Listen, street corner shoe-shine guy, it's not that I don't appreciate the offer. It's just that these boots are supposed to look a little beat up, that's kind of the point.
I'm sure you've got skillz, and I know you work hard, and $3 is really pretty good. Those tweens back in Plaza Grande charged like...twice that.
But the last time I let someone who wasn't me shine my shoes, they ended up an entirely different color. I mean sure, I should have seen it coming. Street children in a plaza in Quito probably can't tell the difference between brown and cordovan. I imagine you can, in fact I think I saw distinct stains of each on your apron. But since that fateful Ecuadoran afternoon, no one puts polish on my shoes but me.
Also, and I hate to be pedantic, but once someone turns down your (admittedly cheap) services, you're probably not going to have any better results with "Well lemme get you to buy me a hot dog for $3, then," that's not an effective use of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. And I know, for a fact, that that hot dog would become a dog/chips/drink meal the second we got to the cart. You're not gonna grift me like that. Never again.
But I wish you the best, hopefully someone less finicky than me will hire you for a quick shine-up.
Also, good luck with the imminent turf war between you and that well-dressed young blood with the sound system halfway up the block. Sure, he's more technological, and he drapes a towel over his bent forearm like a waiter at a fancy restaurant, but you've had that spot WAY longer. Frankly, I prefer your old-school barking to his DJ-style pronouncements that he recorded himself and repeats aloud while it plays.
And he's going to learn pretty quick how hard it is to get cordovan stains out of a suit jacket.
--AWG
...on a crooked corner of a dirty street.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Hillary(?) for President!(?)
It's become increasingly clear that Hillary Clinton is going to be THE Democratic candidate for 2016, and increasingly clear how much she wasn't the first choice for a lot of people.
I can't decide how I should feel. I mean, sure, she's uniquely qualified for the job. Former first lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, it's almost as though the White House is the only logical next step for her.
But somehow... I can't get but so excited about her candidacy, which was officially announced on Sunday. And I suspect I'm not alone there. Maybe she's just, I don't know, old news?
A lot of people wanted Elizabeth Warren to run, and are still deluding themselves that she will. She won't. Honestly, I'm okay with this. We need more Elizabeth Warrens in the Senate, not less. She can do much more good as a progressive warrior in the legislative branch. Warren's voice provides an inspiring counter-narrative in the Senate where, quite frankly, progressive leaders can almost never match the soaring, firebrand rhetoric of Tea Party Republicans. To win a presidential bid, Warren would have to move much further to the center, and that would be dangerous in a country where conservatives are being pushed further and further to the right.
In fact, I imagine if you took an Elizabeth Warren, ran her through the machinery of a presidential campaign and years of Washington executive-branch insider politics, she'd come out looking and sounding a lot like...well...Hillary Clinton. We've already got one of her.
Incidentally, that's probably going to be Hillary's biggest weakness in 2016- the perception that she's just another Washington insider out of touch with everyday America. Clearly, she's already got a strategy in place to blunt this edge, I mean just take a look at her campaign video:
She's going heavy on that personal touch, and plans to emphasize that the Hillary you think you know, the political juggernaut, household name, and all-around HBIC is only one side of her- the other is a lifelong, compassionate advocate for regular ol' folks trying to make a better life for themselves and the people who depend on them.
Maybe that will help, maybe it won't.
But what's almost certain to make skeptical progressives line up behind Hillary* is stuff like this article casting Marco Rubio as the Republican Barack Obama, young, "diverse," so to speak, savvy, an inspiring speaker, not a complete wingnut, similar to Hillary in that he's the "next best thing" for Tea Party hardliners.
And as much as I'd like to say that Rubio's sawdust-mouth moment will probably tank his campaign before it ever truly starts, the reality is that continuing to refer to that little gaffe will just make his opponents look mean-spirited and shallow.
Whatever the state of his TV skills, Rubio's stance on most issues: nix the ACA, keep our heads in the sand on climate change, give corporations free reign over...everything, etc. should, at least, be enough to frighten otherwise unenthusiastic progressives into turning out for Hillary come next Fall.
Say it with me now: Hillary... for President...!
-AWG
*Other than thinking it would be kind of cool to elect our first woman president right after our first black president. Cause you know, there's that.
...or maybe you were the ocean...
I can't decide how I should feel. I mean, sure, she's uniquely qualified for the job. Former first lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, it's almost as though the White House is the only logical next step for her.
But somehow... I can't get but so excited about her candidacy, which was officially announced on Sunday. And I suspect I'm not alone there. Maybe she's just, I don't know, old news?
A lot of people wanted Elizabeth Warren to run, and are still deluding themselves that she will. She won't. Honestly, I'm okay with this. We need more Elizabeth Warrens in the Senate, not less. She can do much more good as a progressive warrior in the legislative branch. Warren's voice provides an inspiring counter-narrative in the Senate where, quite frankly, progressive leaders can almost never match the soaring, firebrand rhetoric of Tea Party Republicans. To win a presidential bid, Warren would have to move much further to the center, and that would be dangerous in a country where conservatives are being pushed further and further to the right.
In fact, I imagine if you took an Elizabeth Warren, ran her through the machinery of a presidential campaign and years of Washington executive-branch insider politics, she'd come out looking and sounding a lot like...well...Hillary Clinton. We've already got one of her.
Incidentally, that's probably going to be Hillary's biggest weakness in 2016- the perception that she's just another Washington insider out of touch with everyday America. Clearly, she's already got a strategy in place to blunt this edge, I mean just take a look at her campaign video:
She's going heavy on that personal touch, and plans to emphasize that the Hillary you think you know, the political juggernaut, household name, and all-around HBIC is only one side of her- the other is a lifelong, compassionate advocate for regular ol' folks trying to make a better life for themselves and the people who depend on them.
Maybe that will help, maybe it won't.
But what's almost certain to make skeptical progressives line up behind Hillary* is stuff like this article casting Marco Rubio as the Republican Barack Obama, young, "diverse," so to speak, savvy, an inspiring speaker, not a complete wingnut, similar to Hillary in that he's the "next best thing" for Tea Party hardliners.
And as much as I'd like to say that Rubio's sawdust-mouth moment will probably tank his campaign before it ever truly starts, the reality is that continuing to refer to that little gaffe will just make his opponents look mean-spirited and shallow.
Whatever the state of his TV skills, Rubio's stance on most issues: nix the ACA, keep our heads in the sand on climate change, give corporations free reign over...everything, etc. should, at least, be enough to frighten otherwise unenthusiastic progressives into turning out for Hillary come next Fall.
Say it with me now: Hillary... for President...!
-AWG
*Other than thinking it would be kind of cool to elect our first woman president right after our first black president. Cause you know, there's that.
...or maybe you were the ocean...
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
There Ought to Be A Law
I woke up to more rain.
Normally I wouldn't care, but I'm on dog-watch this week so we had to go out to pee. Fortunately, Zeus is almost as terrified of water falling from the sky as water sitting on the ground. He did his business like, real quick, and then we went back inside to start the day.
It was one of those mornings where the air seems strangely warm and close despite (or because of?) the rain. Amanda, having lived in Southeast Asia, loves a warm rain. Me? I feel like I'm suffocating. Maybe I should make her walk the dog.
I've gotten so bad at dealing with temperatures and humidity levels that fall outside a really narrow range.* As a kid, none of it mattered. I was going to go out and run around anyway. But now that I'm a "grown-up," no matter how uncomfortable it is out, I still gotta put on a tie and climb the hill to the train station.
On the bright side, the shortened dog-walk meant I had time to eat breakfast at home for a change. Toasted everything bagel with avocado and tomato, what could be better? And I still managed to catch the bus to the Metro, minimizing my time getting rained on. (Seriously, what the hell has happened to me?)
There ought to be a law giving us all the day off from work when it's like this outside. Think about it. Foul weather puts people in a foul mood, I mean it can't be all delicious bagel breakfasts for everyone all the time, and that's gotta have some negative impact on, like, productivity or something. And that's without taking into account the worse traffic, crashes and stuff.
How about it, presidential candidates? Administrative rain closures for federal/quasi-federal employees? I'd be willing to take that over our next cost-of-living raise.
--AWG
*Of warmth, that is. It can get as cold as you please, and I'm fine with it.
...her picture was on the back of a pack of cigarettes...
Normally I wouldn't care, but I'm on dog-watch this week so we had to go out to pee. Fortunately, Zeus is almost as terrified of water falling from the sky as water sitting on the ground. He did his business like, real quick, and then we went back inside to start the day.
It was one of those mornings where the air seems strangely warm and close despite (or because of?) the rain. Amanda, having lived in Southeast Asia, loves a warm rain. Me? I feel like I'm suffocating. Maybe I should make her walk the dog.
I've gotten so bad at dealing with temperatures and humidity levels that fall outside a really narrow range.* As a kid, none of it mattered. I was going to go out and run around anyway. But now that I'm a "grown-up," no matter how uncomfortable it is out, I still gotta put on a tie and climb the hill to the train station.
On the bright side, the shortened dog-walk meant I had time to eat breakfast at home for a change. Toasted everything bagel with avocado and tomato, what could be better? And I still managed to catch the bus to the Metro, minimizing my time getting rained on. (Seriously, what the hell has happened to me?)
There ought to be a law giving us all the day off from work when it's like this outside. Think about it. Foul weather puts people in a foul mood, I mean it can't be all delicious bagel breakfasts for everyone all the time, and that's gotta have some negative impact on, like, productivity or something. And that's without taking into account the worse traffic, crashes and stuff.
How about it, presidential candidates? Administrative rain closures for federal/quasi-federal employees? I'd be willing to take that over our next cost-of-living raise.
--AWG
*Of warmth, that is. It can get as cold as you please, and I'm fine with it.
...her picture was on the back of a pack of cigarettes...
Friday, April 3, 2015
Ted Cruz, Back on the Cross
You've really got to hand it to Ted Cruz. He can feign victimhood with the best of them.
CNN today reported Cruz's laments over the backlash over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. RFRA is a piece of legislation so ridiculous and embarrassing that the same man who signed it into law last week, Governor Mike Pence, is already calling for amendments that clarify that the bill is not meant to permit discrimination against LGBT Hoosiers. Pence's repentance likely has a lot to do with the backlash Indiana has faced over the law, not only from citizens, but businesses from Apple and Angie's List to Walmart and the NCAA.
Far be it from Ted Cruz to undercut a fellow republican, but the senator expressed his sorrow over big business' refusal to stand up for
How come it's only called an agenda when it's what your opponents want?
Surely, as a Republican and thus a staunch ally of corporate America by his very nature, Ted Cruz must have heard sometime, from someone, that exclusionary politics are bad for business. Though the law's defenders will tell you it's not intended to be discriminatory at all, it's certainly being perceived that way, and a person's perception is their reality. If you want your business to be competitive, especially at the national level, you have to be seen as appealing and welcoming to the broadest possible cross-section of people. So you want to stay far, far away from supporting laws that even look discriminatory (with a few notable exceptions.) In this context, the business reaction to RFRA is 100% rational and makes perfect sense.
But not to Ted Cruz.
Because in his world, if someone points out the wrongheadedness of something you did, you don't change course or even engage them in discussion. Instead, you double down on your rhetoric. You cast yourself and people who agree with you (hetero, conservative Christians) as the true victims. Those nasty progressives are the intolerant ones, you insist. In so doing, you hope to provoke your supporters into reacting and giving you a few points' boost in the polls.
It's telling that the only businesses defending Indiana's RFRA are certain small outfits run by religious families such as Memories Pizza , whose owner Crystal O'Connor states that the law is not discriminatory, and then in the next breath argues that religious business owners should be allowed to
*Ahem*
Leaving aside the obvious question of what couple, gay or straight, would ever ask a rural pizza joint to cater their wedding (rehearsal dinner, maybe?), how is a law allowing you to refuse to provide services to a gay couple because they are doing a gay thing --getting married to one another-- NOT discriminatory? The fact that O'Connor can persist in that strong a contradiction shows a certain... small-mindedness on the part of RFRA's defenders (read: certain conservative Christians) that I think we can extrapolate straight up to the national level.
The states, at least, can be reasoned with. Governor Pence says he's floored by the backlash against the law, as if he had no idea that it was going to cause trouble. And Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, another Republican, will probably decline to sign the bill until it's changed to be less of an invitation to further marginalize the LGBT community and alienate businesses. A Republican governor of a Southern state could hardly be called the vanguard of the
But where Pence and Hutchinson at least appear to want to make changes to their states' RFRAs to bring them in line with the much looser federal standard, Ted Cruz is having none of it. To hear Cruz (or O'Connor) tell it, it is not discrimination to turn away a gay customer if being gay is against your religion. Real discrimination is requiring that when
 |
| Cross-posted from Doug Muder at the The Weekly Sift, because he's better at this than I am. |
Quick digression: I'm not criticizing Christians as a group, or the faithful in general. To paraphrase Nick Offerman, I have nothing negative to say about faith or prayer- they're both wonderful things, though they happen to not be a big part of my life. My point is that when certain members of privileged groups find their (our, I'm very privileged too) dominance threatened, they (we) sometimes react in a visceral way that they may not intend to be discriminatory. It's simply meant to, you know, reinforce their dominance over other groups.
Increasingly often, those efforts are couched in the language of tolerance or protection from an out-of-control federal government, "activist" judges, or some other nefarious system. The Men's Rights Movement is another example- they believe, among other things, that courts, the military, and other institutions are stacked against men and any attempt to strengthen women's role in society is a direct assault on men, who have been the true victims of inequity all long. A similar thing is happening here, with a small but vocal segment of believers: the relative prevalence of Christianity in America is decreasing, meaning Christianity is threatened. Christian social mores are declining in importance, so America is hostile to Christian values. Institutions are becoming more cognizant of the full range of identity concerns in a pluralistic, multicultural society like the U.S., and by responding accordingly, those institutions are persecuting Christians. We, the faithful, must fight this injustice on every conceivable front.
And Ted Cruz is just the politican/demagogue to lead that fight. Whether Cruz truly believes in the Christian anxiety he gives voice to, or if he's simply playing a character he believes will be attractive to theocrats in the 2016 race, only he could say. Either way, his support for the politics of exclusion and division is likely to cost him dearly down the road. Eventually (and we've all been talking about this for years, so who knows when), Republicans will have to choose between attracting the younger, more left-centrist, less white part of America that represents an increasing share of the electorate, or clinging to a smaller and smaller constituency whose views become more dated with every passing year.
In the meantime, I'll stick with the extreme left-wing agenda that believes "religious freedom" doesn't mean "your (Christian) beliefs trump everyone else's rights to be treated as equals in society."
*Ironically, Crystal O'Connor might be one of the only white, Christian conservatives who can claim victimization at liberal hands. I just read on The Daily Caller that the owners of Memories have been targeted by threats and online harassment by liberals angered by their stance on gay marriage, and have closed down for the time being. No link, because I can't stand that site's firebrand proclamations about socialist-fascists etc., and I don't want all three of you who read this blog adding to their page views. But that sort of behavior is unacceptable. We don't need progressive allies who act without thinking, preach violence, and work to silence opponents instead of convincing them. It's wrong, and it only strengthens the other side's arguments that progressives are the true oppressors.*
--AWG
We'll fumble with the planet, dry the river and then dam it, just persuade me that everything's all right.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
What Does it All Mean?
I had a really strange dream the other night. Not just strange because of the content, but uncommonly vivid besides. Normally, I wouldn't entertain the idea of keeping a dream journal in a blog on the very public internet, but this one was just too good.
Step into my subconscious, if you will. No, right over- yes that's- OK. Far enough.
I snapped into being on my bike on a rainy morning, bent over the handlebars getting seriously aero. I had just gone down a steep, steep ramp into a Metro station. "Damn," I muttered as I hit the landing and worried if my still weak legs could handle the impact. They did, barely.
I dismounted and headed for the train. No 7:00-10:00 AM bike ban in the Metro of my dreams, apparently. I hadn't been on the train for more than a minute before a handful of people began asking me questions about family law, the kind I get at work. Did my best to answer them, simultaneously proud of my dedication and frustrated at being asked to do my job when I wasn't even at my job.
But there was something else too, something had changed. As the doors to the next stop slid closed, I looked down to check on my bike. It was gone! (of course!) In the seconds it took to assist those curious people, someone had apparently removed my hands from the handlebars and walked off with my beloved Two-Wheeled Siege Engine of New England Liberalism!*
Faced with a situation like that, what's a civil servant to do? Well, I don't really know, because time flashed ahead and suddenly I was standing on the National Mall near 7th Street and Jefferson Drive. I suppose I had gone to work in the meantime, but who knows? A man pedaled into view, southbound on 7th. As he grinned and looked around I immediately recognized the blue and black frame and panniers. He had my bike!
Ignoring the pain in my knee and throwing self-preservation to the wind, I half-ran, half-hobbled across the thoroughfare that is 7th Street. Miraculously, I avoided being hit by a car (dream!), and somehow caught up with the thief as he tried to flee, his legs spinning wildly in too low a gear. I tackled him to the ground and he crawled away, and I just didn't have the will to go after him. He would face no justice, but my bike and I were reunited. I felt a great sense of peace...
...which dissipated a moment later, as a cruiser pulled up and a college-age police officer got out. His polite smile barely covered the wariness underneath; he leered at me in the way an animal might regard a predator. In as conversational a tone as he could manage, he asked me why I was on the ground. I explained the events of the past few moments, and he seemed less concerned about my bike being stolen than the mild violence I visited on the thief in order to recover it. I asked, politely, why I was being treated as the aggressor in this situation, and he knelt and picked up one of my kitchen knives, which had suddenly appeared the ground. It was wet with something other than water, and had recently been used on something other than a carrot.
I opened my mouth to protest, but all that came out was a strange, lo-fi sort of electronic music...
It was my alarm. 6:00 AM. No rain, but neither would I be riding my bike today, nor any day soon.
Well, at least it wouldn't be stolen on the Metro.
WHAT??? What does it all mean???
I almost never remember my dreams in that much detail, and when I do, they leave me feeling so strange that I don't take much time to think about them. A couple days on, though, I have some ideas. If I'm honest, the symbolism wasn't even terribly complicated.
The bike-- obviously, I miss riding my bike. I worry that I won't ever be able to again, and if I do, I'm going to be weak and it's probably going to be painful.
The theft-- I also get really frustrated with the Metro. For the national capital of an industrialized power, our train system is really crappy. The system is disintegrating, delays are rampant, and sometimes people get really hurt or outright killed. And they're always warning us that our smartphones or whatever are going to be stolen. Probably by teenagers. I never used to worry about that, but now I'm just as beholden to the slings and arrows of a spiraling transit system as anyone else. And it has a significant effect on my mindset when I arrive at work.
The confrontation-- worse, if someone were to steal something of mine, I probably couldn't run after them. Even when I recovered my bike, it was through sheer dumb luck, as I shouldn't have been able to catch up with him. I've touched before on how much physical fitness and general...capability?... have become part of my identity, and I still haven't really made peace with the fact that that part of me is gone and may not come back.
As for the incident with the cop and the knife, I have NO idea. Maybe I have some hidden angst over the grim state of policing in our country, and my subconscious was trying to reconcile that with the truth that, as a white male, I'm much less likely to be mistreated by police than...pretty much anyone else. It's almost unthinkable, for instance, that a cop would plant a knife at the scene of a scuffle I was involved in and accuse me of using it. Maybe I need to pay some sort of...psychological penance and work for greater social justice.
Or maybe I just had too much cheese in my burrito on Sunday night and I shouldn't read so much into things.
But I really think I'm onto something with that whole police, social justice thing.
--AWG
Ignoring the pain in my knee and throwing self-preservation to the wind, I half-ran, half-hobbled across the thoroughfare that is 7th Street. Miraculously, I avoided being hit by a car (dream!), and somehow caught up with the thief as he tried to flee, his legs spinning wildly in too low a gear. I tackled him to the ground and he crawled away, and I just didn't have the will to go after him. He would face no justice, but my bike and I were reunited. I felt a great sense of peace...
...which dissipated a moment later, as a cruiser pulled up and a college-age police officer got out. His polite smile barely covered the wariness underneath; he leered at me in the way an animal might regard a predator. In as conversational a tone as he could manage, he asked me why I was on the ground. I explained the events of the past few moments, and he seemed less concerned about my bike being stolen than the mild violence I visited on the thief in order to recover it. I asked, politely, why I was being treated as the aggressor in this situation, and he knelt and picked up one of my kitchen knives, which had suddenly appeared the ground. It was wet with something other than water, and had recently been used on something other than a carrot.
I opened my mouth to protest, but all that came out was a strange, lo-fi sort of electronic music...
It was my alarm. 6:00 AM. No rain, but neither would I be riding my bike today, nor any day soon.
Well, at least it wouldn't be stolen on the Metro.
WHAT??? What does it all mean???
I almost never remember my dreams in that much detail, and when I do, they leave me feeling so strange that I don't take much time to think about them. A couple days on, though, I have some ideas. If I'm honest, the symbolism wasn't even terribly complicated.
The bike-- obviously, I miss riding my bike. I worry that I won't ever be able to again, and if I do, I'm going to be weak and it's probably going to be painful.
The theft-- I also get really frustrated with the Metro. For the national capital of an industrialized power, our train system is really crappy. The system is disintegrating, delays are rampant, and sometimes people get really hurt or outright killed. And they're always warning us that our smartphones or whatever are going to be stolen. Probably by teenagers. I never used to worry about that, but now I'm just as beholden to the slings and arrows of a spiraling transit system as anyone else. And it has a significant effect on my mindset when I arrive at work.
The confrontation-- worse, if someone were to steal something of mine, I probably couldn't run after them. Even when I recovered my bike, it was through sheer dumb luck, as I shouldn't have been able to catch up with him. I've touched before on how much physical fitness and general...capability?... have become part of my identity, and I still haven't really made peace with the fact that that part of me is gone and may not come back.
As for the incident with the cop and the knife, I have NO idea. Maybe I have some hidden angst over the grim state of policing in our country, and my subconscious was trying to reconcile that with the truth that, as a white male, I'm much less likely to be mistreated by police than...pretty much anyone else. It's almost unthinkable, for instance, that a cop would plant a knife at the scene of a scuffle I was involved in and accuse me of using it. Maybe I need to pay some sort of...psychological penance and work for greater social justice.
Or maybe I just had too much cheese in my burrito on Sunday night and I shouldn't read so much into things.
But I really think I'm onto something with that whole police, social justice thing.
--AWG
*Not my bike's real name. Her real name is Winona.
It seemed so different than I pictured in my head/ everyone fighting looked exactly like me.
It seemed so different than I pictured in my head/ everyone fighting looked exactly like me.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Callin' Shenanigans: #iamonestudent
Welcome back to "Callin' Shenanigans!" In everyone's favorite Mainer segment, I call out get on a soapbox and wax quasi-intellectual about things I think are even just a little bit dumb.
While reading Doug Muder's excellent news blog The Weekly Sift, I saw he had posted a link to the following "powerful video about men's responsibility for sexual assault," in which college students get real real about the issue.
Now, I agree that this video is excellent in that it calls out us dudes for our persistent tendency to use language that suggests to women that it's THEIR responsibility to avoid being harassed or attacked. Language that casually blames women for sexual assault. What the narrator was saying was so true, even for someone 8 years removed from college, that I found it hard to look directly at his eyes while he told me that meaning well doesn't cut it. It seemed too raw somehow, like I was realizing I wasn't nearly as innocent of oppressive tendencies as I had allowed myself to believe.
My privilege aside, a couple things about the video itself made me itch a bit. And since this is my blog, I get to blow those things way out of proportion.
First, did you really need to make that many sports metaphors in a 6-minute video? You're acting like the only way to get guys to the table on this whole gender equality thing is to make them think they're talking about The Big Game instead.
I call shenanigans. Not every guy thinks and speaks in terms of sports-- base-running, offense/defense mentality, those terms are unhelpful for men who don't or can't relate to that lifestyle, which is going to limit the potential for uptake of the important points the video makes.
It could be argued that the video's target demographic is only that sort of collegiate fraternity <----> athletics axis, the last great adolescent bro-down before you have to go and deal with the "real world." That's traditionally one of the strongest things underpinning the patriarchal aspects of our culture, and it hits men at a critical period in their development. But there's a large (and growing) segment of the male population that doesn't relate to that world and that has its own sinister, often internet-based ways of marginalizing women (think Gamergate.) So basically, the language of the video limits its audience and reach unnecessarily.
A second, and related, point. The man speaking issues multiple demands that men stop lazily relying on a culture permissive of our supposed base aggression and lack of caring. He argues that it's time for us to prove that we have evolved past the point of being cavemen clubbing cavewomen and excusing ourselves because it's just our nature. By debasing women, we create animals of ourselves.
I call shenanigans. He makes an excellent point, of course. But when I sent the video to a friend who shares my low level of sports literacy, his response was "Looks like something I, as a cretinous male, might be able to understand." Yuh.
The narrator invites us to evolve our thinking, but again, his language assumes that we won't understand unless that message is couched in sports terms, because we're dumb guys. It's almost an invitation to revert to outdated, tribal thinking. The message and the messenger appear to be at cross-purposes-- he deploys a vocabulary and a set of metaphors germane to a thought pattern he simultaneously asks us to abandon.
Maybe creating cognitive dissonance was the objective, since it might lead us to really examine our perceptions, which could lead in turn to a positive shift in attitude. I'm just not sure how successful it was. Definitely watch and share the video all the same, since carpet-bombing the male persuasion with several brands of this stuff might just work.
Total shenanigans: 2
Lifetime shenanigans: 4
Bonus shenanigans: I honestly had the urge to call shenanigans on myself a number of times while writing this post. I wondered whether I was really evaluating the video on its own merits, rather than just what I wish it had said, which is like Critical Analysis 101. Was I manufacturing flaws in order to avoid confronting an uncomfortable truth about myself and my entire sex?
No. I'm way too evolved for that.
Thanks for reading.
--AWG
I might be a prototype, but we're both real inside.
While reading Doug Muder's excellent news blog The Weekly Sift, I saw he had posted a link to the following "powerful video about men's responsibility for sexual assault," in which college students get real real about the issue.
Now, I agree that this video is excellent in that it calls out us dudes for our persistent tendency to use language that suggests to women that it's THEIR responsibility to avoid being harassed or attacked. Language that casually blames women for sexual assault. What the narrator was saying was so true, even for someone 8 years removed from college, that I found it hard to look directly at his eyes while he told me that meaning well doesn't cut it. It seemed too raw somehow, like I was realizing I wasn't nearly as innocent of oppressive tendencies as I had allowed myself to believe.
My privilege aside, a couple things about the video itself made me itch a bit. And since this is my blog, I get to blow those things way out of proportion.
First, did you really need to make that many sports metaphors in a 6-minute video? You're acting like the only way to get guys to the table on this whole gender equality thing is to make them think they're talking about The Big Game instead.
I call shenanigans. Not every guy thinks and speaks in terms of sports-- base-running, offense/defense mentality, those terms are unhelpful for men who don't or can't relate to that lifestyle, which is going to limit the potential for uptake of the important points the video makes.
It could be argued that the video's target demographic is only that sort of collegiate fraternity <----> athletics axis, the last great adolescent bro-down before you have to go and deal with the "real world." That's traditionally one of the strongest things underpinning the patriarchal aspects of our culture, and it hits men at a critical period in their development. But there's a large (and growing) segment of the male population that doesn't relate to that world and that has its own sinister, often internet-based ways of marginalizing women (think Gamergate.) So basically, the language of the video limits its audience and reach unnecessarily.
A second, and related, point. The man speaking issues multiple demands that men stop lazily relying on a culture permissive of our supposed base aggression and lack of caring. He argues that it's time for us to prove that we have evolved past the point of being cavemen clubbing cavewomen and excusing ourselves because it's just our nature. By debasing women, we create animals of ourselves.
I call shenanigans. He makes an excellent point, of course. But when I sent the video to a friend who shares my low level of sports literacy, his response was "Looks like something I, as a cretinous male, might be able to understand." Yuh.
 |
| So you're saying... it's MEN that mostly do sexual assaults to women??? |
The narrator invites us to evolve our thinking, but again, his language assumes that we won't understand unless that message is couched in sports terms, because we're dumb guys. It's almost an invitation to revert to outdated, tribal thinking. The message and the messenger appear to be at cross-purposes-- he deploys a vocabulary and a set of metaphors germane to a thought pattern he simultaneously asks us to abandon.
Maybe creating cognitive dissonance was the objective, since it might lead us to really examine our perceptions, which could lead in turn to a positive shift in attitude. I'm just not sure how successful it was. Definitely watch and share the video all the same, since carpet-bombing the male persuasion with several brands of this stuff might just work.
Total shenanigans: 2
Lifetime shenanigans: 4
Bonus shenanigans: I honestly had the urge to call shenanigans on myself a number of times while writing this post. I wondered whether I was really evaluating the video on its own merits, rather than just what I wish it had said, which is like Critical Analysis 101. Was I manufacturing flaws in order to avoid confronting an uncomfortable truth about myself and my entire sex?
No. I'm way too evolved for that.
Thanks for reading.
--AWG
I might be a prototype, but we're both real inside.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
How Many Incidents in a Trend?
I've lived a pretty sheltered life, OK? Never been mugged or attacked (while in the U.S.), never had my house broken into, never even had a cabbie try to rip me off. That I can remember.
But when you live in a city and work in a crowded, public building, you're constantly reminded to maintain "situational awareness," hold your phone with both hands, avoid this or that area at night, and "when you see something, say something."
D.C. used to be known variously as "Drama City" and the "murder capital" of America during the 80s and 90s, as the violent crime rate soared high above our stunted southern skyline. Things have improved vastly in the past 20 years or so, though the revitalization has brought its own set of problems. But I've always felt mostly safe in the four neighborhoods I've lived in since moving here.
In the past few weeks though, my neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant/Columbia Heights has seen more than its fair share of incidents- some robberies, a stabbing, bike-borne smartphone theft, and a group of youth who attacked a woman at random. I even saw two guys fighting, like literally trying to beat the crap out of each other, on the corner of 14th and Irving, the unofficial hub of Columbia Heights. Oh, and yesterday some muggers shot a guy 2 blocks from my house.
And now some of the commentary on our neighborhood blogs like PoPville and New Columbia Heights express a lot of anxiety over a general uptick in crime and blight in our neighborhood(s) over the past 2 years, backsliding from all the progress that had been made.
I've never had a head for numbers, and I was not the star of statistics class in college. But I did learn one very important critical thinking skill there: don't let "vivid cases," exemplary incidents that stand out in your mind, trick you into seeing a pattern where there isn't one. Obviously we're nowhere near the levels of crime and blight that the long-neglected neighborhoods east of the Anacostia have been dealing with. Everything is relative, and even these small incidents no doubt burn brightly in the minds of people not used to seeing them. But what sort of predictive power do they have, if any?
So a thought for this weekend is "how many incidents does it take to make a pattern?" Is my adopted home actually backsliding, and if so, how worried should I be? Or, are these just the fits and starts of a neighborhood and city in an ongoing transition, and I should pay less attention to upper-middle class (mostly) white-gentrifier anxiety over crime?
Maybe the police could release some statistics already so we'd be able to know for sure.
--AWG
But when you live in a city and work in a crowded, public building, you're constantly reminded to maintain "situational awareness," hold your phone with both hands, avoid this or that area at night, and "when you see something, say something."
D.C. used to be known variously as "Drama City" and the "murder capital" of America during the 80s and 90s, as the violent crime rate soared high above our stunted southern skyline. Things have improved vastly in the past 20 years or so, though the revitalization has brought its own set of problems. But I've always felt mostly safe in the four neighborhoods I've lived in since moving here.
In the past few weeks though, my neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant/Columbia Heights has seen more than its fair share of incidents- some robberies, a stabbing, bike-borne smartphone theft, and a group of youth who attacked a woman at random. I even saw two guys fighting, like literally trying to beat the crap out of each other, on the corner of 14th and Irving, the unofficial hub of Columbia Heights. Oh, and yesterday some muggers shot a guy 2 blocks from my house.
And now some of the commentary on our neighborhood blogs like PoPville and New Columbia Heights express a lot of anxiety over a general uptick in crime and blight in our neighborhood(s) over the past 2 years, backsliding from all the progress that had been made.
I've never had a head for numbers, and I was not the star of statistics class in college. But I did learn one very important critical thinking skill there: don't let "vivid cases," exemplary incidents that stand out in your mind, trick you into seeing a pattern where there isn't one. Obviously we're nowhere near the levels of crime and blight that the long-neglected neighborhoods east of the Anacostia have been dealing with. Everything is relative, and even these small incidents no doubt burn brightly in the minds of people not used to seeing them. But what sort of predictive power do they have, if any?
So a thought for this weekend is "how many incidents does it take to make a pattern?" Is my adopted home actually backsliding, and if so, how worried should I be? Or, are these just the fits and starts of a neighborhood and city in an ongoing transition, and I should pay less attention to upper-middle class (mostly) white-gentrifier anxiety over crime?
Maybe the police could release some statistics already so we'd be able to know for sure.
--AWG
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)