Organization Spotlight: Unconscious Bias Project

We all know STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields are rife with sexism. It seems like every week, there’s a new story about sexual harassment, or absurdly sexist statements about how women can’t science. And, of course, the many other forms of bias that plague us – racism, homophobia, transphobia – are prevalent in STEM fields too. (And, you know, everywhere.) Sometimes it just feels like everything is terrible and everyone is terrible to each other. But, there are also a lot of awesome people working hard to change things, in STEM and elsewhere. This week, I talked to Cat Adams, a PhD student a UC Berkeley who is fighting biases in STEM fields through The Unconscious Bias Project, which, in her words, is designed to “help people be more awesome to each other.”  You can follow her and her project on facebook and twitter. Our interview is below.

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#distractinglysexy and Drawing the Line

Last week, Tim Hunt surely earned himself a lot of love letters by claiming that women in the lab are distracting—you know, always falling in love with him (I’M SO SURE, TIM HUNT), crying, and other female shit.

(Incidentally, this sparked one of my favorite twitter hashtags of all time, #distractinglysexy, in which women in STEM documented how hard it is to hold tissues and test tubes at the same time! How conveniently a hazmat suit hides tear tracks! Etc. )

Tim Hunt’s sexist remarks were infuriating not only on their own merit (or lack thereof), but also because they make me fear that for every lumberingly blatant misogynist speech, there are a hundred Tim Hunts not voicing their misogyny—only thinking it. It was striking in the way he kept claiming he was just “being honest,” and shouldn’t have said those things in a room full of journalists, as if his real mistake was revealing the depths of misogyny in the sciences, not the misogyny itself.

This incident, and the responses to it, are yet another reminder of the way in which women who work in fields dominated by cis-hetero men (ie. most professional fields) must grapple with the policing (and self-policing) of their beauty. It’s no secret that women, whether walking into a grocery store, a first internship interview, or into their own corner office, deal with an overload of information on how to self-present—as competent, as low-key, as anything but #distractinglysexy. How much makeup can one wear in a lab? A boardroom? When does that extra swipe of eyeliner push you from “intriguing” to “overdone”? Like women’s bodies, women’s faces are a battleground where the war over modesty and “appropriateness” is waged.

Thinking about makeup and the performance of appropriate womanhood brings to mind Caitlyn Jenner looking into the mirror at her Vanity Fair cover shoot. Caitlyn Jenner marks a watershed moment in American thinking about gender presentation—as she went from Bruce Jenner, an emblem of masculinity in the Cold War Olympics, to channeling the immediately “legible” femininity of Marilyn Monroe and other screen sirens.

Photo @VanityFair / Twitter

Her revelation to the American public was, of course, not going to be complete without a ‘glam squad’ supplied by a magazine in the business of selling femininity. In the write-up above, Vanity Fair lovingly details the individual products used on Jenner, and quotes makeup artist Mark Carrasquillo in saying,  “‘I didn’t want her to look like a man in a dress. I wanted her to look like a beautiful 65-year-old woman,’ said Carrasquillo—and that is exactly what he achieved.” There is, of course, nothing wrong with Caitlyn Jenner wanting to look like what she considers her most beautiful self. But the discourse surrounding Jenner focused on a very particular image of womanhood, which uses makeup to emphasize the person’s traditional and hetero-acceptable femininity. It thus erased trans-women (and cis-women) who either can’t or don’t want to conform to this image.

From high-school hallways to corporate offices, women walk a thin line between “successfully” inhabiting a beauty standard and stepping outside of it. The margin can be as thin as the missing half-inch of fabric on shorts that get high-school girls sent home. It’s not just about wearing makeup versus going bare-faced, but the ways in which powders, creams, and pigments play back into age-old virgin/whore dichotomies. In these cases, the onus is on women to use their purchasing power to present themselves as willing and able to adapt themselves to “appropriateness.” Sometimes they lack that purchasing power. Let’s not forget that looking “right” for the context is a class-based and racial issue as well, more often than not. To take a prominent example opposed to the more demure examples of Taylor Swift and even Beyonce, Nicki Minaj’s alter ego Roman and her “Barbie” phase were both memorable for their very intentional use of makeup as message. By wielding strikingly artificial pink hair, green eyeshadow, and lacquered lipgloss, Minaj reminded us of the extent to which femininity (especially femininity that dared to be loud, deep-voiced, and not particularly “feminine”) is a performance that others will try to police. This makeup made some people uncomfortable. That, like Nicki’s monster-rap voice, was part of the point. There was nothing “natural” about it.

Photo from Mypinkfriday.com | Official Site of Nicki Minaj

This is not to erase the agency of women who use makeup or choose not to, but to prompt a more thoughtful consideration of the ways in which women are pressured toward the “right kind” of beauty construction. Makeup and the performance of beauty are complicated issues. No amount of misogyny and policing can fully erase the pleasure, for those who love it, of tracing one’s lips with a beautiful, velvety lipstick. These instances remind us that makeup and self-presentation serve purposes beyond “prettiness” as it’s traditionally defined.

And makeup can be a weapon. I wear thick black eyeliner all the way around my eyes these days. This veers just beyond the kind of eyeliner that is conventionally considered “attractive” or appropriate for daytime—except for those who see my eyeliner as an invitation to comment on my “exotic” looks. As a young Chinese-American woman alone in a new city, with a soft-spoken voice and a manner that can come across as naïve and trusting, this eyeliner is my daily ritual of preparation. At least, while others might see me as a quiet, malleable person tapping away silently at a laptop all day, I can look back at them with assassin eyes.

The author in disguise as a lemur

In the Wake of Hobby Lobby: Abortion and the Satanic Temple

If you don’t remember last summer’s terrifying Supreme Court ruling, “Hobby Lobby” (the informal name for “Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc) was the case in which the Supreme Court decided that, since corporations are basically people, “closely-held” religious organizations could deny their employees health-care coverage that extends to certain forms of birth control. Here are a few links to refresh your memory.

 Hobby Lobby Wins Contraceptive Case

 Hobby Lobby 101

What The Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for America

The Satanic Temple is suing the state of Missouri for religious freedom – specifically, for the right to have an abortion without the added burden of MO’s 72-hour waiting period. This isn’t quite a first for the Satanic Temple; in the past, they have pushed for the right to display “Satanic” holiday decorations on government property as long as Christian groups could do the same. According to their website, the principle behind both their holiday displays and the current case is calling out the hypocrisy of religious freedom, which often seems to apply to Judeo-Christian denominations above all else.

So what do abortions have to do with Satanism? First, it is important to note that the so-called Satanic Temple is not, in fact, full of devil-worshippers. The tenets of the Satanic Temple involve:

• One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
• Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
• One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

It is under this last listed tenet that the Satanic Temple is suing (although the phrase “inviolable body” appears elsewhere in their self-description). A woman identified as Mary Doe is the subject of the law suit; like many women in the many states with highly restrictive abortion laws, Mary could not afford the extra costs imposed by the mandated waiting period. Arguably, this is one of the purposes of the waiting period in the first place. The Washington Post writes:

In Missouri, women seeking an abortion at the one open abortion-providing clinic in the state have to make two trips to the clinic, 72 hours apart: The first is to receive counseling that “includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion,” the Guttmacher Institute says, and the second after the required waiting period is for the procedure.

Whatever one’s religious beliefs, waiting periods are an added difficulty; in states like Missouri, with only one abortion clinic, or Texas, with few abortion clinics spread through much of the state, women either have to find a place to stay – which often means coughing up non-existent hotel funds – or make a long drive twice. Either scenario requires taking time off work, finding childcare (61% of women seeking abortions are already mothers), or both. These factors can amount to a prohibitive financial strain on women – and if you cannot afford childcare for 72 hours, an additional child would be, at the least, extremely difficult financially. In Mary Doe’s case, according to Slate,

Mary has the money for the abortion, but she doesn’t have the estimated extra $800 that she needs to travel to the only abortion clinic in the state, in St. Louis, a trip that will require gas, hotel, and child care.

 

The Satanic Temple succeeded in raising the funds for Mary in a day, but they also went further, helping her draft a letter outlining the reasons that the 72-hr waiting period is a burden on her (and their) beliefs. The core of the letter reads:

• My body is inviolable and subject to my will alone.
• I make any decision regarding my health based on the best scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.
• My inviolable body includes any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry so long as that tissue is unable to survive outside my body as an independent human being.
• I, and I alone, decide whether my inviolable body remains pregnant and I may, in good conscience, disregard the current or future condition of any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry in making that decision.

This letter initially targeted the clinic itself, which, as Slate points out, is not a great legal strategy; “The clinic, too, is being victimized by the regulation, and they’re not the authorities standing between Mary and her abortion.” The letter’s demands were rejected, but since then, the Satanic Temple has wised up – or, perhaps, has just finally succeeded in getting the funding necessary to go for the big guns.

On May 8^th, the Satanic Temple filed a petition for injunction against Missouri governor Jay Nixon. There are a few questions here. Will the case succeed? And, more importantly, what kind of influence will the case have, whether or not it does? That is, what kind of precedent will it set?

The Washington Post interviewed University of St. Thomas law professor Thomas Berg, who believes that “the Satanic Temple’s proposal essentially relies on the same question one would ask to determine whether the 72-hour waiting period violates the earlier decisions at the Supreme Court: Does the law impose a substantial burden on the individual seeking an abortion?” Berg told the Post that “if 72 hours is a substantial burden on religious conscience, it’s also a substantial burden under the privacy decisions.”

Interestingly, when the federal Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA) was initially passed in 1993, a number of Catholic and pro-life groups worried that RFRA would be used for exactly this purpose – claiming a religious right to abortion – although they probably did not predict the involvement of the Satanic Temple.

The RFRA was drafted in response to a 1990 Supreme Court case in which some Native American men were fired from their jobs for using illegal peyote for ceremonial purposes. Democrats and Republicans alike were angered by the ruling, and, a truly bi-partisan bill came into being (once upon a time, “bipartisan” could be more than just a buzzword). But, as the conservative National Review reflects, both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee were opposed to the RFRA. Both groups worried that “that under the RFRA women could claim the right to an abortion as a matter of religious belief,” and both groups advocated for an amendment to the bill that would specifically prohibit abortion-related claims. Due to this conflict (not so bipartisan after all?), it took three years – from 1990 to 1993 – for the bill to pass, and it was the newly-elected President Clinton who signed it into law.

Since then, RFRA has been used toward more conservative and traditionally Christian ends, the Hobby Lobby ruling being perhaps the most notorious example. The RFRA is a federal law that cannot be applied to states, so many other similar cases instead fall under the First Amendment. As the RFRA was designed to give more protection for religious exemptions than the Court has said is available under the First Amendment, First Amendment cases will look different than Hobby Lobby. However, there has certainly been a trend at both the state and federal level towards an understanding of “religious freedom” as the right not only to freely practice religion, but to use one’s religious values in a discriminatory manner (see, for example, what’s been going on in Indiana).

So will the Satanic Temple’s suit hold water in court? If the Satanic Temple is regarded as an established religion by the court (which, based on its previous success in Florida, seems likely), it seems this would be a yes; given that one’s “inviolable body” appears in three of the seven central tenets of the Temple, it does seem that a 72 hour waiting period – especially a financially prohibitive one – would prove a “substantial burden.”* But the more important question here is, what kind of precedent will this set? What will it mean for reproductive rights?

If, for example, it is found that the 72-hour waiting period placed a substantial burden on Mary’s religious freedom, this would be great – for established members of the Satanic Temple. Don’t get me wrong; my first thought on hearing about this suit was “Awesome. This underlines the hypocrisy of Hobby Lobby, where the “religious freedom” of the corporation is permitted to intrude on the religious freedom of the employee. Yes!”

But if it takes proof of a substantial religious burden to gain the right to an affordable, accessible abortion, what happens to everyone else? What about atheists, or Reform Jews, whose religion has no bearing on abortions? Even more concerning, what about devout Catholics, whose religious views might prohibit abortions? Even the most ardent pro-lifers can find themselves in situations in which abortions are medically necessary, life-saving procedures, or financially responsible choices made on behalf on their already existent children (61% of women who have abortions are already mothers).

Another concern: if this suit should succeed, how will it play out in the public eye? While the ­fight-the-patriarchy radical inside me cries, “who cares?,” the rest of me acknowledges that the way the public perceives abortion is very important to its legal future. While, as noted above, The Satanic Temple is, in fact, devoted to personal freedom, personal responsibility, and scientific accuracy rather than actual Devil-worship, the name itself will evoke darker images in the public imagination, and the last thing the pro-choice movement needs is an association between a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body and devil-worship. This is not sacrificing infants to Beelzebub, and we do not need anyone to make that association.

This is a fairly unique case, but it is neither the first nor the last in a series of reproductive-rights cases to raise religious freedom issues – sometimes involving the religious liberty of the person most directly involved, and sometimes the religious liberty of some other participant , like the employer in the Hobby Lobby case. From here on out, I will document some of the more interesting, concerning, or impactful cases and pieces of legislation involving the relationship between reproductive rights and religious rights.

*Updated 05/27/15 to reflect Mary Doe’s membership in the Satanic Temple