Do you know your mind?

I am about halfway through the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  It’s about our sense of judgement and decision making processes.  He mentions an on-going study by Harvard University, Project Implicit, that analyzes people’s implicit associations, the snap judgements people make that they may not even realize.  I think the first test was for race, but now there are several (gender-science, weight, religion, age).

“It is well known that people don’t always ’speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology.

This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.”

I started with the Light Skin / Dark Skin IAT.  “Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as ’slight’, ‘moderate’, ’strong’, or ‘little to no preference’.”  My results …

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.

While I find this information annoying I’m not really surprised.  One passage in Blink says, “The disturbing thing about the test is that it shows that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values.  As it turns out, for example, of the fifty thousand African Americans who have taken the Race IAT so far, about half of them, like me, have stronger associations with whites than blacks.  How could we not?  We live in North America, where we are surrounded ever day by cultural messages linking white with good.”  Oh good – I can blame the media.

There’s good news though.  I also took the Sexuality IAT.  My results were similar to 3% of the population.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Gay People compared to Straight People.

If 10% of the population is gay then I actually like gay people more than most gay people do. 

Me and Kathy Griffin, we just love the gays.

Strangely …

Suze Orman annoys me less now that I know she’s a lesbian.

New York Times Magazine  Feb. 25, 2007

Are you married? I’m in a relationship with life. My life is just out there. I’m on the road every day. I love my life.

Meaning what? Do you live with anyone? K.T. is my life partner. K.T. stands for Kathy Travis. We’re going on seven years. I have never been with a man in my whole life. I’m still a 55-year-old virgin.

Would you like to get married to K.T.? Yes. Absolutely. Both of us have millions of dollars in our name. It’s killing me that upon my death, K.T. is going to lose 50 percent of everything I have to estate taxes. Or vice versa.

Are there gay Girl Scouts and should I buy cookies?

It’s that most wonderful time of the year.

I haven’t purchased Girl Scout cookies for several years because I didn’t know anyone with children, but my mom usually gets around to sending a box in May or so.  I am now working in a building with many people with children and there are “Cookies!” signs up all over.  I was going to order a couple of boxes, but then I started wondering if the Girl Scouts have the same anti-gay policies as the Boy Scouts (in case you missed it, here is an article about the Supreme Court ruling on the Boy Scouts barring gay troop leaders and A Reveiw of BSA’s Gay Policy.) 

Now, I don’t think the Girl Scouts, whose stated goal is ” in an accepting and nurturing environment, girls build character and skills for success in the real world” should become consumed with pushing any particular political agenda, but I’m not about to give one pretty penny to an organization with a policy of discrimination against my favorite group of people. 

The official website for Girl Scouts of America does not state a policy on the topic of lesbian members and leadership, so I poked around for awhile on the World Wide Web.  (I did learn from the website that two-thirds of female members of Congress have been Girl Scouts.) 

For the record, as a child I spent a couple of fairly uninspiring years in Brownies.  I have fuzzy memories of a week-long summer Brownie day camp tie-dying t-shirts and roasting bananas with chocolate and marshmallows.  During afternoon meetings I remember cross-stitching a cutesy puppy.  Or rather, not cross-stitching a puppy – what about the hiking and fire making, hello?  That was 1982; now the girls earn badges in aerospace and computers.  I graduated to Girl Scouts in third grade just as I was entering a new school with a bunch of Mean Girls and thus quickly dropped out.  So much for my senatorial career.  

Note:  I was hoping to insert a picture here of some punk rock Girl Scout flipping the bird, but I was afraid to do an image search for “Bad Girl Scout.”

Anyway, here’s what I found on the gay topic:

Girl Scouts on GLBTQ.com

“Although at various times in its history, the Girl Scouts organization and affiliated troops have expressed fears about homosexuals working with children and have conducted witch-hunts to purge lesbians from positions of leadership, the Girl Scouts of the U. S. A. has had an inclusive non-discrimination policy since 1980.”

“Though many feel that the Girl Scouts’ policy–which states that the organization does not discriminate or intrude into personal issues–amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about lesbians in scouting, it is still remarkably open for a young people’s organization in the United States.”

Girl Scouts of the USA by Debra L. Stang

“In a letter sent to parents, Girl Scouts states, “The Girl Scout organization does not discriminate, but we do not endorse any particular lifestyle and we do not recruit lesbians as a group.”

“Only about two dozen of the 300+ Girl Scouts Councils have adopted explicit non-discrimination policies.  The rest operate on a vague “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. Each Council is also allowed to interpret Girl Scouts rules in its own way.” … “Unlike Boy Scouts of America, which remains mired in unabashed bigotry, Girl Scouts of the USA is trying to move towards a policy of acceptance.”

 Girl Scouts Blazing Its Own Trail On Lesbian Issue by Barbara Raab

“It’s a non-issue for us,” said Lori Arguelles, communications director, who stressed that rigorous background checks are required for all staff and volunteer leaders. “We don’t ask people to declare X, Y, or Z. It’s not in our makeup to have to define people like that. The Boy Scouts believes that to be gay is somehow immoral. That is not our feeling.”

The councils, (spokesperson) Christie-Ach added, are solely responsible for the hiring and training of staff, consistent with the national policies, but always, she says, subject to interpretation “depending on community norms.”

“Girl Scouts is not like McDonald’s,” she added, “The councils are not franchises. We allow Girl Scout councils to know best how to operate in their communities. That’s what our founder wanted.”

 

Fair enough.  I look forward to enjoying some Shortbreads or new-fangled Lemonades with my tea.   Plus, there’s just nothing better than discovering half of tube of frozen thin mints in July.