It’s been a long time…

Well, first off, it’s been quite a while since I’ve even looked at this blog, let alone thought about posting anything.  On the off-chance you are even remotely interested as to why, I’ll elucidate about that a bit more below.  But first, I’d just like to say, well, sorry about that.  Part of my PhD process was a promise to self and others that results from the study would get back to not only the participants, but also the public at large – needless to say, something of a fail on that one.  The reasons are complex, tied in with why there have been no blogs in general, and may come as something of a surprise to some of you. So, let’s start at the beginning. What on earth have I been doing?  Since finishing my PhD, I’ve been working as a research associate/assistant/project officer/tutor/whateverthehellyouwanttocallitforthepurposesofmyworkcontract at an Australian university.  With, I must add, some pretty amazing academics, in the diversities field – mainly sexualities and race, with some gender in there too.  It’s been pretty great, and I am very very lucky to be employed in my field when most graduates end up in admin if they work at a uni, or as tutors working across institutions, trying to keep afloat on multiple casual contracts.  Which is actually what I am doing, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have those contracts be in research and at one uni – a real novelty in Australia, apparently. You’d think this would have put me in the perfect position to be writing and posting about my research, and the stuff I’m involved with.  Not so much.  Partially because in order to stay afloat financially, casual contracts come in multiples – last year I held 12 contracts, at least half of those simultaneously.  Doesn’t leave a lot of time for concentrated thinking, and certainly not on my own work.  The upside on this, a tremendous learning curve.  Steep, dense, but good. The downside, the constant realisation that, to quote my favourite wildling, ‘you know nothing, Jon Snow’… wait… I’m not Jon … I think…?   This is a common problem for academics, feelings of inadequacy and fakery, that any moment you’re going to get found out as someone who has faked their way into their position, and yes, actually has no clue what they are talking about.  (Yes, you could say that many have internalised the public’s opinion of academics in general…).  Apparently narcissism is an excellent trait to have as an academic, comes with thick skin and feelings of awesomeness… missed out on that one. After three months in the job, I pretty much realised I had no clue, and really should just be quiet, not make too much of a show of it, and keep at it, least I be discovered, outed, and banished from the tower.  You’re probably thinking, banishment probably doesn’t sound too bad if that’s the environment.  And seriously, you’re probably right.  But the problem with eroded confidence, and what we now get to name as impostor syndrome – yes, it is an actual thing whoopee! – is that wherever you go, it goes too.   So yay for me.  Now where did I put that bottle of narcissism and/or expert fakery? As a result, I haven’t written anything since the completion of the thesis.  Principally because writing stresses me out to the point where I literally cannot even sit at my computer.  Ridic-u-lous! Really.  And I know that.  We all have our dragons, apparently this is mine. Bear in mind that there are only two kinds of discursive positions for those in the academy – tenured academics who have the merit to have their position, and everyone else, who is either too green or too crap to have tenure.  (Evidenced by my institution classifying researchers like me as general staff (along with cleaners, baristas and the like) – not a classest statement, just a reflection on the institution’s conceptualisation of us – service providers), rather than as academic staff who do work with books and research and such.) Bear in mind too that neither of these discursive positions is accurate, but it does present a bit of a challenge about how to conceptualise yourself when there is no right-fitting space for you to locate yourself in.   It has taken a while to get my head out of framing myself as a student let alone anything else – so where I go from here is, well, a bit of a mystery. So, there we have it,  a complicated intersection of working with tenured giants, no discursive space to occupy, a need to make an income in a crazy work culture, and feelings of fakery that are fed by this intersection.  Yeah, no blogging, no brainer.  As for publications… really?  Whoa there young-un. So, sorry about that.   Doing my best to get over myself. Hence, a post. And an endeavour to start talking more. But with some caveats.  Some stuff may be on topic, off topic, no topic, huh? topic.  And I may talk out my ear.  Part of the academic fiction is expertise.  As much as some people may know more on some things than others, expertise… yeah, that’s problematic – I am not going to try and occupy that space.  I am going to talk through ideas, be wrong, get close to an insight, share some others thoughts, ask some questions, share some experiences, some theory, some research (mine and others) in an endeavour to engage in some knowledge transfer.  But expertise… yeah no.  I may be at the bottom of the academic ladder, but I know enough to recognise that expertise is contingent and context-specific, transitory.  But I also know that that shouldn’t stop any of us from talking. So, some blogs, and as part of the updates will be on where I’m at with getting results published in academic journals, and where you can find that material (open access where possible, drafts where not), in case you’re interested.  Be patient, this stuff takes time. Here’s hoping this actually results in something worth reading.  I make no promises!  But maybe we can get a conversation started.

Dying of shame

You’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the tragic suicide of a nurse after 2Day FM DJs prank called her about the British Royals.

We as a public have an intuition that we need to be punishing someone for what happened. And as a result there’s a lot of debate about blame and vulnerability going on, but I think a lot of it misses a very important point. At present the focus is on either whether the actions of the DJs were the actual cause of this tragedy, or if the nurse had mental health issues (to coin a diminishing phrase). What is not being discussed is the context in which these events took place.

In the past – five, ten years ago – pranking someone (as bullying as it can sometimes be) had a small ripple effect with respect to the audience. But now the globe is our stage. Do something local and it can quickly become global. Social media and the current appetite for low quality shock news means events like the prank hospital call can become global very quickly. What might have been an embarrassment that might have been ok to handle as a local event now turns into a global mockery. When we think about it, it’s actually not that surprising that such a terrible turn of events occurred – how many of us could really handle the scrutiny of billions of judging strangers and the constant meming and viral spread of a mistake that suddenly calls your mental and professional competency into question.

What we do in public, in our surveillance society, has the potential to spread like wild fire and become uncontrollable in an instant. This is the point that is lost on those that undertake this kind of humor work without considering the consequences of just what can unfold.

Are the DJs to blame? Sure, but not in the ways the public is trying to blame them. Was the nurse simply vulnerable? Yes, but only in the same way we all are vulnerable to a disproportionate public response to a mistake.

What do we do then? We change our behavior about how we publicize others and think about the weight of audience on individuals we highlight.

Moral panics everywhere

One of the interesting things to come out of my research was the snapshot of the tone of moral panics in New Zealand pertaining to women’s sexuality, and how the media chooses to frame it (reflecting  political editorial agendas).

A pertinent example is the media coverage of Dr Albert Makaray, an Egyptian-Christian gynecologist who has had considerable airtime from the media.  His most classic description of young women analogises them to paddock-mating sheep.    In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuVP9GW8Hlc) , he talks mostly about the problem of promiscuity and alcohol as related to female subjects – women are the most promiscuous, the most at risk.  What he doesn’t consider is the cultural discourse we have around teaching women that they have to protect themselves from being sexually assaulted, and not our young men about not sexually assaulting, and how New Zealand drinking cultural performances are particular to us as a country (and therefore not solely determined by chemistry and physiology).   What he is not referencing are the realities of the drink/sex culture, and how they are taken up by young people, beyond the ones he sees in his clinic.  Makary’s opinions are inaccurate and extreme fear-mongering: for example, he says that young people get drunk and have sex with whoever is beside them at the time.  If this was the case the the number of lifetime partners New Zealanders would have would far outstrip the 20 reported by Durex (whose survey may not necessarily represent a fair sampling of the nation).   And the young women I talked to would have had hundreds more sexual partners than they reported, as many were out drinking most weekends.

Beyond what he is saying, the fact is, he is quickly being picked up by the media and his voice disseminated through the social discourse as an attractor point of conversation.  A quick Google search of his name brings back over 100,000 results, highlighting the amount of media airtime he receives, and the number of those who are in some way engaged either in propagating his opinions (and using him as (what I consider to be) an ill-qualified expert (he is a practitioner, not a researcher)), or attempting to talk back to him/his proponents.

What also needs to be referenced is the use of his voice by the media and its moral/political agenda .  Media is a mechanism for shaping social discourses and they do so in a number of particular ways.  Because we as individuals often have no experience of the many of the events happening in the world we rely on stories from others and frequently use media sources to fill information gaps(1), often with an idea that there is a knowingness that presents information in a way superior to our own individual analyses – they are after all the experts/professionals, and we accept what they present as such.  What is, however, often washed out of the presentation of news events is the atypical nature of stories that make it to the headlines.  They are headlines because they are unusual, not common events. To make these suitable for inclusion in the drive to present more in less time, stories are cleaved of that very important point, along with other contextual information that would allow the judging/viewing public to make better assessments of the salience of stories, their reflections of the commonly lived experience, and their bearing on personal realities.

These issues are made more problematic when we consider how the media frames story-kinds.  Examination of, for example, how media frames stories of crime points to a predominance of punitive and individualist slants that place the cause of crime at the feet of the individual rather than examining its broader social issues (2). Framing of feminism and feminist activities also shows negative framing, away from the positive social impacts to a reduction of feminist agents/agency to harpies making mountains out of molehills.   These frames reflect political agendas – moral panics focus on risk towards political ends, and risk-focus always reflects a politics of social control and political investment.  When we hear about risk, we should ask ourselves, if we comply with risk-averse behaviour such as that being suggested, what does that mean in terms of broader social outcomes?

In this regard, what can we say about the over-representation of Makary in the media, especially in formal news sources, in comparison to those voices that would refute his claims, or argue differently regarding social issues?   The preference for sensationalising stories is obvious – headlines that describe young New Zealand women as mating in paddocks like sheep is bound to capture anyone’s attention.  Makary is aware of this – as a professional he does not use the language of his cohort, but chooses to use terms that will inflame and negatively frame in an attention-seeking way.  As do all of those with a cause.  His framing of young women reflects a highly vocal and powerful conservative politics in New Zealand that is very interested in maintaining a status quo of power differentials that locate efficacious social power and control primarily not in the hands of minority groups such as Maori, those with disabilities,  those in lower socio-economic bands, women, LGBTIQ,and so on, but in the hands of (most often) white, educated conservatives (usually men).  This political context provides significant privileges attached with not belonging to a minority, even if those that access those privileges are not active in enforcing them.

What is Makary supporting then?  He is not talking about a general adjustment of society – he is talking about a behavioural adjustment of one section of the population.  In his 2010 interview he noted that young women needed to return to their roles as sexual gatekeepers to keep a sexually uncontrolled male population in control. That promiscuity is the moral and social responsibility of women, in curbing their own sexual access and as a result curbing men’s.   To do this he stokes the moral panic that suggests young women have declining morals and self esteem, that they are promiscuous (doesn’t it take two people to have heterosex that results in unwanted pregnancy??).  Where in the past the moral panics around male sexuality and STIs put the onus on prostitutes as the source of the moral scourge, now Makary’s comments suggest that the problem of promiscuity is all about young women to the exclusion of young men – men now are less promiscuous – suggesting that instead of a few women servicing many men we now have a small number of men servicing many women.  Lucky chaps.  But more importantly, what this discourse suggests is a population of young women who are out of control.

We conceive of male sexuality as a biological drive that can be difficult for men to handle – it takes a strong and rational man not to succumb to his sexual urges, the dominant discourse goes.  But our discourse also places women as in control of a sexuality that is not as rampant and biologically driven – it is not obsessional or overwhelming and once it is turned on it it is not seen as a foregone conclusion that something must be done about it.  How then to account for these rampantly promiscuous women if they have no recourse to biology?  The evils of alcohol, lack of morality, low self-esteem, poor values system, lack of agency.  The list goes on.  Very few conversations come back to women wanting to have sex as rational agents.  Rather their many partners is a kind of moral or psychological pathology.  We don’t talk about those 20 partners as chosen, but only as the result of drunken one-night stands.   Needless to say, I didn’t talk to anyone who thought that their wanting to sleep with a variety of different men made them psychologically unwell, though many were aware that they may be judged that way.

What Makary is wanting is to curb the behaviour of young women and return us to a society where fewer people crossed his office threshold with STIs and unplanned pregnancies.  (Fair enough.)  And the way to do this is to reduce the number of people we sleep with.  I doubt the young woman who catches an STI from her first and only sexual partner would think that this strategy is of much help to her, however.  What Makary should be pushing for is a greater level of education about self-care and self-protection in sexual encounters.  And equally importantly he needs to push for education that teaches people how to care for and about those they are sleeping with.  When we consider that a large majority of negative complaints from young women regarding casual sex outcomes are to do with being poorly treated by either their casual sex partner, or their peer group (or fear of these things), it would suggest that how we treat people as experiencing ‘others’ is of primary importance.

Unfortunately care for the other directly contradicts moral panics and risk-culture propagation  where we are taught to consider the ‘other’ not as someone to be cared about but as someone who is a potential danger, a risk-vector of disproportionate negative consequences, that is it best to practice risk avoidance altogether than reap (disproportionately) negative outcomes.  So, don’t sleep with non-relationship partners, because he or she may have an STI, may not use protection, may sexually assault you, may negatively talk about you, may …. this is a very long list of cons.  The reality of course not so horrific.  Yes we do need to be mindful of our own safety, and that of others.  But to live in a culture of fear is to close down avenues of education and learning, of experience and enjoyment, of agency  action, response, evaluation, criticality, and common sense.  There is not room to care when fear is the disproportional emotional state.  And care, ethical self-care and care of the other, seems to me a much better solution to the problems inherent in contemporary western sexual culture than running around, drecying women who like to have sex with someone who isn’t a relationship partner.

Refs on request: Beale (2006);  (Green, 2009).

Published

Well, finally, a return to the net.  You could be excused for thinking I’d run off somewhere to never return, but have no fear, I have only been suffering from a reasonably common academic malaise that I like to call ‘thesis aversion’.  Apparently many PhD writers go through this, where the idea of even looking at our research makes us run faster than a certain Mr Bolt in the other direction.  This is for no other reason than that we have been ‘eating’ intellectual cereal without milk for 4 or more years.  No matter how interesting it is to someone else, to us it is like reading Fifty Shades of Grey over, and over, and over ..

Never fear however, although many of us run, it is often  only in circles.  Thus we find ourselves back where we began …

Like all humble returns, this will be short and sweet, because I know I have to write something, but I just don’t know what that is.   So the easiest way to get out of doing anything substantive is just to go: Taadaaaaah! Here’s the link to the thesis if you want to take a look:  http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz//handle/10063/2366

Look at that! I’ve put up 100,000 words in the blink of an eye!  Now why couldn’t the writing process have been this easy?

For those of you sensible enough not to click through to my swipe at academic credibility a.k.a. thesis, stay tuned, results discussions are coming  Thanks for your patience.

Going by the numbers

Finally, something more about the research!

I’m currently reading some work from a wonderful researcher in my field, discussing the difficulties of recruitment.  For researchers in fields looking at what is called sensitive topic research, it can be a real dilemma to get enough people together to talk to you about what is going on for them in the topic area.  The irony about this is that getting people talking about sensitive topics is a big inroad into improving people’s lives in these kinds of areas.  For example, no one likes to talk about domestic violence, but talking about it makes it visible, assessable, and then a proper target for social interventions at whatever level to help reduce this social blight can be found.   Which is why so many researchers focus on sensitive topics – these are often at the core of social issues and problems that greatly affect individuals.

I certainly didn’t expect my recruitment process to be easy.  Other researchers in the area of sex and sexuality have discussed how difficult it can be to get participants to interview, and to keep participating throughout the research.  The rate of attrition of participants can be quite high.  And not uncommon.

What surprised me most about my own research was the overwhelming response I had to my own recruitment process.  My expectations were far exceeded with respect to how long it would take for me to get the number of survey responses I needed, and the number of young women who would want to participate further.   The question I guess comes down to why on earth I had an easier time of it than some other researchers I have come across.

Really I have no definitive answers to that, but I think perhaps some of it comes down to a culture of lack of space for women to talk about sex.  Now, I think some of you will shake your heads here, and tell me that young women are talking about sex a lot.  A participant related to me overhearing a group of high school girls talking about the taste of semen in a public area.  This would suggest that there is little issue about talking about sex for women these days.  But what I want to suggest here is whether that is actually talking about sex, or engaging in a public performance that places the speaker as sexually experienced, and therefore, in today’s parlance, as ‘cool’/fashionable/knowing/etc.   Today’s culture is big on the idea that being sexually active is part of being a well-rounded and mature individual – sex is a necessary part of a healthy life, an adventurous life, an uninhibited life, shows you as skilled and capable and so on.  No  one wants to be thought of as a prude!  So talking about the taste of cum, yip, that situates you as sexually experienced,  but does it mean that you are talking about sex?  I’m not so sure on that.

And I think this is where I managed to have some success in recruitment, because I recruited young women on the proviso that they could talk about anything they liked about sex, but most importantly I wanted to hear their opinions on today’s sexual culture (for their age group).   I wanted to hear their gripes and insecurities and problems, and truimphs. I wanted to hear about all the things that it is not really that acceptable for them to talk about in a group – their virginities, their getting drunk and being taken advantage of, their flashing in public, their frustration at their partner’s lack of reciprocity in sex, that they were not sure what they wanted in bed, weren’t comfortable asking for what they wanted, had lousy sex but didn’t know how to fix it, and so on.

In an area where we are all supposed to have our shit together, talking about these things with our peers can sometimes be problematic.  One of the biggest factors participants of my research talked about as a factor that inhibits their sexual expression and experience was the wide range of stigma they could experience – from sexual partners, friends, family, work mates, religious leaders, medical practitioners.  And themselves.  Talking about our faults and insecurities in such a judgemental social context can therefore be a really big thing.   Talking about sex then can reduce to just talking about successes, rather than issues that once discussed can be normalised and examined and addressed.  Because no one wants to be judged.  At least not in a bad way.

Oh, and if you think this is a woman’s problem (which btw it kind of is, as the spaces available for women to be anything sexual let alone chatty have been very small for a very long time), just take a moment and try to recall the last time you heard a guy talk about not being able to get aroused, that he had lousy sex because it just felt mechanical and uncaring, or that he didn’t want to have sex with the girl at the bar he pulled becuase he actually liked/didn’t like/[insert reason here] her.  None of us are outside the social rules about talking about sex.

So when someone gives you the opportunity to talk about your insecurities and worries, well, particularly if its anonymous, I’d bet a lot of you would jump at it (and did).  Of course, there are a lot of other reasons young women participated, but considering what many of you had to say in reply to some very general questions, I’m guessing that this might have been a really good reason.

Which brings be to a larger point beyond how fortunate I was as a researcher to have so many wonderfully brave young women come forward to tell me about their experiences.  And that is the quality of conversations we as women have about our sex lives.  Now, you might think that as a researcher in the topic of sex I’d be a chatty Cathy about all things sexual.  And to be sure, that can be true, within particular contexts.  But that certainly wasn’t the case before I started my PhD.  It wasn’t until I was known as ‘the sex dr’ that my friends started talking to me about their sex lives in much more detail, and I started talking back.  Suddenly they (and I) had an excuse – asking me about the research presented opportunities for us to segue into their own sex lives.  It was great, and a good laugh, and comforting sometimes too.

These conversations are vitally important I think.  Sex is such a large part of our lives, in the contemporary context.  We are all beset by performance anxieties, pressures and fears, many of which could be reduced or removed if we sat and had a good conversation about things.  And not of the Cleo magazine kind – frankly talking about how to make ‘him’ cum does nothing for ‘your’ sex life.  We need to be having real conversations.  About things that really matter to us.  Because if the research is anything to go by, the issues are pretty homogeneous – we are all lamenting about the same stuff.  If we got talking, what we thought about ourselves that was worrisome of weird would probably turn out to be far more normal than we realise – giving us a chance to let ourselves off the hook, and move forward towards ways to resolve the issue for ourselves (which might go no further than simply realising that what you think is a problem isn’t one at all).

So here’s a little homework.  Have a ‘talk about sex’ night with friends – not one about how great Mr Y from Bar X was, but about all things real.  It may take a glass of wine to kick the conversation off, but I think it might be worth it.  And a lot less daunting that you think.  After all, sex is fun.  Talking about it, even the problematic, scary stuff, can be too.

 

Something odd happened on the way to the tax office …

One of the things about doing post-graduate education is the moment when you come up against the reality of related future employment.  Education means a variety of things for us, from being a means to an end to a passion project.  If you’re a means-person the likelihood of you getting a job in your field is reasonably good – though not guaranteed – because the means is usually towards the end of employment so you’re crafting yourself to the market.   But if you’re a passsion-person like me, the prospect of finding work in your field when you have a set of acronyms after your name can prove to be down-right daunting.  Let’s face it, how many employers are looking for someone with extensive experience talking to people about sex … (excluding the sex industry)?

This isn’t to say that we should curb our passions in the face of narrow employment prospects.  Just that we have to be realistic about the intersection between the education and employment sectors as they move away from education for education’s sake (which illustrates intellectual capacity, capacity to stick with delineated tasks for prolonged periods, independent work ethic, and so on) towards a more pure profit model – what did you do that we as employers can actually capitalise on beyond your having learned to be a good worker.   You can see why passion-projects, despite their often adding greatly to the body of knowledge, can therefore be tricky with respect to future employment, because these things are not always (often!) transparent to employers.  This is exacerbated in todays quantifiable world when your passion is qualitative and social-science or humanities-based.  Try finding a job when you not only talked to people but listened to what they had to say, and didn’t count it.   Unless you’re in marketing, there are very few spaces available.

So, what do we do? Do we NOT do what we are passionate about? Of course, this is the tension. Within the academy one of the first things we are told, particularly at Masters or PhD level, is to ensure that we chose topics of research that we are passionate about.  The logic is that we are about to spend the next one to two to three to five to seven years smacking our heads up against said topic, and if we are going to do it we ought to at least enjoy the pain.  And the logic is sound.  Really, the P in PhD should stand for passion, because doing it for other reasons can really be a killer.  So here we have the tension: between passion projects that keep us alive and up the chances of our completing, versus a job market that is focused on your product-potential – how much useable knowledge and skill can you bring to a profit-making environment?   Hence why so many SS/H PhDs end up flipping burgers at Maccers.

One of the ways around this conundrum is to be aware of the international job market.  In good old NZ there is very little opportunity to work in my field, whether by discipline (Gender) or by thesis (sexuality).  The majority of universities there have cut their gender departments to save dollars and up profits (despite often high student uptake and overall popularity), favouring disciplines that get government and private sector funding, or have high international student demand – disciplines like the hard sciences, economics, marketing and so on.  As NZ unis move this way, the death of small knowledge-for-knowledge-sake disciplines like Latin, and social impact disciplines like mine, get disenfranchised.  Some of you may say, so what? Why keep a dept that researches Latin? Why keep Gender when NZ’s OECD rating for gender equality is so high?   Well, these topics have changed history and society, and their potential to keep doing so is still alive.  It does matter how accurate translations are, and understanding the etymology of language is extremely valuable.  And as for gender, NZ has some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the OECD right along our high equality rating, and one that is highly gendered.  Beyond their utility, closing down departments that broaden the knowledge pool regardless of their economics impoverishes society, and goes against the ethos of universities in general – ie to increase the body of knowledge.

OK, now that I’ve harped on, back on track.  So clearly employment prospects in my native country are not going to be great.  For many of us, this is the case.  And why so many academics don’t work in their country of origin. With a shrinking academic job market, one that is being narrowed by economic pressures, it’s becoming something of a scrap out there.  So we have to be prepared to chase the work.  By plane, train or automobile. Because here’s where the irony kicks in.  That passion project that can’t get you a job in so many places may be exactly the thing that gets you a job somewhere.  The great thing about passion is that it is usually shared, and someone, somewhere might actually want to pay you for it.  You just have to keep looking, and be prepared to move.

Of course, finding these jobs is really a bit of a rarity.  Honestly, getting a PhD in language etymology and then being employed by Websters Dictionary doesn’t happen to everyone – though I know someone it happened to, so there you go.   I’ve seen it, and  it just happened to me.  After 5 months of trawling through the job market (depressing) I got a job in my field.   Make no bones about it, I know how extremely lucky I am, that I was in the right place (Sydney) at the right time.  And that jobs like this only come around once in a galactic cycle.   But then,  my new boss was pretty pleased to have found me as apparently we gender grads are rare gems these days.   So everybody won.  Which just goes to show that that obscure thing you toiled over for years can actually prove to be productive, despite what economists and skeptics and nay-sayers may say.  Obscure jobs may be rare things, but so are the academics that study them – eventually every old sock will find its old shoe.

It’s like a little ray of sunshine on a crappy day, isn’t it?  To know that passion can still get you a job in today’s cynical market.

So next time someone rolls their eyes at you and asks you why they heck you would study that in todays’ world, have a wee smile.  You know exactly what you are doing, and eventually you’ll be paying taxes because of it.

Off topic … kind of.

One thing I have been hesitant to write and post about during my research has been the PhD process itself.  But what the hell, its a new year, and I’m feeling cathartic lol.  Which probably has to do with the unending nature of PhDs themselves.

I think that, among some of my friends/family/acquaintances/connections there has been the expectation that once I submitted my thesis and got through the oral examination, it was all done and dusted.  They could mockingly call me Dr (rightly so btw), and then mock me once more when I get a job flipping burgers at MacDonalds (quite likely), whilst talking crap that no one understands or is that interested in (PhD side-effect, rampant, long-lasting, thankfully not contagious).  But no, horror of horrors, like every step in the PhD process, although the oral examine was the end, it was only the end of the beginning (0r the beginning of another end … I’m not sure which way your that goes …).

Thesis submitted: check!  Oral examination: check (and slaughtered btw).  Graduation …. hmmmm ok.  So, when they tell you you’ve passed your PhD, there’s a catch.  This is to be expected, PhDs are full of catches.  There’s the catch that once you’re enrolled, you then have to been accepted to keep that enrolment, then you have to get through the ethics stuff, then you have to get through the regular reporting to the uni so you can keep doing what you are trying to do.  And beyond the official stuff, there’s dealing with all the internal stuff that tells you that there is no good reason for you to be getting through the official stuff: haven’t they worked out that you’re clueless and a faker and that your research is going to be crap, yet??   Yes, PhDs are full of catches – some official, and a lot that are self-made.  If you’ve never experienced self-doubt before, just do a PhD – it will reshape the most hardened of us.

With all that in mind you can imagine the horror of the ongoing PhD process – the catch being IT IS NEVER OVER.  Lol.  Of course, this is not all bad.  Well, its bad on the days when you’ve had a guts-full of it.  But on other days there’s the knowledge that you get to indulge your brain in stuff that’s (hopefully) still very interesting.  But here’s the big catch for those of us at this particular stage of the PhD process (oral passed, thesis conferred with X changes): if we are not careful, we can spend another 3.5 or however many years fixing the small changes suggested by your thesis examiners.  The battle then reduces to pragmatism v idealism/perfectionism.  What do to, what to do.

This is where I’m at.  I have a list of required changes, and a list of recommended changes.  The requireds are kind of interesting, but the recommended are REALLY interesting, but require more analysis, more reading, more writing, more drafting, more thinking … more time.  The question, where to draw the line.  How to say stop to a process that can be horrifyingly addictive.  PhDs are like sugar addictions – we know that they can do to us, but we do them anyway.

Of course, once the changes are done, there’s the NEXT phase: publication.  If you’re like me then the nature of your research means that part of the examiners’ recommendations included book publication and mainstream press publication.  So, along with journal articles, a book publication, and mainstream press articles and release notices you have to ask, when the hell do I find time to do anything other than PhD stuff?  Ah yes, PhDs, the gift that just keeps on giving.

So with all this in mind, you can understand why I have been reticent about blogging the PhD process – because once the lamentation/celebration begins, it, like the PhD process, never ends.

But that’s OK.  Life is life that.  The best most worthwhile things drive us nuts, and are always reaching forward into our lives, but we are always glad we’ve done them in the end (omg, PhD has made me into a life coach).

So, expect gluts and droughts in the writing process, as I cycle through the love-hate relationship most of us have with our research.  At least I can relax in the knowledge that I am not alone – most of my PhD friends are equally as angst-ridden.  So next time you see anyone who is doing or has one, remember to give the poor buggers a moment of sympathy lol.

 

 

 

 

Faking it is great … yeah, not really.

I’m sitting in my lounge watching The Morning Show on Australia’s Channel 7. They’ve run a segment about why faking orgasms may be good for women.  Needless to say, my eyebrows shot up at the suggestion.  I couldn’t think of one reason why it would be good for a woman to fake it.

Here’s what their expert had to say, in a nutshell:

A recent study says 67% of women fake it – the study says this can heighten arousal.  Hmmm – not sure how that works, to be honest.  Thankfully they had someone commenting.   Sexpert Tracey Cox was interviewed about the research and noted that men will compare their non-orgasming girlfriend with previous orgasming girlfriends, and may view the non-O girlfriend as lesser.  Hmmm youch.  She did go on to say that we shouldn’t fake it, thank goodness, and that we ought to be honest about our desires, and less orgasm-orientated.

The question of orgasms and faking should be one we consider carefully.  The images we see of sex in action is often one that is highly performative – we see lots of writhing and moaning and signs of arousal, particularly from women.  One of the reasons for this, apparently, is that unlike men, women’s arousal is less visible, so we need to give other signals.  Men have erections, women have… performance.

Problematically, the kinds of sexual performance we see as a guide to how to be sexual aren’t necessarily accurate.  Most of these come from the media – highly stylised and romanticised movie sex, or more sexually orientated pornography, neither of which are particularly realistic.  In this regard we ought to ignore these sources of information and start with another – our own bodies.  If during sex we feel the urge to wiggle around or moan, then well and good.  But if we feel like we need to perform these behaviours when they are not genuine, we set ourselves up for failure.  Why?  Well, hopefully that will be visible in my list:

Some reasons not to fake it (arousal, pleasure and orgasm)

• Faking it reinforces ineffectual sexual performance:  if you are someone who likes to have your partner get you there, then moaning when s/he is not is only going to prompt him/her to continue on doing exactly the wrong thing.   Yeah, not ideal.
• Faking closes down opportunities to learn and communicate: yes it’s hard at times (no pun intended) but talking about sex is one of the best ways to improve the quality of your sex life.  But once it starts, it’s not that big of a deal.  Faking it though stops you being able to talk about what you feel, desire, want and don’t want.  Why would you want to talk about things if you are apparently having a great old time?  Your partner’s pride might be bruised initially, but he or she will thank you in the long run.
• Faking = lying: hmmmm yeah, not so nice when you think about it this way.  Your partner won’t appreciate you trying to pad their ego by faking it and lying when you are engaged in something many consider to be intimate.
• Orgasms aren’t the be-all-and-end-all of sex: faking it makes orgasm the most important thing in sex, and frankly, that’s just not the case.  Sex without orgasm can be immensely enjoyable, and sex with orgasm can be immensely unsatisfying.  There is more to sex than the big O, but faking it says the opposite.

Part of the reason women fake is to protect their partner’s egos.  For men, sex is something we as a society consider them to be experts in – or as the terminology goes, they are supposed to be sexperts.  This is an unrealistic expectation.   We are all different.  Our bodies respond differently to physical, emotional and mental stimuli – what man could possibly anticipate that?  Being competent is one thing, but being expert, another.

Sexpertise makes sex problematic for a couple of reasons: it suggests that when you sleep with a sexpert they are going to know what you want/need/like which in turn stops the need to communicate – if he knows what’s good, why do you need to tell him.  Problem: he can launch in and not expect any direction or feedback from you, and you can lie back thinking that you don’t need to communicate anything because he should know what he’s doing.  See the problem?  Faking orgasm is part of this dynamic – you fake to tell him he is the sexpert, despite the fact that he may not be.

Chasing the orgasm can make your sex life less than enjoyable.  Yes they are great to have, no doubt about that, but they are not everything there is to sex.   Not having a goal to sex other than enjoyment is likely to take the pressure off for everyone – no need to perform to support a supposedly fragile ego (are our partners really that vulnerable to feedback?), and no need to chase after something that you might not have at the expense of an enjoyable time.

And just as an aside, if you’re sleeping with someone who compares your sex life to a previous partner, there may be reasons other than him or her thinking you are sexually inadequate to not be sleeping with said individual.

Remember, no none is responsible for our pleasure but us.  It’s great to have a partner that has worked out what makes us quiver and groan.  But it’s far better if we know what makes that happen for us.  Then we can communicate that to our sexual partners, which in the long run will be better for our sex lives because our partners will participate in honest sexual events where they can feel comfortable about what they are doing, whilst knowing you are enjoying yourself too.  Without the pressure of performance.

Thinking about the risky stuff…

Hmmm, so, having my morning coffee glancing through my news feeds, and I came across an article on Think Big called The Sky is Falling.  Should We Worry?  It’s about asteroid strikes (yes, I’m a science geek (sigh)).  If you’re interested, here’s the link (http://bigthink.com/ideas/41151?page=1).

It didn’t catch my attention so much for the discussion on the psychology of risk assessment and asteroid strikes (clearly I need to read things more uplifting with my morning coffee btw), but rather how easily we can remove all the space-science terminology in the article and replace it with terms about STIs and sex-related health issues, and how we think about risk in relation to those terms.

We talk a lot about sexual risk in health research into sexual behaviour.  Risk risk risk risk risk.  Casual sex is called risky sex, hooking up is framed as risky, and so on and so forth.  Should we worry about risk?  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t but as Think Big points out, we worry about risk the more we hear about it.  And as we hear about sex and risk so often together, we really have to ask if we are creating a culture of fear around sex, and how that is going to impact on how we conduct our sex lives.  The sky is falling apparently, because we are having casual sex.

The first thing we need to be aware of, I think, is that when we talk about risk we are not necessarily talking about danger.  These terms are not as synonymous as we are had to think.  Just becuase something is risky it does not mean that it is dangerous.  As Slovic notes, danger is real but risk is a concept we as a culture/society create, and it is complex.  “Risk assessment is inherently subjective and represents a blending of science and judgment with important psychological, social, cultural, and political factors.” (1)   And how we define risk determines what we do about it.  Defining risk therefore becomes quite a political endeavour – a quick look at how the western world handles the definition of risk in relation to terrorism is a transparent example of the politics of risk and its definition, how it creates cultural and behavioural change, and informs a culture of fear-based behaviour and thinking.  If risk-talk can do this about terror and  ethnicities (for example, the discourse suggests that all Muslims are potential terrorists – clearly a fatuous idea), then what does risk-talk about sex do for those of us having it?

If Slovic is right about the politics of risk, and frankly it seems commonsensical, then we ought to be careful about how we read research (well, anything really) that talks about sex and risk, because the way it is often defined suggests that the way to avoid risk is to not have sex outside of relationships.  Casual sex is risky – how to avoid risk, don’t have casual sex.  The problem is, risk is not that narrow.  Relationship sex can be just as risky as casual sex when it comes to contracting disease and infection, to emotional, physical and psychological harms, and issues of autonomy and consent.  There is however less research in this area, and even less looking at the bigger picture with respect to sex and danger.

I am not saying that sexual health researchers have an agenda in researching from a risk perspective other than trying to find ways to improve population health and reduce exposure to health dangers.  What I am suggesting is that if we are to approach sex research (and sex itself) from a risk framework, then we really need to think about what it is we mean by risk, how it relates to actual dangers, and what politics we are engaging with when we talk in risk-related ways.

If we are to talk about risk, what needs to be understood is where the actual dangers are with respect to bad outcomes from sexual interactions, rather than the kinds of sexual contexts those outcomes are encountered in.  From my research, I see that the greatest dangers come not from casual sexual engagements, but from ones where individuals feel they do not have the power to communicate their desires, to assert themselves as agents (ie, they determine the what/how/when/with whom aspects and are active in whatever they are doing, instead of being done to), to trust sexual partners to act ethically and responsibly, and to act ethically and responsibly themselves.  These aspects of behaviour can be present or absent from any kind of sexual context, whether it be casual or committed.  And they are in my mind the forerunner of sexually responsible and mindful behaviour.

For example, two strangers decide to have casual sex: both are self-responsible in having regular STI checks, and in respecting themselves with respect to their sexual health, both actively use and carry contraception, both communicate clearly about what they want from the sexual encounter, and treat each other with respect before/during/after the act, do not stigmatise the other or malign, and so on.  Risk/danger in this kind of interaction is low.  Then consider a couple in a relationship: one has not had a STI check prior to entering into the relationship, and as they are in a relationship considers using condoms to be unnecessary (one of the hallmarks of committedness in the modern sexual context), one partner is sexually dominant in determining the how/when and where of sex, and the other does not feel confident enough to voice their wants and desires and lack thereof; little communication occurs, and one partner can sometimes feel disrespected, whether through not being heard, or being judged or stigmatised by a partner.  This scenario, one I saw often in the comments of the young women I researched, presents a greater potential with respect to risk and real dangers than the casual sex encounter outlined above.

The point of the above example is not to throw into the risk-circle yet another kind of sex to be wary of but rather to highlight why risk needs to be thought about critically, and approached from a wider perspective than perhaps is focused on in the predominance of sexual health research.   In doing so the kinds of changes that would be encouraged in the sexually active community would more likely have better results with respect to negative sexual health outcomes.  For example, research shows that young women who feel they have a right to speak up and out about what sex they want to have, and how, are more liable to use condoms and insist on condom use, thus reducing the risk of exposure when partners are potentially unsafe.

The other aspect of thinking critically about the gap between risk and danger has to do with the kinds of risks that we are wary of, and the likelihood of that actual danger occurring.  A good example of the gap between risk and danger can be seen in the current climate of parental fear around child abductions.  Stranger danger is the predominant message around child abductions, yet most children are abducted by someone they know.  Very few are taken by strangers.  Yet our proscribed behaviour to mitigate the risk is to drive our children to school/the mall/the park/playdates etc, and to have them accompanied by someone at all times.   Hardly the kind of behaviour that offsets the actual danger of child abduction, but one that suggests that the actual gap between risk and danger is quite large and that the politics of risk management in childcare is not quite on target.

It is worthwhile considering this gap too when it comes to what research describes as risky sex.   Now,  I don’t have access to statistics on the likelihood of contracting an STI from a casual sex encounter.  The best I came up with was a link discussing the likelihood of catching gonorrhoea from an infected parter (http://dermatology.netfirms.com/mdderma/STDcenter/STDFaqs/STD_FAQ_transmission.html) – 20%.  Note that the partner has to be infected already – likelihood gets far more difficult to predict when we try and calculate that a partner has an STI in the first place.  A likelihood that would drop the actual danger (brain rattles whilst pulling out school stats probability stuff).

This isn’t to say that we should be cavalier about STIs, rather it’s to put things into perspective.  It’s one thing to look at a sexual partner as a potential source of sexual risk, and another to act as though they actually are.  The former suggests precautionary measures, the latter, avoidance.  If we approach risk as danger, then our behaviour changes to something that is perhaps not favourable – already we are criticising parents who over-coddle their children in response to a plethora of risk-messages about the unsafeness of everyday environments.  Overt attention to risk can result in negative outcomes unrelated to the actual danger they are warding against.

Couple statistical likelihood with sexual health outcomes, and the life-destroying tone of risk messaging swings even more into questionable territory.  Modern medicine puts many STIs within the curable category, and many more in the treatable and manageable category.  And as long as we are responsible before, during and after, then danger is reduced (even if risk is not).  But we do not treat STIs the same as we treat other communicable diseases – as regrettable, treatable, and curable.  Instead we stigmatise.  If we were as scared of catching the flu as we are of an STI we’d never leave our homes.

Again I am not dismissing the impacts of STIs, rather I am suggesting that the gap between perceived risk and actual danger might not be as narrow as the litany of educational and medical messages around non-relationship sexual activities might suggest.  But I am definitely suggesting that we ought to take the fear out of risk-discourse around STIs – because it’s being scared that can stop people acting pro-actively to manage their sexual health.  Is it a big deal you got Chlamydia?  Sure.  Will it destroy your life? No (as long as you manage your health).  But does the world treat your differently when it finds out you’ve had it?  Yes – it may not destroy your life, but it certainly can alter it.   And that’s the kind of risk we shouldn’t have to negotiate.  When we catch STIs from unfaithful partners, yet have safe casual sex … well, you can see the disjunct in how we treat people.   And why risk-discourse can be off-target.

Risk is a complicated issue – about that, Slovic is right.  When we talk about risk the politics involved can be hidden, and certainly not straight forward.  However, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be critical in our approach to sex as risk, and the messages we receive about it.   It ought to prompt some internal reflection, about how we conduct our sex lives, not as risk-averse, but danger-averse.    If we have a more targeted approach to our sex lives we can then start to change our sexual community to a safer one – because we have our eyes on the right targets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Slovic, P (1999). Trust, Emotion, Sex, Politics, and Science: Surveying the Risk-Assessment Battlefield in Risk Analysis, 19(4).

It’s Great to be an All Black: you can get away with pretty much anything …

Poor Zac Guildford.  And I say that with genuine sympathy, though perhaps not for the reasons the media and the All Blacks organisation of apologists thinks I ought to.   We as a nation are being asked to cut Zac some slack, despite his assaulting two bystanders and sexually harassing another (female) athlete.   Guildford is yet another in a long line of professional sportsmen who drink excessively, act violently and abuse women.  I sympathise with him not because his fame is hard to handle, not because being a professional sportsman comes with pressures that can cause self-destructive behaviours, but because the kind of masculinity Guildford enacts clearly has negative impacts on his own well-being, and the well-being of those around him.

When rugby players are seen as pretty much the penultimate in male role models, and this kind of drunken and abusive behaviour appears to be generally condoned (or at least expected and therefore tolerated) when we see how common it is in the professional and amateur ranks, perhaps we ought to be thinking about what we are teaching our boys and men with respect to the kinds of masculinity they perform.   Some might say that it the alcohol talking, but there has been sufficient cross-cultural research showing that drunken behaviour is culturally defined.  Excessive consumption does not by necessity lead to violence and sexual aggression.    Not unless you live in New Zealand (and a few other western nations – proud lot, aren’t we?).     Alcohol often acts as a disinhibitor and facilitator.   It also comes with some cultural rules about how it is consumed and how consumers are to behave when consuming.   It’s not hard to see what New Zealand’s culture is.  For some of our men, it’s about potential violence and potential sexual aggressiveness.  A walk around any city centre on a Saturday night will cough up any number of fights and women being harassed by unwanted (and sometimes aggressive and insulting) sexual attention.

If we are to feel sorry for Zac Guildford, it is because he is little more than a publicised stereotype of a kind of  Kiwi manhood.  We all know Zac, he lives down the road from us, he’s one of our mates (or used to be), we went to school with him, he’s in our work place.    He is the height of hyper-masculinity in our culture, hard drinking, womanising, rough and strong, and to top it all off, a hero/an All Black.   The question of whether we ought to cut Zac some slack comes down to whether or not we ought to cut this stereotype some slack.   Personally I think there are other ways to be masculine.  And it really is about time that this kind of masculinity was reformed, rather than fed with sympathy.  Guildford was lucky not to have seriously injured someone, or killed them (whether through assault (he is after all an athlete built for physical conflagration) or a motor accident with his reckless riding).   The men he assaulted appear to be happy to shrug it off – perhaps this is the acceptance of men being men.  Kelly Pick on the other hand has had reinforced the cultural lesson that for women no space is safe from sexual harassment – an unhappy reminder of a social reality that is archaic and socially constraining.   What is ironic for Kelly is that Zac – who really is a nice guy (according to allies) – now becomes more the ‘everyman’ than ever, because our culture frames Zac this way – a regular guy, not unusually aggressive, just a rugby player with a bit of a drinking problem.  Sexual harassment and aggression can therefore come from any man, any regular guy, once he gets a drink in him.   So not only is Zac an example of masculinity, but he also reflects the kinds of femininity women ought to perform when men like him are around: cautious, aware, avoidant.   Ironically the kind of behaviour some young women discussed or exemplified in my own research.

What we also ought to remember too is that there are plenty of other ways to be masculine. I know plenty of masculine men who are not like Zac – some of them play rugby, some of the drink, and some even get trashed, but as far as I know none of them have assaulted anyone, and as a woman I feel  safe around them.  They are the kinds of men I like spending time with – but you couldn’t get me within a mile of Zac Guildford.  Yes, personal choice I know, but for me our culture’s apologetic attitude for men like Zac means that he will continue to be a lose cannon, as are many of the men who behave as he does.   No doubt he is a nice guy, for all I know he is a prince among men, but the kind of masculinity he performs frames him as a potential risk.  I doubt Zac would be happy about this if he understood just what his performance actually means to those in his very large audience.   And as a culture we ought to be unhappy about this too, because it places within our midst another thing to be wary of, another social element that constrains our behaviour (regardless of gender), another force to be avoided or capitulated to.

Poor Zac … and poor us.