoing debates (New Haven 1997) and came across discussions of differences between the sexes on mathematical ability. (This interests me because I studied maths before I became a historian, and was good enough to get a first-class degree in it). Looking at the data, the argument doesn’t seem to be about average abilities, where there is little, if any sex-related difference, but about the extremes. Specifically, some scientists are claiming that men’s intellectual performance (both on mathematics and other intellectual measures) is more variable than women’s, so that there are more extremely clever men and more extremely stupid men, while women’s abilities bunch more. (This has also been suggested by several other studies/commentators(see e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1556640,00.html). I’ve heard of this theory before, but for the first time I came across it being designated as the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis. I haven’t investigated the topic sufficiently (and I’m not sure I will), to know how much the evidence stands up for this view. (When I started Googling the term, one of the first things I found was a cross-cultural study that claimed that US findings on this weren’t common to all cultures)
I do have two immediate thoughts from a gender studies perspective, however. One is that if there was a Greater Female Variability Hypothesis, it’d surely have got extended onto claims about women’s emotional variability, inconstancy etc. The other is why claims about variability only emerge during discussions about why there are so few women scientists (e.g. Lawrence Summers speaking at Harvard). Why do the scientists not speak out whenever there is one of the frequent panics about boys’ academic achievement? Or are they not prepared to acknowledge the alternative side of their hypothesis: that is ‘natural’ that boys will disproportionately be at the bottom end of the academic scale, and (as a presumable corollary), we shouldn’t do anything to alter this inevitable state of affairs.

Another collision of the Magistra and the Mater this morning: surfing the net to see if anyone's got a useful summary of Jacques Lacan's theories while finding myself with the song 'Let's all do the Wiggley-Woo' running through my head. If there's a connection there I don't think I want to know it.

I've just put in a proposal for a research fellowship, saying I want to study the moral meaning of bodies in the Carolingian period. There's a lot of interesting stuff I could look at and try to draw together: moral meanings of illnesses, descriptions of bodies, contrasts of fasting and feasting etc. But I do worry I would have to read an excessive amount of theoretical stuff, because so much of the work of later medievalists on the body comes from a literary studies perspective and is saturated in such material. Foucault is fine, Judith Butler I can just about cope with, but I'm not sure whether I can face Lacan. Apparently, you have to read Freud before trying to start Lacan, but how do you read Freud now? He doesn't give an accurate description of how minds work; as far as I know he's been pretty much discredited as a scientist. The websites that discuss Freud seem to be based in English/Cultural Studies departments now, not psychology. Is Freud just a purveyor of interesting metaphors or is there anything more?

It's irritating because there are fascinating things to examine about the body and culture, but much modern theory seems to be so opaque and text-bound it gets in the way. There's nothing like being pregnant and giving birth to make you feel that biological sex is more than just a social and cultural construction. And raising L has given me a far greater sense of the materiality of bodies, both wonderful (I was admiring the line of her shoulder blades the other day) and disgusting (when she poos on the carpet). But even the theorists whose interest is in the ooziness, slipperiness of bodies often don't seem to be able to convey their ideas in a way that enables shared experience, recognition. I found this in a review by Mahmut Mutman of Vicki Kirby, Telling flesh: the substance of the corporeal, apparently very significant for feminist theory:

What Kirby aptly calls "the subject of humanness" is the blindspot in postmodern cultural criticism: "it is entirely unclear how this subject of humanness recognizes itself as a unified subject of humanity, individuates itself within species-being and identifies itself as possessing sufficient stability to ground the destabilization of grounds" (151). Within the framework of the unified subject of humanity, language belongs to Man, is mediation by and for Man. Against this age-old metaphysics, Kirby proposes a corporeography in which "the body is more than a visitor to the scene of writing... it is the drama of its own remarkability" (154). By a powerful critical articulation of Gayatri Spivak's reading of Marx's "body with no possible outlines," she argues that the infinity of the body's limits and borders are at the same time internal to the spacing of its tissue. With this concept of body, which Kirby derives from a highly original reading of Derrida, the essence is no longer an identity, a seamless unity of its manifold manifestations, nor is it simply lacking, happily replaced by a "plurality" which always remains within the unity of humanity. The essence is now a complex, open-ended, and mutable writing--and it is essence that is writing.

It's after reading that kind of thing that I think 'to hell with theory, let's get back to ninth-century texts'. I suppose my question is really - is there something useful out there in Theoryland or is just (back to bodies again) The Emperor's New Clothes?

As a follow-up to my comments on male roles, here are links to a few interesting articles. One is by a historian called Stephanie Coontz who’s just written a history of ‘modern’ marriage (from late C18): http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i35/35b00701.htm
The second is a discussion of a new book on the ‘future of men’, which seems to be taking a more useful approach than just saying we need to turn the clock back again: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-7-1737856-7,00.html
Finally, a fairly depressing article about divorce (but which shows incidentally, how difficult it would be to turn the clock back, given attitudes have changed): http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:123410

I think high rates of divorce are one of the downsides of the social changes since the 1960s to marriages/families, which are positive overall, in my view. I think I may keep this article to hand as an awful warning for the times (relatively few during 15 years of marriage) when I’ve thought I might be better off out of the relationship.

I got asked by a reader of this blog (Casa about how masculinity and male roles related to each other. I think of masculinity primarily as being a set of ideas/ ideology/discourse that says what men ought to be like and how they ought to behave. In that sense, it covers a lot more territory than simply male roles, including such areas as appearance (e.g. ‘long hair is effeminate’), consumption patterns (‘real men don’t eat quiche’) and emotion (‘real men don’t cry’).

What historians of masculinity, like myself, are interested in is how these ideas of masculinity change over time and are culture-specific. We’re also interested in how different ideas of masculinity interact in particular societies (there’s never just one idea of what men should be like, although there may often be a dominant idea) and how these ideas are masculinity are used politically/polemically: to demonstrate that one idea of masculinity (and femininity) is the right one and that men who don’t conform to it are inferior/woman-like.

The current Anglo-American right wing commentators on male roles, in contrast, normally seem to be arguing that there is one eternally correct form of masculinity/femininity (which normally seems to be located in the 1950s middle-class West), that any changes in this lead to problems/chaos and that the superiority of this model is shown by the fact that it is ‘natural’ or confirmed by ‘science’. Just a couple of examples of why this is complete rubbish. For example, it sometimes gets stated that men have to be the breadwinners in order to be fulfilled/marriages to be stable etc. Here is an extract from that unlikely subversive source, the Old Testament:

10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price [is] far above rubies.
11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
14 She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
18 She perceiveth that her merchandise [is] good: her candle goeth not out by night.
19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household [are] clothed with scarlet.
22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing [is] silk and purple.
23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.
24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth [it]; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
25 Strength and honour [are] her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue [is] the law of kindness.
27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband [also], and he praiseth her.
29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
30 Favour [is] deceitful, and beauty [is] vain: [but] a woman [that] feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
31 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

(Proverbs 31:10-31, the King James Version (which is handily available on the net)).

Here, male identity (and superiority) is based not on economic activity, but scholarship; an ideal that I believe is still potent on Orthodox Judaism. (Incidentally, this kind of female behaviour would have been strongly disapproved of in a society almost contemporary to it: classical Greece, where women were very much confined to the purely domestic sphere and it would have been the husband’s role to deal with agricultural purchases etc).

As for the idea that ‘science’ supports the 1950s model, there are studies in the history of science showing the extent to which prevailing social/cultural influences heavily influence what is scientifically believed about sexual difference. As one basic example, for about 2000 years (from Classical Greece to 17th/18th century, it was ‘known’ (scientifically and theologically) that women’s sexual desire/lust was stronger than that of men. Then there was suddenly a complete reversal to the belief that women ‘naturally’ didn’t have strong (or any) sexual feelings. One interesting book on such changes in scientific belief/knowledge is Thomas Laqueur, Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990).