Stalking for academic research

In what world is stalking a research “subject” acceptable? I would hope that you agree that such a “methodology” is never acceptable. As academic researchers, we must ensure that the privacy of our research participants is never invaded, that their identity is never revealed (at least so far as possible), and they we never do them any harm. When you stalk someone, you invade their privacy and you certainly do them harm. One would hope that the “researcher” who conducted this study would have known that. Maybe he did and just didn’t care.

In the numerous research projects I have conducted to date, ensuring that I am ethical with my research participants is always a priority for me. I am confident that I never did anything in any study to compromise the safety of a participant, or to cause them harm. I ask you again: In what world is stalking a research “subject” acceptable? Let’s ask the author of this article. It’s called: “Saved!” by Jena Malone: An introspective study of a consumer’s fan relationship with a film actress.

I think you all know what you’re about to read here.

For the “study”, the “researcher” developed an obsession with this woman, built a shrine to her in his home, spent several hours of his life devouring her films, had numerous pictures of her (included in the article), delved very deeply into her private life, and kept a diary and a “contemporaneous dataset” about his “relationship” with her – which, incidentally, stacked up to nearly 200,000 words.

He started off his description of this “relationship” with the following statement:

I still remember the day in April 2005, when I saw Jena Malone for the very first time. Her lovely smile and her beautiful eyes captivated me so much that my entire body was filled with the same prickling warmth that I feel each time I fancy a particular girl/woman.

If you, too, are picturing the archetypal peeping tom in a trench-coat, then you’re in good company here. He goes on to say:

Though I felt sexually attracted to her, my initial interest and admiration for Jena Malone was mainly based on her work and achievement as an actress. But the nature of my emotional attachment to her changed after suffering another major disappointment in my private life. As I hadn’t been on a date for a long time, I was filled with an enjoyable and arousing feeling of excitement, anticipation, happiness and nervousness mixed  together, when a nice girl finally agreed to go out with me.

What the actual fuck is wrong with you?! Is anyone feeling sick yet? Yes, you’re still in good company.

The whole narrative reads as if it were complied by a confused and horny teenage boy indulging his fantasy. But it wasn’t; this is a “study” by a grown man whose obsession is being passed off a piece of academic research. It is published in a respected academic journal. I’m finding it difficult to express just how unbelievable it all is.

OK, let’s breathe and start again.

So he never actually met the woman, and presumably he wasn’t hiding in the bushes outside her house with a flask and pair of binoculars, but that does not make his obsession any less disturbing. Stalking as a activity takes many different forms, particularly now with the increase in internet use and our unlimited access to other people’s lives (if you know where to look, wink, wink). This case qualifies as stalking just as much as any other. Perhaps she didn’t know she was being stalked (many women don’t, as it happens) but she was. This man knows everything about her life – intimate details about her past, her finances, her family and her upbringing. He’s no “fan”; he’s a repulsive obsessive. That he attempted to disguise this obsession as academic endeavour, and cynically used a theoretical framework to “explore consumerism”, does not make his obsession any less reprehensible. For crying out loud, he doesn’t even try to mask his motivations half the time!

Anyway, frustrated with having to live my lonely life as an involuntary single again, I started to seek romance and love from a very different source — Jena Malone.

My mind is well and truly boggled.  But creepiness, aside, this “study” has been published as a piece of  academic research. That is incredibly damaging to the academic research community. Cataloguing teenage masturbatory fantasies is not academic research. That is not what we do. Using theoretical terms to “introspect” on your teenage masturbatory fantasises is not academic research. That is not data. And stalking someone, whether in person, on the telly, online, or anywhere else, is not academic research. People like this give the rest of us a very bad name and I for one would like to see the publication of that article challenged.

The article ends:

This experienced ‘bond of emotional closeness’ can at times be strong enough to elicit a feeling of ‘personal friendship’ within the consumer or, in some way, even a feeling of ‘love’ towards the admired celebrity … that can express itself in a parasocial relationship. It also provides an explanation as to why fans sometimes feel enormously disappointed, when their most desired dream of actually meeting the adored celebrity in person comes true, because the celebrity turns out to be a different person in private life or just can’t live up to the (perhaps unrealistic) imaginary person that the consumer has created in one’s own mind.

Jena Malone, are you scared? I would be.

16% think it’s OK for a man to hit his wife? (Trigger warning)

[Trigger warning for violence.]

This piece from alternet.org really doesn’t require much additional comment. A report  (link to PDF) from a group called UN Women has revealed some frightening views on violence towards women,  and includes data on, for example, the massive gender pay gap (particularly between white men and women of colour) and sexual violence against women of colour.

On violence against women:

One of the most shocking statistics in the report? The public perception of gender violence as sometimes acceptable, within the context of marriage. This is from the report’s language: “In the USA, 16 percent of women and men agree that it is sometimes justifiable for a man to beat his wife.”

Sure, 16 percent is a fairly standard number for representing the lunatic fringe of American culture, but the fact that these respondents willingly admit they think it’s okay certainly sheds a disturbing light on why violence against women remains widespread: “Prevalence surveys in the USA show that 22 percent of women have experienced physical violence, and 8 percent have been targeted for sexual violence in their lifetimes.”

On the justice system and the justice system and rape cases:

One of the hindrances to women seeking a fair application of the legal system is a lack of women’s representation in that system’s hierarchy. While three female Supreme Court justices are certainly a step in the right direction, even that huge stride gives women disproportionately small representation. Women are under-represented as prosecutors, judges and police officers throughout North America. Statistics cited by UN Women indicate that “data from 40 countries where women are present in the police, reporting of sexual assault increases.”

…

“Evidence shows that jurors in the USA are especially likely to question the credibility of African American and Latina female witnesses in rape cases.”

On sexual violence towards Native American women:

One other element to these statistics that may be lesser-known is the issue of rape against Native American women, which is astoundingly high. Native American women are more than twice as likely as other women to be raped. One of the things compounding the problem was a confusion over judicial jurisdiction: “Crimes committed by non-Native Americans on reservations often went unpunished, due to uncertainty over which jurisdiction applied. This is thought to have contributed to the high levels of rape of Native American women, Progress shows.“ In other words, a culture of impunity existed.

On the gender pay gap:

We passed Lily Ledbetter, right? So why is this still an issue? Well, the gender pay gap remains at 23 percent in the USA, according to the new fact sheet from UN Women. If that number isn’t dismaying enough, for African American and Latina women, that gap swells to huge proportions: “On average 39 and 48 percent less than white men, respectively.”

It’s well worth reading the full report if you have time (it’s not long), not least because it includes a variety of other striking statistics (e.g., 127 countries do not explicitly criminalize rape within marriage, 61 countries severely restrict women’s rights to abortion), and it should be commended for including some very positive content on recent improvements in women’s rights worldwide.

I’m still reeling from the 16% statistic, mind you.

In brief: Satoshi Kanazawa removed from Psychology Today

Update to yesterday’s post: Get Satoshi Kanazawa out of LSE and off Psychology Today. Psychology Today has now removed Kanazawa as a contributor (links from change.org and colorofchange.org).

Good work. Now to remove him from LSE too.

I’m so glad this arrogant offensive little prick is finally being dealt with.

What I’ve been reading – rock and roll whores, and sexy women aren’t actually human

I’m still trying to process this particular story: girls who like rock and roll are whores (thegloss, hat tip to lastyearsgirl). One should always begin a discussion which involves the word “whore” with the question: “what is a whore”? It’s a much-used term yet I’ve never quite understood what it means. It’s generally directed at those women who have sex and enjoy sex, though if those women are married the term doesn’t apply, as I understand it. So, unmarried women who have and enjoy sex are whores. (So what about lesbians who can’t legally get married in the traditional sense? Or does it just apply to heterosexual females?) There’s also a consideration of the number of partners, I believe, although that number is entirely arbitrary and subjective. I don’t know if five sexual partners makes you a whore, or if it’s 10, or if it’s 20, or if it’s 100. Other behaviours are often discussed also; for example, if a woman likes a drink of an evening, she may be a whore. There’s probably an age consideration also, with younger women arguably more likely to be “labelled” whores than older women, and there could also be an ethnic element in the mix. And, of course, if a man whistles to a woman on the street and comments on her “nice tits” and she ignores him, it’s very likely that he will call her a whore. Because, you know, that’s a complement, right, and she’s a slut for not indulging his ego and god-given patriarchal right to objectify her. But I digress. A whore is anything or anyone you want it to be, m’kay?

In the case of the linked piece, Men’s Health – that pinnacle of philogyny – reports that women are whores if they like rock and roll. Women who listen to Nirvana are more likely to “put out” on the first date than women who listen to Coldplay.* (Yes, seriously!) And why? Because of the lyrics, of course. Cobain was a shagger and Martin is, well, he’s not a shagger. (They do make a semi-interesting point about normalising different sorts of behaviours but it’s impossible to take any of it seriously when it’s all intended to slut-shame.) It is admitted that the study is unscientific. Ahem.

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In somewhat related news, Psychology Today reports that Princeton researchers have found that sexy women are more likely to be seen as sex objects. Why? Because some male brains neurologically deny sexualized women “humanity”. When these men viewed pictures of scantily clad women (that’s the study’s definition of sexiness, by the way), their brains did not perceive them as being fully human. (Other studies have found, you may be interested in noting, that such women are less moral, likeable and intelligent!) A couple of things. First, these men can’t help themselves if they dehumanise a sexy lady because it’s all to do with their brains and their cognition over which they have no control. Irrelevant, it seems, is the patriarchal culture which has permitted them to dehumanise women in the first place. Second, sexy ladies, you only have yourself to blame if you’re not given the respect you deserve; again, remember, it’s the poor menz brains going all awry when they see you. Third, perhaps you just shouldn’t be sexy at all, for your own sake. And, by sexy, don’t forget that we mean scantily clad. If nothing else, you should have a care for what your appearance is doing to these poor blokes whose brains are fried every time they turn the corner. Not a bit wonder they see you as sub-human, you flipping harlot! Psychology Today there, always good for larks.

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* Women who listen to Coldplay have a whole other term in my book but it applies to men also.

What I’ve been reading – burka ban, budget 2011, Ivory Coast horrors, and US revisionist history

Ok, yes, I possibly have been on the Interbets all week. Here’s some of what’s been happening:

• It’s quite unbelievable, still, that France passed the “Ban on the Burka” law last week, but it did. Needless to add, there was outrage. The irony of telling women that they’re not allowed to wear what a patriarchal culture tells them to wear is not lost on Sarkozy, I’m sure, even if he is brainless. You cannot beat oppression with oppression. (Though we shouldn’t fool ourselves that Sarkozy et al were thinking of the women at all here. No, this is thinly veiled – pun intended - Islamophobia at its best.) And as if it’s not offensive enough as it is, the Guardian reported that refusing to comply with the ban will result in a fine or a condition to have lessons in “French citizenship”.  Arrange the following words in a sentence: off, fuck. Within hours of the ban coming into force, women were being arrested for continuing to wear the veil. Well, you would wouldn’t you! There are several excellent blog posts around the Interweb which discuss this issue in much more detail than I do here: thefword, delilah-mj, msmagazine, and lattelabour for starters.

• Budget 2011 leaves women out in the cold (fawcettsociety). The 2011 budget spells trouble for women in Britain. There’s been talk for a some time now of how the vast array of cuts introduced by the coalition government will affect women, and the picture is now becomnig clearer. First, a piece from the Guardian reveals that job losses have affected women the most and, second, a report produced in partnership with the Fawcett Society (‘The Impact on Women of the Budget 2011’) highlights the following issues. It is not looking good.

- The current economic strategy looks set to undermine gender equality in the labour market: if current trends continue, more women than men in the UK will be unemployed, for the first time since records began.
– The bonfire of regulations will remove the protections that women and men with caring responsibilities need in order to be able to work.
– The increase in the Personal Tax Allowance threshold will not touch the most vulnerable, and among those who will benefit, men will gain £140 million more than women.
– Without action to tackle entrenched gender inequality within the apprenticeship sector, where women earn on average 21 per cent less than men,  the Government’s flagship expansion in apprenticeships and training opportunities will not improve the employment opportunities young women face and do nothing for older women.
– The businesses set to benefit most from new tax breaks and other incentives are typically owned and invested in by men while schemes to support women in business are scrapped.

• The Ivory Coast standoff ends, but the nightmare for women continues (msmagazine). Most mornings when I wake up, I’m inclined to be rather discontent with my lot for a few minutes before I come to (I’m tired, it’s cold, I have too much to do; that sort of thing). Reading about the women in the Ivory Coast reminds me that I don’t even know I’m born. Though the conflict in the Ivory Coast has come to an end now, women and girls there are still being persecuted (kidnapped, beaten up and raped) daily. They’ve been through all of this before in 2004 and they’re going through it all again. And we don’t know the half of it.

Pender [a gender-based violence Technical Advisor for IRC] conveyed reports from women of gang rapes, rapes of entire families and sexual slavery, as women and girls are “taken as wives” for weeks at a time. “These women have experienced things that we cannot even imagine–and many for the second time,” said Pender. The collective memory of rape and violence from the last Ivorian war, in 2004, is still fresh. In fact, the recollection of “what happened last time,” and the threat of new violence has driven many girls and women to flee.

• Finally, Americans seem to [want to] forget slavery (prospect). When a research centre asked why the American Civil War took place, a frightening number of respondents answered that they thought it was about the rights of states. The reason for the war is disputed, of course, but even I (a European)  know that slavery was as central a reason as any other.

That so many young Americans believe a revisionist account of the Civil War is, if anything, another sign of our collective refusal to deal with our difficult past. Slaves built the White House and fueled Wall Street, but we want nothing more than to forget slavery and the central role it played in our nation’s history.

Couple this finding with the recent revisionist adaption of Huckleberry Finn (to remove the n-word) and one wonders if America wants to forget all about its sordid past altogether. I hope not.

Daily Mail says mothers should stay at home

Yesterday saw yet more “women should know their place” propaganda from the Daily Mail. The Mail reported from a recent meta-analysis that children suffer when mothers return to work in the year after giving birth:

Youngsters are less likely to succeed at school if their mothers return to work within a year of their birth, according to a major study. Children of mothers who resume work during their first year of life end up faring worse in formal exams and show signs of being more disruptive. The child’s success was particularly affected if the mother’s work was full-time, the study spanning five decades found.

Unsurprisingly, the Mail has taken some of the the findings from this meta-analysis and construed them for its own ends. It neglects to point out, for example, that issues around socio-economic status and family structure are equally important.

This message from the Mail resonates with John Bowlby’s thesis in the the 1940s when he conducted research on child development and “found” that mothers should stay at home for their children’s benefit. It transpired that Bowlby’s research was part of a wider government campaign to force women back into the home after WWII so that men returning from the war could regain employment. There is every reason to believe now that that the Daily Mail has the same agenda. Indeed, this agenda may be an indication of the current government plans in the coming years. It is now believed that women will suffer most from the financial cuts which were recently announced, and will be most likely to lose their jobs, so it is all too plausible that the government is planning to force women back into the home under the pretence of “child welfare” in order to alleviate pressure on the economy. Such an agenda would never be explicit, of course, but I don’t have any doubts that Cameron is devious enough to exact it. We will have to wait and see.

Are there any no-go, research-not-allowed areas?

Attacking what academics choose to research and how they do it seems slightly odd to me. I have no romantic ideas about freedom of academic thought but I do suppose people end up researching general areas in general ways because they are drawn to them. I think of research as an endless stream of fairly random coloured bits that sometimes come together to fill in part of a big picture we will never comprehend. Time passes and the shapes we thought we had figured out change, but new research brings new bits of understanding.

This is a very interesting post from Laura Agustín about academic research and comes on the back of a comment by Julie Bindel who criticised the author’s research on sex workers stating that there “was a lot of terrible anthropological research concerning women in the sex industry, and that they should not be treated as an anthropological field research group”. Agustin counters the argument, in part, by suggesting that it is not only anthropologists who research sex worker, and that it may be that Bindel is criticising a certain research method (ethnography). Agustin asked the question: What does it mean to suggest any subject should not be researched? I ask the same question here.

As an academic researcher who conducts research with vulnerable people, I am constantly aware of the ethics of such research and the effect that the research may have on the participants. I am, after all, going into their world from a very privileged position and I have to ensure, for example, that the research is not exploitative of, or will cause any distress to, participants. Indeed, when researchers are seeking ethical approval for their work, one of the main stumbling blocks is around the effects of the study on potentially vulnerable groups. But does that, simply put, mean that there are, or that there should be, no-go research areas?

In short, are there areas/ groups that should not be researched? And why?

Anti-depressants now kill your unborn child

There’s one thing I’m tired of and that’s hearing how ‘research’ has found that anti-depressants are bad for you. (Do you know if you take them for too long, your limbs fall off one by one?) Every time I read such a finding, I think of Tom Cruise’s rant about anti-depressants and how evil they are. I mean, for the love of the Gods (of Scientology), if Tom Cruise says it’s wrong, we know it must be right.

Anyway, the latest anti-anti-depressants decree maintains that anti-depressants are linked with a higher risk of miscarriage. The study, which was conducted at the the University of Montreal, examined 69,742 women from a a pregnancy register compiled in Quebec, 5,124 of whom had had a miscarriage. Among these women, 5.5% had had at least one prescription for an anti-depressant during their pregnancy, compared with 2.7% of the control group (presumably, those who were not on anti-depressants). Researchers calculated that those women who were on anti-depressants had a 68% higher risk of miscarriage than those who were not, and concluded that the findings indicate that the risk was greater for women who used two or more classes of anti-depressants.

Now, I don’t know the details of how these researchers did their analysis, but I’ve done some statistical analysis myself in my time. I’m thinking that it’s fairly unlikely that the very small proportional difference between those women who miscarried who were on anti-depressants and those who were not (5.5% vs. 2.7%) would be statistically significant, never mind that the likelihood of the former miscarrying was 68% higher. The difference between the two is so marginal that I cannot see where they could have got 68%. They also have not indicated how many women who were not on anti-depressants miscarried or how may who were did not. There is a lot more going in here than you first think.

And ultimately, this isn’t about warning the medical fraternity of the dangers of anti-depressants, it’s about contributing further to the swell of ‘rules’ that come from the medical industry which dictate what women are and are not allowed to do with their bodies. They should breast-feed, they should not be given drugs during birth, they should eat greens, they should not have caffeine. The lists go on and on and your choice during your pregnancy is constantly mediated by what ‘science’ dictates to you to do. This latest decree is particularly dangerous, however, because depression during pregnancy is very common and it is considerably more serious and important to consider than the effects of the odd cappuccino. It’s all too possible that new research will be released next week which will refute these findings and carry with it another rule about pregnancy, but we have to wait for that with baited breath.

In the meantime, I’d like to see a study coming out which concludes that women know what’s best for their own bodies, whether they’re pregnant or not, and that the decisions on what they do with their bodies should be left to them.