Thank you New York

On Sunday, New York state started performing gay marriages. New York is the most populous state of the union to have gay marriage, not just a Civil Union. Its very cool. I'm very excited. Here are some interviews from activists and couples from the day.

A minor point that caught my attention, listening to the news coverage: I really like the line being used at the end of marriage ceremonies by Mayor Bloomberg.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg: "And now for the moment that you have all been waiting for. Do you, John, solemnly declare that you take Jonathan to be your spouse? Do you promise to love, cherish and keep him for as long as you both shall live?"

John Feinblatt, groom: "I do."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg: "By the powers vested in me by the state of New York, I pronounce you both married."

Read that again. "Pronounce you both married." The equality of that statement soothes my nerves. Nothing like starting out the state recognition of one's relationship symbolically on equal footing.

Financial issues in 2-body problems

Mathgirl commented

As for the argument, "you have two incomes, use them to buy time", well, it depends on the context.

If the two people in the couple live appart, this is not so realistic, because these two people have to maintain two households and commute to see each other from time to time. In fact, maybe you can add some comments to how you do it, I never done the long distance since after Toddler was born.

If everybody lives under the same roof, this is more possible, but still depends. In Canada professor salaries are low and pay a lot of taxes, so that doesn't apply to us: we can afford the regular daycare, but we can't afford a nanny, for instance.

I think the argument about having a lot of income in a dual academic couple primarily applies to both adults living in the same household. I should have specified. But there are a few words to be said about a 2 (+ epsilon) body problem.

However, I've seen couples make cross country commuting work on dual graduate student salaries (albeit without a child.) What they have sacrificed is having anything in terms of savings. Also, the particular people in mind all worked outside of academia for several years before entering graduate school, so they started eating into their savings from that period of their lives.

Some things I've learned about long distance relationship finances:

1) Buy tickets long in advance. I've been bitten in the pocketbook because I've tried to buy tickets for the entire term starting at the beginning of the term. All but the last few weeks of the term were more expensive than they had to be if I had been on the ball. Frequent flier programs, credit cards that earn miles, AAA discounts all help.

2) Live within your graduate student means. Epsilon was born a few months after I stopped being a graduate student. Therefore, we never got out of the habit of living like graduate students. All of the extra money from first my salary, and then my partner's has gone either into childcare, savings, commuting or a second rent.

3) All time saving devices are not created equal. For instance, there are different types of daycare that come at different prices. Nannies and large daycare centers that care for dozens of children at several different age groups tend to be more expensive than day cares run out of people's homes. Depending on what you want and need out of day care, the latter may be sufficient. We are saving about $900/mo by choosing the latter option.

Similarly, buying time on food prep does not have to mean eating out all the time, which breaks both my fiscal and caloric budget. Take a second look at the deli section and frozen foods section of your local grocery stores for partially prepared foods. We found, on warm days that we could combine Epsilon's walk (back when he still enjoyed going for a stroll in a stroller) with a run to the local grocery store for a loaf of fresh bread and soup, cheese, fruit and tomatoes. This was a much more enjoyable dinner to eat on the lawn than going out to the local upscale burger joint. Sometimes there are small catering businesses that have meal plans, where they deliver X meals/week, delivered to your house.

In January, when our 2-body problem gets bad again, I'm planning on hiring someone to come by the house once a week for a few hours to clean. As long as I can control the amount of mess that Epsilon and I make, we can get by with just a few hours a week. Figure out where the steep changes in the price points are, and see if you can work within those ranges.

4) Utilize your housing space. If you are about to move, or if you have an extra room that is under utilized, consider rearranging space in your house to have a house mate. When we moved to this job, we got a 2 bedroom house, with the knowledge that Epsilon would probably want his own bedroom by the time we had to move again. In the mean while, we rented the spare room out to an acquaintance with the agreement that part of her rent would be paid in childcare. This solved the problem of not having outside the home child care for Epsilon during the first several months of his life. After she moved out, and while Epsilon was living with my partner, we rented the spare room out as a temporary sublet. This was also a solution to my unease of leaving the house completely empty for weeks at a time when I was away. If you are in an urban area, Craigslist is a great resource for finding matches.

5) Be creative. Epsilon is a very early riser. At one point, I paid the aforementioned house mate to come by and take him in the mornings so I could sleep in until the sun had risen.

The ironic fact about our budgeting is that the biggest crunches we've felt the for paying our credit cards has been when our respective universities budget offices haven't refunded us for our conference travel. It's really hard to hold a buffer of a few thousand dollars in the bank account for several months because the university is swamped with reimbursement.

When a man talks about work family balance: What they perceived

This is the third part in a story about my partner being asked to give a talk about work family balance at a summer school he was helping to organize. For the first 2 parts, see here and here.

The demographics of my partner's audience was completely male, even though the conference attendees were about 1/3 female, only males came to his talk. Some of them had children. Some of them had 2 body problems. Some of them were single but hoped that this would be an issue that would affect them in the future.

Given this audience, my partner took the opportunity to emphasize the point that if the goal is to further both careers, then one needs to take into account the difference in perception that our colleagues put on a male taking care of a child versus a female. Thus, it probably makes sense for the male to do more than half of the child care, especially things which require missing work.

The point that faced the most resistance, to his surprise, was the statement that "you will have a lot of money in a dual academic household. Use that money to buy time when you are in a tough 2-body problem, or have a newborn." For some reason, the meme of the "poor academic" was stronger than any comparison to household income percentiles in the US.

The demographics of his audience concerned him. Did women not feel comfortable coming to the talk? In our experience, men our generation in dual academic situations gripe about the difficulties as much as women do, but the discussion tends to take place in more gendered settings. This may be driven by the fact that women don't want to expose this part of their life in front of (possibly senior) men. Or it may be driven by something else.

Did the women feel like a male speaker may not have as much to offer on advice as a female speaker does? I know that I would be biased against going to hear a male speaker on this issue because of a fear of inexperience or latent sexism in the talk.

Given the relatively small sample size, did the talk happen to be more irrelevant for the female attendees than the males?

It turned out that the first case was true for at least two women, who privately sought my partner out for questioning later.

On the whole, the experience was enlightening for my partner, and probably for the audience. From where I stand, it raises to mind the question of the need for women's spaces in academia. It would be great if men could come to "women's events" to get the great advice given there on career advancement, asking for letters of recommendation, grant writing, etc. But it only takes one person denying the existence of the gendered problems that are also discussed at these forums to turn it into a hostile environment. I've seen successful attempts at discussing gender issues to a general audience in non-academic settings, but those have usually involved a trained mediator running the discussion. I don't trust any of my untrained colleagues to be able to undertake such a task. On the other hand, historically, in other arenas, having a "minority only" space has run the risk of further marginalizing the issues that the minority only group is trying to address. I don't know how to proceed.

When a man talks about work/family balance: What he said

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my partner being given a opportunity to address a group of young academics in his field about work family balance.

I thought it was a novel idea that a summer school would have a session on such a topic at all, and even more so that they would choose a male to address the audience on what is generally relegated to an issue that concerns female academics. I later learned that the main reason for choosing a male was because none of the female organizers currently had two-body problems or children to balance in their careers.

The choice of a male to deliver this hour long session has an impact on who will attend, what can be said, and how it will be received. This post is about what my partner said. Tomorrow's post will be on how the session was perceived (at least, as far as he could read the tea leaves.)

Here's what he had to say

The following is a summary of what I had prepared to say (the makeup of the audience took me some distance from what I had planned). The point of the planned part was to get conversation started. I prefaced the talk with the statement that it is primarily aimed at people in dual academic couples, though probably not exclusively useful to such.

I started with two-body problem advice.
1. Compromise, but not too much - the long term career costs of starting at a lower ranked school can be very large.
2. Think very carefully before planning to finish your dissertation in the city of partner's job - unlesss things are really well set up, it can go disastrously wrong.
3. Be ready to spend several consecutive years on the market looking for 2 positions at the same place (or at least places in the same city).

Then came lots of talk about kids. Again nothing which should be particularly surprising.
1. They take lots and lots of time (well more than a one person-year clock extension).
2. A dual academic incomes is a lot of money on any realistic scale and you can buy time in many ways.
3. Think about what is important and communicate it well ahead of time.
4. Neither of you has been a parent before (I assume) so neither has any more knowledge or expertise on the topic.
5. Remember that small choices can add up, it is easy to accidentally let one career become secondary unless actively monitoring the situation.

Finally, think about gender perceptions in what you do, since the same behavior can be seen as being a good dad or being a mom with the wrong priorities.
1. It is far safer for me to talk about family at a conference over drinks with a bunch of men than it would be for BD to do so.
2. As far as I can tell, the career related perception costs of my saying I can't do something for family related reasons are far smaller than those BD faces. This is magnified if one of us has to single parent for a period.
3. If the goal is two academic careers it might make sense to try to equate career costs, which leave the male in the (assumed heterosexual) couple doing the majority of the child rearing. This obviously isn't the only criterion to optimize over, but it probably deserves consideration.

When I first posted about the fact that he had this opportunity, I asked you, dear readers, for ideas of what he should talk about. I got a few responses, for which, we are grateful. Now I ask, is there anything you wish he would have said, or not said, or planned to have said differently?

Messaging

The following is inspired by this post by I Blame the Patriarchy.

Unlike the discussion on the post, I make no claims as to all women being victims, and all men being oppressors. In fact, in the following story I have no desire to blame anyone, or more accurately, I have a desire to place blame on both parties (this concerns one man).

Both he and I were well aware of the risks of sex, and were both trying to be conscious of the messages we grew up with. Different messages tailored for our different 23rd chromosomes. And both of us tried and failed to overcome those messages.

Do the messages place one party at an advantage over the other? Yes. Does it hurt the billions of people who do not have the privilege or support to tackle this inequity? Yes. Does this make the majority of hetero sex rape? No. Is it reason for pause and to examine the meaning of consent? Yes. Can this new ideal of consent from equal positions be legislated or even morally mandated? I don't see a way to do so without treading on a host of other hard fought for rights.
At the end of the day, this has to be a personal journey for both parties to respect themselves and each other in a relationship. I realize that from an activist perspective, that is a cop-out stance. But I don't see another way.

-----

To every time I gave in a little
Because the condom was out of reach
Or my time of month was deemed safe.

To the discussion about using protection
In polyamorous love-making
That concluded in the negative,
Followed by the decision to doff my earings
Because they might poke someone.

I drink to your memory.

A few bits of entertaining science

I'll have some real content in a bit, once I catch my breath from these last few weeks.

In the mean time, here's an article that caught my intention recently, mostly because of the abstract and title:

"The Number of Same-Sex Marriages in a Perfectly Bisexual Population is Asymptotically Normal"

And while I'm on the topic of papers that are probably saying something important, but are using a silly model to make the point, see this one on vampires from a few years back.

"Macroeconomic Policy and the Optimal Destruction of Vampires"

And finally, brought to my attention from Funk Dr. X, a song about human sexuality. I'm not sure what I think of it on either the scientific or feminist axes, but it's fun.

Torchwood

Torchwood is a spinoff off of the Dr. Who science fiction series, being aired by the BBC, CBC, and various other stations around the world. It recently started a new 10 show mini-series.

If you've never seen Dr. Who, it is a science fiction show that has aired at various points over the last 5 decades about a wandering time traveler, his (mostly human) companions and their adventures. The science is humorously bad (but it doesn't take itself seriously), but the thing about Dr. Who that distinguishes it from other science fiction is the Doctor's strong pacifist streak. So faced with palace coups, villanous mad scientists or everly enthusiastic British military outfits, the Doctor often comes up with clever ways of outsmarting them.

Torchwood follows the adventures of Captain Jack Harkness*, a gender and species blind Don Juan, who once traveled with the Doctor. Like the Doctor, Captain Jack is virtually invincible. Unlike the Doctor, he would rather eradicate than negotiate with any alien menace. While the adventures of Dr. Who mainly take place in London, the first several seasons of Torchwood took place in Cardiff. Apparently this itself is a joke, as Cardiff seems to have a reputation of being boring. Why would aliens invade there?

The first 2 season's of Torchwood had little to say for themselves except this episode, and the fact that Captain Jack's universal lust, which is far greater than anything either captain of either Enterprise could acheive, often makes the show sweetly homo-erotic.

The third season, a 5 show mini-series, is brilliant.

This season starts with Captain Jack showing signs of mortality, while everyone else on earth seems to be invincible. There is a new plot twist to bring the action to the US. The sexual undercurrent of the rest of the series is toned down/missing, at least so far. But there are some great scenes, such as a 6 month old wearing earmuffs grinning from ear to ear in her mother's arms as Mum tries to shoot down a helicopter. Good fun. I look forward to the rest of the series.


*If you are interested in Dr. Who, Netflix has many of the episodes streaming. And Captain Jack first appears in the series in what might be the best episode produced in the last 7 years.