Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Occupiers - Arundhati Roy's Speech
We are all Occupiers
People the world over salute the Occupy movement for standing up to injustice and fighting for equality at the heart of empire
Arundhati Roy speaking at the People's University in Washington Square Park, New York, held at Judson Memorial Church, 16 November 2011. Video: NYU4OWS/YouTube
Tuesday morning, the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We're not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.
What you have achieved since 17 September, when the Occupy movement began in the United States, is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerised into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfilment.
As a writer, let me tell you, this is an immense achievement. I cannot thank you enough.
We were talking about justice. Today, as we speak, the army of the United States is waging a war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. US drones are killing civilians in Pakistan and beyond. Tens of thousands of US troops and death squads are moving into Africa. If spending trillions of dollars of your money to administer occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not enough, a war against Iran is being talked up.
Ever since the Great Depression, the manufacture of weapons and the export of war have been key ways in which the United States has stimulated its economy. Just recently, under President Obama, the United States made a $60bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It hopes to sell thousands of bunker busters to the UAE. It has sold $5bn-worth of military aircraft to my country, India, which has more poor people than all the poorest countries of Africa put together. All these wars, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, have claimed millions of lives – all of them fought to secure the "American way of life".
Today, we know that the "American way of life" – the model that the rest of the world is meant to aspire towards – has resulted in 400 people owning the wealth of half of the population of the United States. It has meant thousands of people being turned out of their homes and jobs while the US government bailed out banks and corporations – American International Group (AIG) alone was given $182bn.
The Indian government worships US economic policy. As a result of 20 years of the free market economy, today, 100 of India's richest people own assets worth one-fourth of the country's GDP while more than 80% of the people live on less than 50 cents a day; 250,000 farmers, driven into a spiral of death, have committed suicide. We call this progress, and now think of ourselves as a superpower. Like you, we are well-qualified: we have nuclear bombs and obscene inequality.
The good news is that people have had enough and are not going to take it any more. The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don't know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.
They (the 1%) say that we don't have demands … they don't know, perhaps, that our anger alone would be enough to destroy them. But here are some things – a few "pre-revolutionary" thoughts I had – for us to think about together:
We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As "cap-ists" and "lid-ites", we demand:
• An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example, weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health funds.
• Natural resources and essential infrastructure – water supply, electricity, health, and education – cannot be privatised.
• Everybody must have the right to shelter, education and healthcare.
• The children of the rich cannot inherit their parents' wealth.
This struggle has re-awakened our imagination. Somewhere along the way, capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights", and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.
As a cap-ist and a lid-ite, I salute your struggle.
Salaam and Zindabad.
• This is the text of a speech given by the author at the People's University in Washington Square on 16 November 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/17/we-are-all-occupiers-arundhati-roy
People the world over salute the Occupy movement for standing up to injustice and fighting for equality at the heart of empire
Arundhati Roy speaking at the People's University in Washington Square Park, New York, held at Judson Memorial Church, 16 November 2011. Video: NYU4OWS/YouTube
Tuesday morning, the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We're not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.
What you have achieved since 17 September, when the Occupy movement began in the United States, is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerised into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfilment.
As a writer, let me tell you, this is an immense achievement. I cannot thank you enough.
We were talking about justice. Today, as we speak, the army of the United States is waging a war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. US drones are killing civilians in Pakistan and beyond. Tens of thousands of US troops and death squads are moving into Africa. If spending trillions of dollars of your money to administer occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not enough, a war against Iran is being talked up.
Ever since the Great Depression, the manufacture of weapons and the export of war have been key ways in which the United States has stimulated its economy. Just recently, under President Obama, the United States made a $60bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It hopes to sell thousands of bunker busters to the UAE. It has sold $5bn-worth of military aircraft to my country, India, which has more poor people than all the poorest countries of Africa put together. All these wars, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, have claimed millions of lives – all of them fought to secure the "American way of life".
Today, we know that the "American way of life" – the model that the rest of the world is meant to aspire towards – has resulted in 400 people owning the wealth of half of the population of the United States. It has meant thousands of people being turned out of their homes and jobs while the US government bailed out banks and corporations – American International Group (AIG) alone was given $182bn.
The Indian government worships US economic policy. As a result of 20 years of the free market economy, today, 100 of India's richest people own assets worth one-fourth of the country's GDP while more than 80% of the people live on less than 50 cents a day; 250,000 farmers, driven into a spiral of death, have committed suicide. We call this progress, and now think of ourselves as a superpower. Like you, we are well-qualified: we have nuclear bombs and obscene inequality.
The good news is that people have had enough and are not going to take it any more. The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don't know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.
They (the 1%) say that we don't have demands … they don't know, perhaps, that our anger alone would be enough to destroy them. But here are some things – a few "pre-revolutionary" thoughts I had – for us to think about together:
We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As "cap-ists" and "lid-ites", we demand:
• An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example, weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health funds.
• Natural resources and essential infrastructure – water supply, electricity, health, and education – cannot be privatised.
• Everybody must have the right to shelter, education and healthcare.
• The children of the rich cannot inherit their parents' wealth.
This struggle has re-awakened our imagination. Somewhere along the way, capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights", and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.
As a cap-ist and a lid-ite, I salute your struggle.
Salaam and Zindabad.
• This is the text of a speech given by the author at the People's University in Washington Square on 16 November 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/17/we-are-all-occupiers-arundhati-roy
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Steve Job's Biography -
Why You Shouldn't Read The Steve Jobs Biography
By Kim Bhasin
Business Insider – 21 hours ago
Businesspeople and consumers alike look up to Steve Jobs as perhaps the greatest CEO of his generation. He undoubtedly made a profound impact on this world.
But business executives shouldn't read his biography. You can't be like him, and you shouldn't be like him. And when you read it, you won't be able to resist trying.
You can't be like him because he was a genius.
Many of the business lessons in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs can't be applied anywhere else. Jobs had a management style unique to himself, and it was deeply connected to his company and industry at the time. What he did at Apple only worked because of his own inexplicable, and extraordinary, abilities.
Any executive is capable of doing the things that folks claim are from the "Steve Jobs School of Management," but these aren't the things that defined his success. For instance, he was decisive, intensely detail-focused and valued design above all. But what counts is that he made the right decisions, focused on the right details and helped design things that were truly beautiful.
It's that unidentifiable bit that gets us. How did he get all those things so right? Well, there's one word that always appears in discussions about Jobs' abilities: "uncanny." His uncanny ability to know exactly what people wanted, even before they wanted it. His uncanny ability to think outside the box. His uncanny ability to seduce people with his ideas. His uncanny ability to foresee innovation. The things he did made us uncomfortable, and we could never pin down exactly what he was doing.
That set of abilities, his most mysterious features, are what made him great at business. He was an aberration (or outlier, in Gladwell-speak). And that, you can't copy. All the other big business names that we put in the same category as Jobs were completely different from him, because each of these strange folk set themselves apart in a different way.
It's much easier to define minds like former GE CEO Jack Welch, who succeeded because of his set of management principles. Louis Gerstner turned IBM around by facilitating change. Both of them wrote books outlining all the decisions they made, how they made them and why. Jobs, on the other hand, thrived off his taste -- what he did in his lifetime with Apple simply worked.
Take the Apple brand for example. Marketers preach transparency and authenticity, and keeping a running commentary with their customers so that everyone can feel like they're part of a brand's story. Apple is shuttered and elitist, yet, its fans around the world are as adamant as any. It's an outlier, and it just works.
You shouldn't be like him because he was an asshole, and that wasn't what made him successful.
Nearly everything he did in the workplace defied the pillars of modern management theory. Managers are supposed to be good listeners. Managers are supposed to empower employees and not micromanage. Managers are supposed to coach workers. Managers are supposed to take real interest in the success of their subordinates. He did none of this, and he was an asshole throughout it all.
Which begs the question: was Jobs' success because of his jerkiness, or in spite of it? After all, he did get booted from Apple in the first place largely because of that. Tom McNichol recently dove into the topic in a stellar article in The Atlantic. He concluded, "Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs."
And McNichol is right. Jobs was a strange sort of genius, and that's something none of us never be able to replicate. We praise his ability to get things done purely through force of will. That's impossible. Even the most indomitable spirit could keep failing, even if that spirit never breaks. He had that something extra, but meanwhile, he pushed people away. Jobs was so concentrated on his vision that he was an asshole to the people around him, and it drove them nuts. Yes, it worked, but only because of the value of the ideas in Jobs' head.
There are things you can learn from the life of Steve Jobs (many are things not to do), but these are lessons to take with you when you're thinking about how to better your life, not how to make decisions in the board room. He showed us how to be passionate, honest and believe in the power of knowledge, but he didn't give us a template for running a business.
And if you read his biography, you won't be able to resist trying to be like him.
It's hard for us to separate the business from the person in Jobs' case because he was so spectacularly successful. Apple's brand has accomplished what most marketers not dare dream of -- a fully devoted, and massive, cult following. Apple's design has become world-renowned. Strategically, Apple fought the tech behemoths of old, survived and came out the other side, more powerful than ever.
Still, we press on, and try to glean everything we can from Jobs' life. We have that need because we're terrified. We're afraid that we'll never see a mind like his again, just as we were with other visionaries like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. We want to comb through their lives for every morsel of knowledge that they could have possibly left behind for us.
That feeling has been amplified with Jobs. We felt closer to him than people at the time did to Ford or Edison. When Jobs spoke, he did with charisma and conviction, and we witnessed it firsthand because TV and the web are so prominent now. We connected with him personally, because he stood side-by-side with the Apple brand, which is an incredible force on its own.
If the temptation is too much, try your best to read Isaacson's book as a narrative that's taking you through the life of one of our age's most influential people. Read it on a personal level, where you can find a personal connection with a man that created one of the most personal brands ever. Instead of trying to be like him, try to accomplish something equal to what he did during his lifetime. To, as Jobs said, put "a ding in the universe." And that can't be done through any amount of lessons. That comes from a person's individual drive, which can only be found through introspection.
But whatever you do, don't ever try to be Steve Jobs. That's a venture doomed to failure.
By Kim Bhasin
Business Insider – 21 hours ago
Businesspeople and consumers alike look up to Steve Jobs as perhaps the greatest CEO of his generation. He undoubtedly made a profound impact on this world.
But business executives shouldn't read his biography. You can't be like him, and you shouldn't be like him. And when you read it, you won't be able to resist trying.
You can't be like him because he was a genius.
Many of the business lessons in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs can't be applied anywhere else. Jobs had a management style unique to himself, and it was deeply connected to his company and industry at the time. What he did at Apple only worked because of his own inexplicable, and extraordinary, abilities.
Any executive is capable of doing the things that folks claim are from the "Steve Jobs School of Management," but these aren't the things that defined his success. For instance, he was decisive, intensely detail-focused and valued design above all. But what counts is that he made the right decisions, focused on the right details and helped design things that were truly beautiful.
It's that unidentifiable bit that gets us. How did he get all those things so right? Well, there's one word that always appears in discussions about Jobs' abilities: "uncanny." His uncanny ability to know exactly what people wanted, even before they wanted it. His uncanny ability to think outside the box. His uncanny ability to seduce people with his ideas. His uncanny ability to foresee innovation. The things he did made us uncomfortable, and we could never pin down exactly what he was doing.
That set of abilities, his most mysterious features, are what made him great at business. He was an aberration (or outlier, in Gladwell-speak). And that, you can't copy. All the other big business names that we put in the same category as Jobs were completely different from him, because each of these strange folk set themselves apart in a different way.
It's much easier to define minds like former GE CEO Jack Welch, who succeeded because of his set of management principles. Louis Gerstner turned IBM around by facilitating change. Both of them wrote books outlining all the decisions they made, how they made them and why. Jobs, on the other hand, thrived off his taste -- what he did in his lifetime with Apple simply worked.
Take the Apple brand for example. Marketers preach transparency and authenticity, and keeping a running commentary with their customers so that everyone can feel like they're part of a brand's story. Apple is shuttered and elitist, yet, its fans around the world are as adamant as any. It's an outlier, and it just works.
You shouldn't be like him because he was an asshole, and that wasn't what made him successful.
Nearly everything he did in the workplace defied the pillars of modern management theory. Managers are supposed to be good listeners. Managers are supposed to empower employees and not micromanage. Managers are supposed to coach workers. Managers are supposed to take real interest in the success of their subordinates. He did none of this, and he was an asshole throughout it all.
Which begs the question: was Jobs' success because of his jerkiness, or in spite of it? After all, he did get booted from Apple in the first place largely because of that. Tom McNichol recently dove into the topic in a stellar article in The Atlantic. He concluded, "Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs."
And McNichol is right. Jobs was a strange sort of genius, and that's something none of us never be able to replicate. We praise his ability to get things done purely through force of will. That's impossible. Even the most indomitable spirit could keep failing, even if that spirit never breaks. He had that something extra, but meanwhile, he pushed people away. Jobs was so concentrated on his vision that he was an asshole to the people around him, and it drove them nuts. Yes, it worked, but only because of the value of the ideas in Jobs' head.
There are things you can learn from the life of Steve Jobs (many are things not to do), but these are lessons to take with you when you're thinking about how to better your life, not how to make decisions in the board room. He showed us how to be passionate, honest and believe in the power of knowledge, but he didn't give us a template for running a business.
And if you read his biography, you won't be able to resist trying to be like him.
It's hard for us to separate the business from the person in Jobs' case because he was so spectacularly successful. Apple's brand has accomplished what most marketers not dare dream of -- a fully devoted, and massive, cult following. Apple's design has become world-renowned. Strategically, Apple fought the tech behemoths of old, survived and came out the other side, more powerful than ever.
Still, we press on, and try to glean everything we can from Jobs' life. We have that need because we're terrified. We're afraid that we'll never see a mind like his again, just as we were with other visionaries like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. We want to comb through their lives for every morsel of knowledge that they could have possibly left behind for us.
That feeling has been amplified with Jobs. We felt closer to him than people at the time did to Ford or Edison. When Jobs spoke, he did with charisma and conviction, and we witnessed it firsthand because TV and the web are so prominent now. We connected with him personally, because he stood side-by-side with the Apple brand, which is an incredible force on its own.
If the temptation is too much, try your best to read Isaacson's book as a narrative that's taking you through the life of one of our age's most influential people. Read it on a personal level, where you can find a personal connection with a man that created one of the most personal brands ever. Instead of trying to be like him, try to accomplish something equal to what he did during his lifetime. To, as Jobs said, put "a ding in the universe." And that can't be done through any amount of lessons. That comes from a person's individual drive, which can only be found through introspection.
But whatever you do, don't ever try to be Steve Jobs. That's a venture doomed to failure.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Terrorists Plots Foiled
How the FBI's Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots "Foiled" in the US Since 9/11
The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?
October 9, 2011
: On September 28, Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-old graduate of Northeastern University, was arrested and charged with providing resources to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to destroy national defense premises. Ferdaus, according to the FBI, planned to blow up both the Pentagon and Capitol Building with a "large remote controlled aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives."
The case was part of a nearly ten-month investigation led by the FBI. Not surprisingly, Ferdaus' case fits a pattern detailed by Trevor Aaronson in his article below: the FBI provided Ferdaus with the explosives and materials needed to pull off the plot. In this case, two undercover FBI employees, who Ferdaus believed were al Qaeda members, gave Ferdaus $7,500 to purchase an F-86 Sabre model airplane that Ferdaus hoped to fill with explosives. Right before his arrest, the FBI employees gave Ferdaus, who lived at home with his parents, the explosives he requested to pull off his attack. And just how did the FBI come to meet Ferdaus? An informant with a criminal record introduced Ferdaus to the supposed al Qaeda members.
To learn more about how the FBI uses informants to bust, and sometimes lead, terrorist plots, read Aaronson's article below.
James Cromitie [8] was a man of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi," he once said [9].
A 45-year-old Walmart stocker who'd adopted the name Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam during a prison stint for selling cocaine, Cromitie had lots of worries—convincing his wife he wasn't sleeping around, keeping up with the rent, finding a decent job despite his felony record. But he dreamed of making his mark. He confided as much in a middle-aged Pakistani he knew as Maqsood.
"I'm gonna run into something real big [10]," he'd say. "I just feel it, I'm telling you.feel it."
Maqsood and Cromitie had met at a mosque in Newburgh, a struggling former Air Force town about an hour north of New York City. They struck up a friendship, talking for hours about the world's problems and how the Jews were to blame.
It was all talk until November 2008, when Maqsood pressed his new friend.
"Do you think you are a better recruiter or a better action man?" Maqsood asked [11]."I'm both," Cromitie bragged.
"My people would be very happy to know that, brother. Honestly."
"Who's your people?" Cromitie asked.
"Jaish-e-Mohammad."
Maqsood said he was an agent for the Pakistani terror group, tasked with assembling a team to wage jihad in the United States. He asked Cromitie what he would attack if he had the means. A bridge, Cromitie said.
"But bridges are too hard to be hit," Maqsood pleaded, "because they're made of steel."
"Of course they're made of steel," Cromitie replied. "But the same way they can be put up, they can be brought down."
Maqsood coaxed Cromitie toward a more realistic plan. The Mumbai attacks were all over the news, and he pointed out how those gunmen targeted hotels, cafés, and a Jewish community center.
"With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone," Cromitie told his friend. "But not me, because I'm intelligent." The pair settled on a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, and then fire Stinger missiles at airplanes taking off from Stewart International Airport in the southern Hudson Valley. Maqsood would provide all the explosives and weapons, even the vehicles. "We have two missiles, okay?" he offered [12]. "Two Stingers, rocket missiles."
Maqsood was an undercover operative; that much was true. But not for Jaish
... read more
http://www.alternet.org/story/152670/how_the_fbi%27s_network_of_informants_actually_created_most_of_the_terrorist_plots_%22foiled%22_in_the_us_since_9_11?akid=7702.35630.frnArS&rd=1&t=2
Monday, October 10, 2011
Secrets of being happy revealed
According to research:
Despite the fact that users of these disparate social media cannot agree on which day of the week makes them happy or glum, there are some commonalities: holidays and birthdays make people feel happy, and deaths of celebrities make them feel sad.
What can we advise the average person to do to be happier? Go out with your Facebook-using friends, but not every day, and stay away from honey badgers.
Read the whole story for yourself - you will find it very interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/are-bees-sad-on-wednesday.html
Despite the fact that users of these disparate social media cannot agree on which day of the week makes them happy or glum, there are some commonalities: holidays and birthdays make people feel happy, and deaths of celebrities make them feel sad.
What can we advise the average person to do to be happier? Go out with your Facebook-using friends, but not every day, and stay away from honey badgers.
Read the whole story for yourself - you will find it very interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/are-bees-sad-on-wednesday.html
Friday, October 7, 2011
The science behind Women's Orgasm - ummmh!
Salon / By Tracy Clark-Flory - What's the Scientific Reason Women Have Orgasms?
A popular theory has been criticized as male-centric, but it might have unexpected feminist results.
October 6, 2011
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Start an Online Petition � Decades of research have failed to answer the question of why the female orgasm exists — and two recent conflicting studies on the subject have hardly changed that. Interestingly enough, though, both focus on a theory sure to anger some women: that their ability to climax is the mere byproduct of men’s orgasm, which has a clear evolutionary purpose. We may not have proof of this one way or another, but it’s worth exploring the potential cultural implications.
The most obvious explanation for the female big “O” is that it motivates women to have more sex, resulting in more babies (or, in wonkier terms, “reproductive success”). Another intuitive theory is that it serves to cement feelings of love and intimacy, thereby supporting parental investment. Then there’s the, um, evocatively named “sperm upsuck” theory — that uterine contractions during orgasm help draw in little swimmers. But many of these approaches have been empirically discredited and it’s the “byproduct” theory that has been held in increasing esteem by researchers.
The thinking behind the “male nipples” explanation, as I like to call it, is that women have the tissues and nerve pathways needed for orgasm simply because of their shared embryological origins with males, whose orgasms serve a clear evolutionary purpose. In other words, women have orgasms for the same reason men have nipples. On the face of it, the byproduct theory seems rather male-focused and maybe even anti-feminist. It falls right in step with the Freudian notion of women’s penis envy: Men have prominent, easily orgasmic members, while we ladies are stuck with our itty-bitty imitator, the clitoris.
But as Elisabeth Lloyd, a philosopher of biology, argued in her 2005 book “The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution,” “The real problem with this view is that it assumes that in order to be really important, female sexuality, and in particular female orgasm, must have been a direct target of natural selection among females. But there is no reason at all to think that only directly selected traits are ‘important.’” She points to examples of valued traits that aren’t directly selected: “refined musical ability, the ability to design rockets, and even the ability to read.”
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the byproduct view could actually support feminist efforts against the so-called medicalization of female pleasure. “If female orgasm is seen as having no particular evolutionary function, but rather as an evolutionary freebie, then many diagnoses of ‘Female Orgasmic Disorder’ would be out the window, and women anywhere on the spectrum of orgasmic performance might be seen as normal,” Lloyd writes in an upcoming article. She argues that this view, which she refers to as the “fantastic bonus” theory, has the benefit of casting “all women as equally ‘normal’ in their orgasmic responses to heterosexual intercourse. The account expects no particular ‘adaptive’ set of responses to intercourse, and thus privileges none.” Meaning, “women who don’t have orgasm at all are as normal as women who always have orgasm with intercourse.”
That just might throw a wrench into pharmaceutical companies’ machinations over the potential for a “female Viagra.” Speaking of, Leonore Tiefer created the New View Campaign to “challenge the distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality that the pharmaceutical industry relies on.” She wrote me in an email that an orgasm is “a nice thing,” but “it doesn’t last very long, and it’s not the easiest thing to have, so I think it’s overrated.” Tiefer, a psychiatry professor at New York University, quoted journalist Malcolm Muggeridge: “The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of human longing and fulfillment.” That line, she says, “summarizes for me the symbolic importance of the orgasm in contemporary life.” As for the uncertainty surrounding it, she says: “It’s mysterious, I think, because its symbolic value is so high (it ‘proves’ to a partner and to oneself that one is sexual, satisfied, fully female) and yet the material essence is complicated.”
Carol Queen, a legendary staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, isn’t convinced that the female climax is an inherently enigmatic creature. “The idea that women’s orgasm is mysterious is simply cultural, and it has developed in a culture that actively refuses to give its youth good information about sexual functioning, especially arousal and pleasure, and which is loaded with subcultures and communities that actively encourage fear of sex, shame, body image issues, confusion about what sex ‘means,’ and other responses that distance people from sexual possibility and pleasure,” she says. “The idea that women have a difficult time having access to pleasure, or scientists can’t imagine why on earth that pleasure is valuable — that’s just another layer of icing on this icky cake.”
Ultimately, of course, the cultural outcome and feminist analysis of the byproduct theory say nothing of its actual scientific merits. As Lloyd says, “I am not a believer in deriving social norms from biological findings, whether they’re about adaptations or not.” The cultural importance of the female orgasm doesn’t have to be determined by its evolutionary origins. So much in our sexual lives is disconnected from baby-making. And let’s not forget one of the things the birth control pill taught us: separating pleasure from reproduction can be tremendously empowering — and fun.
http://www.alternet.org/story/152641/what%27s_the_scientific_reason_women_have_orgasms?akid=7675.35630.Jub6_m&rd=1&t=24
A popular theory has been criticized as male-centric, but it might have unexpected feminist results.
October 6, 2011
LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?
Join our mailing list:
Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.
TAKE ACTIONChange.org
Get Widget
Start an Online Petition � Decades of research have failed to answer the question of why the female orgasm exists — and two recent conflicting studies on the subject have hardly changed that. Interestingly enough, though, both focus on a theory sure to anger some women: that their ability to climax is the mere byproduct of men’s orgasm, which has a clear evolutionary purpose. We may not have proof of this one way or another, but it’s worth exploring the potential cultural implications.
The most obvious explanation for the female big “O” is that it motivates women to have more sex, resulting in more babies (or, in wonkier terms, “reproductive success”). Another intuitive theory is that it serves to cement feelings of love and intimacy, thereby supporting parental investment. Then there’s the, um, evocatively named “sperm upsuck” theory — that uterine contractions during orgasm help draw in little swimmers. But many of these approaches have been empirically discredited and it’s the “byproduct” theory that has been held in increasing esteem by researchers.
The thinking behind the “male nipples” explanation, as I like to call it, is that women have the tissues and nerve pathways needed for orgasm simply because of their shared embryological origins with males, whose orgasms serve a clear evolutionary purpose. In other words, women have orgasms for the same reason men have nipples. On the face of it, the byproduct theory seems rather male-focused and maybe even anti-feminist. It falls right in step with the Freudian notion of women’s penis envy: Men have prominent, easily orgasmic members, while we ladies are stuck with our itty-bitty imitator, the clitoris.
But as Elisabeth Lloyd, a philosopher of biology, argued in her 2005 book “The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution,” “The real problem with this view is that it assumes that in order to be really important, female sexuality, and in particular female orgasm, must have been a direct target of natural selection among females. But there is no reason at all to think that only directly selected traits are ‘important.’” She points to examples of valued traits that aren’t directly selected: “refined musical ability, the ability to design rockets, and even the ability to read.”
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the byproduct view could actually support feminist efforts against the so-called medicalization of female pleasure. “If female orgasm is seen as having no particular evolutionary function, but rather as an evolutionary freebie, then many diagnoses of ‘Female Orgasmic Disorder’ would be out the window, and women anywhere on the spectrum of orgasmic performance might be seen as normal,” Lloyd writes in an upcoming article. She argues that this view, which she refers to as the “fantastic bonus” theory, has the benefit of casting “all women as equally ‘normal’ in their orgasmic responses to heterosexual intercourse. The account expects no particular ‘adaptive’ set of responses to intercourse, and thus privileges none.” Meaning, “women who don’t have orgasm at all are as normal as women who always have orgasm with intercourse.”
That just might throw a wrench into pharmaceutical companies’ machinations over the potential for a “female Viagra.” Speaking of, Leonore Tiefer created the New View Campaign to “challenge the distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality that the pharmaceutical industry relies on.” She wrote me in an email that an orgasm is “a nice thing,” but “it doesn’t last very long, and it’s not the easiest thing to have, so I think it’s overrated.” Tiefer, a psychiatry professor at New York University, quoted journalist Malcolm Muggeridge: “The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of human longing and fulfillment.” That line, she says, “summarizes for me the symbolic importance of the orgasm in contemporary life.” As for the uncertainty surrounding it, she says: “It’s mysterious, I think, because its symbolic value is so high (it ‘proves’ to a partner and to oneself that one is sexual, satisfied, fully female) and yet the material essence is complicated.”
Carol Queen, a legendary staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, isn’t convinced that the female climax is an inherently enigmatic creature. “The idea that women’s orgasm is mysterious is simply cultural, and it has developed in a culture that actively refuses to give its youth good information about sexual functioning, especially arousal and pleasure, and which is loaded with subcultures and communities that actively encourage fear of sex, shame, body image issues, confusion about what sex ‘means,’ and other responses that distance people from sexual possibility and pleasure,” she says. “The idea that women have a difficult time having access to pleasure, or scientists can’t imagine why on earth that pleasure is valuable — that’s just another layer of icing on this icky cake.”
Ultimately, of course, the cultural outcome and feminist analysis of the byproduct theory say nothing of its actual scientific merits. As Lloyd says, “I am not a believer in deriving social norms from biological findings, whether they’re about adaptations or not.” The cultural importance of the female orgasm doesn’t have to be determined by its evolutionary origins. So much in our sexual lives is disconnected from baby-making. And let’s not forget one of the things the birth control pill taught us: separating pleasure from reproduction can be tremendously empowering — and fun.
http://www.alternet.org/story/152641/what%27s_the_scientific_reason_women_have_orgasms?akid=7675.35630.Jub6_m&rd=1&t=24
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