Aug 22 2018

Men and Illegal Words

Lying is illegal when economic interests are at stake: libel, slander, fraud, misrepresentation, false advertising.*  Why isn’t it illegal otherwise?  Why is loss of income more subject to compensation than, say, loss of self-esteem (which may, of course, result in loss of income)?

And words are illegal when physical violence is involved: uttering threats, ‘fighting words’, intimidation, criminal harassment.  Why aren’t they illegal when psychological violence is involved?  Why, when it comes to illegal speech acts, is there an emphasis on economic and physical injury?**

Is it just that the male mode has ruled?  Males engage in business, income-generating activities – making money is traditionally their role, their legitimator.  Men also engage in physical contests of all kinds.

Loss of income is more measurable than loss of self-esteem; physical injury is more measurable than psychological injury.  And males are more engaged in, more comfortable with, quantitative activities than qualitative activities.

Loss of income is less emotional than loss of self-esteem; psychological injury is often all about emotion.  And males, of course, are uncomfortable with any emotion other than anger.

Some may scoff at criminalizing psychological injury.  Surely physical injuries are more serious.  Are they?  I would suggest not, especially if the verbal assaults are ongoing.  Many of us spend our whole lives crippled by apparently permanent injuries to our self-esteem, our belief about what we can and cannot do.  The consequences of psychological injury can be as severe as, if not more severe than, those of physical injury; they’re just much harder to see and harder still to link to the cause.  (And harder to recover from.)

On the other hand, if you punch my body, no matter how strong I am, my body will bruise.  But if you punch my psyche, if I am psychologically strong, if I am mature and have a firm sense of my self, that punch need not injure me.  So it’s our own fault if we’re injured by insult.  As for other kinds of psychological injury, we are responsible to a large extent for our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, values, and attitudes and, thus, our psychological response to injury.  So again, it’s our own fault if we’re injured.  But a punch will break, not bruise, a less strong body.  Just how strong, psychologically speaking, are we expected to be?

And anyway, physical aggression is considered illegal even when it doesn’t injure.  It’s the action, not the consequence, that determines its illegality.  If you punch me, whether I bruise, or break, or neither, I can still charge you with assault.  Why doesn’t insult have the same legal weight?  Because men aren’t into words – unless there’s money or a fight involved?

 

 

* Libel (written) and slander (oral) both refer to false statements that injure a person’s reputation, and you can bet that the reputation being talked about is that which enables the person to make money, not one’s reputation as a good person.  Women don’t have reputations.  Except sexual reputations.   And they can’t sue if some guy writes her name on the locker room wall.  (Hm…traditionally, her sexuality was her ticket to income, either through prostitution or marriage…)

 

** “Acts which inflict severe mental pain or suffering” are illegal as part of torture (CCC 269.1(1)) – but that’s only when such acts are committed in order to obtain information (the presumed purpose of torture).  Why this exception?  And emotional pain and suffering are routinely included in civil suits.  Why not in criminal contexts?

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Aug 22 2018

The Grammar of Male Violence – quick perception-changing read

Read this (takes a couple minutes) and your perceptions will be forever changed:

 

http://www.ncdsv.org/images/GrammarofMaleViolence_9-10-2004.pdf

 

 

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Aug 20 2018

Responding to Wolf-Whistles

Many men will wolf-whistle at any woman.*

So it’s not a special insult toward the woman in question (yes, men, wolf-whistles are insulting when they occur in everyday contexts—because they emphasize our sexuality when we’re trying to be seen for our personhood and our various competencies; it thus reduces us to sexual objects) (a wolf-whistle in the bedroom directed toward your consenting sexual partner is, can be, a completely different matter).

Instead, such blanket expressions are indications of the man’s insecurity about his manhood: he feels the need to assure himself and/or others, since his behaviour is public, that he’s a man.  Apparently, to such men, finding women sexually attractive is proof of manhood.  Heterosexual manhood.  So really the wolf-whistle is an indication of homophobia.

So rather than focus on the inherent misogyny, we should focus on his insecurity.  And, therefore, we should respond with something like “Don’t use me to deal with your insecurity about ‘being a man’!”

Granted, most men won’t understand that, so you’ll have to simplify and expand with something like “I understand that you’re afraid that your friends think you’re gay, but don’t use me to deal with that fear.  Just talk to your friends; tell them you’re not gay.”

(Right.  Like that’s ever gonna happen.)

And those who are smart enough to understand our initial response will be so resistant they won’t process it.  Because introspection, self-awareness—these are not part of the definition of manhood.  (My father hated it whenever I tried to get him to examine his behaviour – ‘Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?’ he’d shout.  As if I was proposing castration.) (I suspect that like most men, he was afraid I’d discover there’s nothing much there; men spend so much time thinking about strategy, at heart, a sort of duplicitous insincerity, they haven’t developed any genuine core.)

(Sigh.)

 

*And once women realize that, perhaps they’ll give up the make-up, the dress, the body obsession: to men, it really doesn’t matter how you look.

 

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Aug 17 2018

Gwynne Dyer (along with half the species) misses an obvious point

I highly recommend Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars, but I must say he misses an obvious point, especially evident when he says “There are almost seven billion of us, and it is almost impossible to imagine a way that we can stop the growth before there are eight and a half billion” (p.268) — because it’s very possible to imagine a way: men just have to stop ejaculating into women’s vaginas.

Just think: the devastating climate changes that have already begun to happen (i.e., the beginning of the now-inevitable end of life as we know it) could’ve been avoided if we’d kept our greenhouse gases to under 350 ppm — which would have been so easy if we’d kept our population to a certain level.

So it begs the question: why is not ejaculating into women’s vaginas so unimaginable for men?

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Aug 15 2018

Sex and Salespeople

Given that the people who use washers, dryers, ovens, dishwashers, and the like are usually female, I find it puzzling that the people who sell these items are usually male.  Especially because it’s inconsistent with the rest of the sales world, in which men tend to sell things men use, such as hardware and men’s clothing, and women tend to sell things women use, such as cosmetics and women’s clothing.

Hypothesis #1 – The current sexist state of affairs is just a carry-over from the days when all salespeople were male.  Gee, I don’t think men ever sold cosmetics or women’s clothing.  (And even if this were so, why is the field of kitchen appliances the last to evolve?)

Hypothesis #2 – These are big heavy items and so the superior strength of men is needed.  Well, the salespeople don’t have to move ’em, they just have to sell ’em.  (And even if they did have to move them, your average appliance salesman is not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger.)  (And anyway, ever hear of a lever?  A cart?  And, hang onto your hats, a forklift?)

Hypothesis #3- Men sell the more expensive things – because they want the higher commission, or because they need the higher commission, or because only they are responsible enough to handle such large sums of money.  Wedding gowns often cost more than a washer and dryer put together, but women sell these.  

Hypothesis #4 – These are machines – and men know more about machines.  Despite its lack of truth (at best, this is generally true), this is, so far, the hypothesis most consistent with the rest of reality.  But what about sewing machines?  Who sells sewing machines?  And coffee-makers?  (Men don’t seem to know that these machines even exist.)

So where are we – what, to judge by sex in the sales field, is still considered the man’s domain?

[1]  Big things.  Well, that’s no surprise.  The size thing is really really hard to get over.  (Get over it!)  Most people still think men are generally bigger than women.  Yes, generally they weigh more.  And yes, generally they’re taller.  But inch for inch, I’m not sure they take up more space than women (real women): our chest measurement is often larger, our hips are broader, we’ve got bigger thighs, and we’ve got bigger asses.

[2]  Expensive things.  Also no surprise, this is a relic of the breadwinner days despite its obvious non-applicability today.  My guess is that there are as many self-supporting women as men and that in most mixed sex families, both the man and the woman provide financial support.

[3]  Machine things.  What is it about things that plug in or make a lot of noise that women do not or can not or will not get comfortable with – or men do not or can not or will not think women can get comfortable with?  Socialization?  Dick used the lawnmower, Jane used a dustcloth.  Education?  Dick took shop and got to see what a gear and a circuit look like and how they work; Jane never got to do that – they remain a mystery.  Is it that machines evolved along with outdoor stuff?  (When women were inside with the babies – washing diapers by hand.)  (Tell me again why washers and dryers took so long to invent.)

Put it all together and you get the ultimate male domain: cars.  They’re big, expensive machines.  Which is why, perhaps, a woman on the showroom floor is so very very radical.  (Wait a minute.  Women drive cars, don’t they?)

All in all, the division of sales by sex is illogical.  (Wait a minute, isn’t logic a male thing?)  My guess is if you put a few women on the showroom floor, be it with cars, computers, or stereos (or washers, dryers, ovens, and dishwashers), your customer base would double – so the division of sales by sex is also bad for business.  (And wait a minute, isn’t taking care of business a male thing?)

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Aug 12 2018

Gwynne Dyer (along with half the species) misses an obvious point

I highly recommend Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars, but I must say he misses an obvious point, especially evident when he says “There are almost seven billion of us, and it is almost impossible to imagine a way that we can stop the growth before there are eight and a half billion” (p.268) — because it’s very possible to imagine a way: men just have to stop ejaculating into women’s vaginas.

Just think: the devastating climate changes that have already begun to happen (i.e., the beginning of the now-inevitable end of life as we know it) could’ve been avoided if we’d kept our greenhouse gases to under 350 ppm — which would have been so easy if we’d kept our population to a certain level.

So it begs the question: why is not ejaculating into women’s vaginas so unimaginable for men?

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Aug 10 2018

Noise Trespass

We need a noise trespass law.  At the very least, the concept of noise trespass should be as familiar among the general population as physical trespass.

Why is going onto someone’s private property without permission (physical trespass) considered a wrong?  Because doing so is intrusive (presuming a right to privacy) and potentially damaging.  The same goes for sending noise onto someone’s private property.

Noise is intrusive because it—the sound of machinery, loud music, screaming kids, even conversations (having to listen to someone have an extended cellphone conversation, for example)—detracts and distracts from whatever one is trying to do, whether that’s watching tv, listening to (one’s own preferred) music, writing an essay, filling out income tax returns, sleeping…it doesn’t really matter.  Surely we have a right to privacy concerning our attention; noise hijacks our attention—it coerces us to pay attention to something we don’t want to pay attention to.

Noise is potentially damaging in a number of ways.  Depending on a number of factors (of which dB is only one), noise “damages hearing [at least 20% of teenagers now suffer from slight hearing loss], disturbs communication, disrupts sleep, affects heart function, intrudes on cognition…, reduces productivity, provokes unwanted behaviors, and increases accidents” (Mitra).  It can also cause or contribute to “anxiety, stress, nervousness, nausea, headache, emotional instability, argumentativeness, sexual impotence, change in mood, increase in social conflicts, neurosis, hysteria, and psychosis” (Noise Free America).

Noise produced by industry, airports, and so on is already being monitored and regulated.  I’m talking here about the noise caused by individuals in residential neighborhoods.  Various sound charts put city traffic at around 80dB, the subway at 88dB, a garbage truck at 100dB; lawnmowers and leafblowers can also be as high as 100dB, and chainsaws, dirt bikes, ATVs, boat motors, and PWCs are louder still, at around 110dB.

But, one might object, although we own our own property, and so have a right to object when someone trespasses on it, we don’t own the air over our property, and sound travels through the air.  There are several replies to this: we shouldn’t own the land either (and yet physical trespass might still be wrong, merely because of occupancy); we should also own the air over our land (in which case, noise trespass is as wrong as physical trespass); we collectively own the air (and that’s sufficient to consider noise a trespass); ownership is irrelevant altogether (occupancy is sufficient).  People get upset when a neighbour’s dandelion seeds travel through air and land on their property; is there not similar justification for getting upset when a neighbour’s sound waves travel through air and ‘land’—ah, but they don’t land on one’s property.  No, but they ‘land’ on one’s eardrums: sound is not perceived until the sound waves ‘hit’ one’s eardrums.  Surely that’s even more intrusive: the sound waves actually touch our body, not just our property.

In any case, smoke from burning tires travels through air, and if it travels from your neighbour’s property through the air onto your property, or, more accurately, into the air over your property, perhaps even through your open windows into your house, you would, I think, cry foul.

In addition to the intrusion and the damage, most of the annoying noise caused by individuals is avoidable.  Manual lawnmowers, rakes, and clippers have enabled people to take care of their lawns for almost a century.  I suspect that dirt bikes, ATVs, and PWCs can be redesigned to be quiet; for starters, could they not use electric motors rather than two-stroke gas-powered motors?  They certainly don’t have to be modified to increase their noise (as they often are), and they can be driven in a fashion that minimizes their noise (as they often are not).  And, of course, people could use instead bicycles, kayaks, canoes, and so on.  And earbuds or headphones.  And landline phones inside buildings.

All of which begs the question: why don’t we consider noise trespass to be trespass?  Are we so unable to consider the invisible and the intangible?  It we can’t see it or touch it, it doesn’t exist?  Despite its obvious effects?

Or is it that men like noise?  (After all, for the most part, they’re the ones making it.)  And it is the male view, male interests, male values that dictate law and custom, make no mistake about that.  This is the view presented at Manly Power Tools.  It’s also the view endorsed by a certain electronic composer who, when asked why he writes such loud, dense music, replied “Besides the obvious?  The desire to fill all this space with sound?”  Perhaps men are still being led around by their primitive brain, and all their noise is just a sublimated roar, mistakenly believed to be necessary for survival.  (Which begs the question: when will they evolve into homo sapiens?)

 

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Aug 08 2018

Made for Men (and so made harder for women)

Because chest-waders are made for men, I have to buy a size medium so the thighs fit.  Which means the shoulder straps, even at their smallest, keep slipping off.  And, okay, after suffering the frustration of that a couple times – either struggling against them as they restrict my movement hanging halfway down my arms or constantly putting them back onto my shoulders – I rigged up a tie-back.  But, worse, it also means the boots are clown-size.  Do you have any idea how bloody difficult it is to do anything, let alone something like fix a dock wading on slimy rocks in muck, with clown-size boots on?

Because kayaks are also apparently made for men, the footpegs even at their closest setting mean I have to paddle with my legs almost straight, instead of, as is more comfortable, and more efficient, with my legs bent.

And I’m not talking about just relentless inconvenience and reduced quality of performance on a personal level.  It’s my understanding that, for example, the hoses at firehalls are stored at a height that makes it easy for men, but extremely difficult for women, to get them off the wall.  So in an application-for-employment test, women are more apt to fail as they stumble and fall, too-top-heavy, given the height of the hoses, their own height, and their center of gravity.  In a real fire-fighting situation, should they not fail and consequently be hired, they may hold up the rest of the crew as they take extra care not to stumble and fall.

Do you see the problem?

And do you see a solution other than ‘Stay the fuck in the kitchen where you belong?’

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Aug 01 2018

The Sexism Compensation Index (SCI)

I suspect that even with today’s rigorous interview and job performance appraisal techniques, which require that all applicants be asked and scored on the same questions, multiple standards still interfere with merit as the sole criterion for hiring and promotion.

How?  Well suppose the interviewers are asked to rate the candidates on ‘friendliness’.  On an absolute scale of ten, the averagely friendly woman is, or is thought to need to be, at, let’s say, 6.  So for a female candidate to be rated ‘very friendly’ as opposed to just ‘friendly enough’, she must score 7 or better.  The averagely friendly man, on the other hand, men tending of course to smile less, chat less, be more product-oriented than process-oriented, etc., is at, say, 4.  So for a male candidate to be rated ‘very friendly’, he must score only 5 or better.  There you have it: suppose both a male and female applicant score 5 on this friendliness score – the man will be perceived as ‘more friendly than’ and the woman as ‘less friendly than’.

The same might go for appearance: the man who spends ten minutes to get ready for work, to shower and put on clean clothes, is deemed presentable; the woman who does the same is told she should’ve dressed up a bit (what, no make up? no styled hair? no jewellery?).

The assertiveness scale probably works the other way: say both candidates are at 5 – the man may be deemed ‘not a go-getter’ or ‘lacking in confidence’, the woman, ‘pushy’ or ‘arrogant’.

And on and on.

How do we correct this?  Many interviewers take great pains to be fair, to be consistent, to stick to the list of questions – so what, exactly, is the problem?  Well, it’s usually not the questions, but the answers – it’s how the answers are heard.  Most of the interviewers were raised in sexist times and so differentiating on the basis of sex is second nature to them; and it’s hard to shed one’s formative years overnight.  Or even over a decade, apparently.

Gender blind interviewing might help, but without expensive voice scramblers and screens, this is impossible.  And I suppose, to some extent, these measures would defeat the purpose of the interview.

However, if all items but those which couldn’t possibly be measured except in a face-to-face encounter were measured prior to the interview, that would go a long way. Cover letters and resumes could be identified by number only (as is the case with anonymous review for publication).  Calling people listed as references would, unfortunately, reveal gender (damn our language and names), so perhaps the conversation or at least the comments could be translated to gender-free language by someone not doing the actual scoring.  This wouldn’t eliminate the gender bias of the person called, but it would minimize what gets passed on.

Another solution might be to adjust the scores, after the interviews, to compensate for the sexism: one could apply an SCI, a Sexism Compensation Index, whereby all of the scores would be adjusted up or down a few points depending on the sex of the applicant, the item scored, and perhaps the sex of the interviewer.  So, for example, the woman’s friendliness score of 5 will get boosted to 6 or 7 to reflect the higher standard that is sexistly expected of women; 7 compared to 5, well then it’s clear that the woman indeed is the friendlier of the two.

Am I serious?  Not really.  But sort of – knowing this, considering this, during the interview and at any other gender-known stage, might alone effect the necessary adjustment.

 

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Jul 20 2018

Men Who Go Fishing, Jass Richards

guest post –

 

Men Who Go Fishing

Jass Richards (www.jassrichards.com)

 

I understand now why men like fishing.

First, there’s the noise of the motor.  Men like noise.  They think they’re the ones making it.  So they think they sound like a lion or a bear.  They think they’re threatening.  Instead of just bloody annoying.

Second, there’s the stink of the exhaust fumes.  Men like stink.  Most of them are still farting at the dinner table and snickering about it.

Third, since they often go fishing with other men, they get to compete.  Men like competing.  Anywhere, anytime, with anyone, about anything.

First one of the men will stand, perhaps casually, explaining to his buddies that he can get a better cast.  A mild discomfort will start to spread among the other guys, but not one of them will be able to explain it.  Certainly it’s not that they’re afraid their buddy may fall out of the boat.  Eventually a second guy will stand.  And his discomfort will go away.  Or at least recede a bit.  Depending on how tall he is, relative to the first guy.  The remaining two guys will become even more incomprehensibly uncomfortable, until eventually they too will stand.  There.  That’s better.  Despite the increasing precariousness of the whole.  Then the first guy will stand up on one of the seats, and almost immediately another one will stand on the prow.  Of course the lot of them will likely go overboard, but apparently that’s not a foreseeable result.

Lastly, there’s something very sexual, very masturbatory about reeling in, moving one’s hand around and around at cock level.   No wonder they wanna be a rock star strutting around on stage strumming an instrument slung low just right there.  And no wonder men go fishing for hours.

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