Feb 14 2013

A Gold Watch. Seriously.

At one of my previous workplaces, we had a little ceremony each year honouring employees who had worked there for five, ten, or fifteen years.  I used to go.  (There was free pizza.)  But then I stopped.  (After three years, I could afford my own pizza.)

It’s a curious thing, this esteem we have for longevity.  Why is an anniversary cause for celebration?  I can see it in some Purple Heart sense – congratulations for surviving – but that doesn’t seem to be the spirit in which such celebrations are intended.  (Then again…)

So what’s the big deal about being married to the same person, or working for the same company, for so many years?  Is it supposed to be some expression of loyalty, which is then rewarded?  What’s loyalty?  And why is it good?  Is it trust?  In a person, or company, no matter what they do?  Excuse me, but the day my partner or my employer starts making weapons or selling unsafe products, I’m outta there.

Let’s admit it, ‘seniority’ rewards quantity rather than quality.  I mean, what if it were a shitty marriage?  Why applaud someone for staying in it?  (Do you want fries with that?)

And what if the person’s a mediocre employee?  We give them a raise every year just because they’ve been there one more year.  But we don’t give a raise to the guy who’s doing a good job.  Is it any wonder then that so many employees develop a clock-punching mentality, that they figure just being there, just putting in time, is enough?  Because apparently, it is.  If they put in enough time, they get a wage increase, extra holidays, protection from lay-off, and eventually, so very appropriately, a gold watch.

Granted, sometimes there’s a connection between quantity and quality: the longer you work at it, the better you get, the more you know.  Sometimes.  (So why not just reward that increase in quality  –  directly.)   But unless you get moved to a different position, the level of mastery is often achieved before five years, certainly usually before ten or fifteen years.  So seniority means stagnation, complacency.  It could also mean cowardice, fear of trying something new.  (Or simply the lack of other opportunities.)  And of course, if one hangs on because of the rewards, it means self-interestedness.

My guess is that after a certain point, performance declines, rather than inclines, with seniority.  You know you can’t be easily fired, you feel secure, you feel comfortable.  So you don’t try as hard, you get a little lazy.  And you get a little bored, you get a little dull.

So seniority should not be rewarded.  And rather than penalizing the person who’s changed jobs every few years, we should be recruiting them.

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Feb 14 2013

Mr. and Ms.

I’m in this world, okay, and the people identify each other by sex.  All the time.  It’s like ‘Female Person Smith’ and ‘Male Person Brown’ or ‘Person-with-Uterus Smith’ and ‘Person-with-Penis Brown’ – I don’t know the exact translation.  But sex-identity is a mandatory prefix.  They distinguish males from females.  Before they do everything else.  Before they do anything else. Continue reading

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Feb 06 2013

On Excluding MtFs from a Radfem Site

As soon as I discovered I Blame the Patriarchy, I thought “I have found the mothership.”  Alas, almost immediately, it powered down.  Since I loved the discussion as much as Twisty’s brilliant posts, I decided to set up a new island for the blametariat: Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist.

Unfortunately, unwittingly, I declared, in addition to the ‘No Dudes’ rule, a ‘No MtFs’ rule.  It seemed logical.  The reason for the first was to minimize dudely mansplaining, and I reasoned that MtFs, having similarly been raised to be men, would be almost as likely to feel and exhibit that ‘entitlement’.  Little did I know.

The rule was met mostly with disapproval, so I posted about the issue in order to open discussion on the matter.  But the matter has been discussed to death on IBTP (I realized this later—there’s one thread there with 772 comments), so posting about it on HYIAF is just inflammatory.  (And upending a barrel of worms on the beach is not a way to attract people.)  So I decided to move it here.  Because it’s an important issue and should, therefore, be discussed.  By everyone.

So, what follows: my original rules (for HYIAF, not this site), my discussion-opening post (excerpts), and then (most of) my explanation (for a revision to the rules). Continue reading

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Feb 01 2013

Surrogacy — Why Not?

Sure, women should be allowed to be surrogates.  We all do work with our bodies, some of us also include our minds in the deal (some of us are allowed to include our minds in the deal), so why not?  As long as they get paid for service rendered. Continue reading

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Jan 28 2013

Intelligent Design vs Evolution

It’s ironic that the stupid people are backing intelligent design, and the intelligent people are backing dumbfuck non-design. That’s essentially what evolution is: whatever traits lead to increased reproduction, those are the ones that survive.

And what traits lead to reproduction? Not intelligence, that’s for sure. Intelligent women don’t want to have ten kids. They’d rather be doing medical research, composing sonatas, studying society. And intelligent men? They’re not cruising the bars. They’re home with a good book if they’re not still in the office or the lab. It’s stupid women who forget to take the pill or don’t get a tubal ligation. And it’s stupid men who don’t use a condom or get a vasectomy. And it’s stupid brute force that rapes. And those men aren’t targeting the intellectuals. So we’re evolving all right. Right into propagated species-wide stupidity.

But isn’t evolution all about survival of the fittest? Yeah…fittest to the environment. And since stupid people, the ones reproducing, don’t even know what an ‘ecological footprint’ is, let alone have the character (and here I include both a certain morality and self-discipline) to minimize their ecological footprint, we’re not going to survive.

Which means maybe evolution is intelligent design after all.

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Jan 24 2013

A Man Shaken by a Bomb

I picked up a sci-fi novel the other day at a used bookstore.  The jacket said it was set after a nuclear war and written by someone who’d rubbed shoulders with a lot of military people.  Well, I figured it’d be interesting to see what they imagined life’d be like after a nuclear war.  (The pages weren’t blank.) Continue reading

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Jan 19 2013

To Wail like a Brat – and Advertise

On what basis do you claim the right to publicize your desire for money – at my expense?  You use forests full of trees for unsolicited mailouts, you produce and then dump tons of nonbiodegradable plastic for oversized packaging aka advertising, you destroy beautiful landscapes with your ubiquitous signs, you stuff my emailbox with your shouting forcing me to expend time and effort to shut you up, you intrude on my consciousness with your insistent voice – all because you want me to buy your product or service so you can make some (more) money.

Listings in directories – by category of product, service, and so on – should be free of charge; when we want to purchase something, we’ll find you in the directory.  Any other advertising should be illegal.  Frivolous depletion and destruction of the planet’s resources is irresponsible.  Shouting “I want I want I want” in someone’s face is invasive and assaultive.  In short, advertising is immature.

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Jan 11 2013

Poor Little Kids

So I heard on the news the other day about the poor little kids whose school backpacks are so full of books they’re developing debilitating back pain…  Oh please.

If they’d worked on their homework during the time allotted for just that purpose, instead of text messaging the person next to them, one painstaking letter at a time, to send the monumentally important query ‘hey brittiny ow r u’, they wouldn’t have so much left over to take home.

If they’d paid attention during class, engaged their minds in the mental effort required to learn something, they might have even finished it during that allotted time.

If they wore their backpacks properly with both straps over their shoulders and high up, instead of oh-so-fashionably slung low over one shoulder, they wouldn’t develop such back pain.

If mandatory physical education hadn’t’ve been cancelled, or if they actually played outside after school instead of watching tv, or walked the five blocks to and from school instead of getting chauffeured by mom or dad, they might have enough strength in their little backs  –  wait a minute  –  are these the same kids for whom pens with rubberized grips are designed because the user’s thumbs and forefingers are just too weak to hold onto them firmly otherwise?

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Dec 27 2012

Assholes or Idiots (take your pick)

Every now and then I hear something really insightful on tv.  What recently caught my mind was an explanation of the behavior of one of the alphas on, of course, Alphas. Rosen says that Marcus can see twenty moves ahead and doesn’t understand why others can’t; so when what they do harms him, he believes it’s intentional.

Yes!  I too—and many, many others, it’s not an alpha trait—can think ahead. I can imagine the likely effect on others of my actions. And I work through the ethics of my behavior. So when what someone else does affects me, I can only assume that they don’t care about others (and so haven’t bothered to think ahead about the effects of their actions, or work through the ethics of their behavior) or they do, and have, and consider what they’ve done to be morally acceptable. Or I must assume that, unlike me, they cannot imagine the effects of their actions; they do not comprehend the ethics of their behavior. Which means, in short, either they’re inconsiderate, egoistic, irresponsible, lazy assholes or they’re idiots.

And so when I point out that what they’re doing does affect me, invariably they respond with aggressive defensiveness.  Because, of course, I’m implying they’re either assholes or idiots.

(Pity they don’t apologize for their thoughtlessness and ask me to help them work through the ethics of their behavior. After all, I’m an authority on applied ethics. Don’t people seek expert opinion on important matters?  Yes, but not from a woman.  Who’s either a bitch or just crazy.)

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Dec 21 2012

Rules of Combat

Why are there rules of combat?  Rules apply to civil interactions and games.  Combat is neither.

Rules give the impression of fairness, decency, civility.  They thus make war permissible.

But if war is really about defending your loved ones, wouldn’t you do whatever is necessary?  Wouldn’t you ‘fight dirty’ if that’s what it takes?

Rules of combat suggest, therefore, that war isn’t about defending your loved ones.  Or even your land, your water, your resources.  As Allan G. Johnson points out, in the best analysis of men and war I’ve ever read (The Gender Knot, p.138-142), “war allows men to reaffirm their masculine standing in relation to other men….  It is an opportunity for men to bond with other men—friend and foe alike—and reaffirm their common masculine warrior codes.  If war was simply about self-sacrifice in the face of monstrous enemies who threaten men’s loved ones, how do we make sense of the long tradition of respect between wartime enemies, the codes of ‘honor’ that bind them together even as they bomb and devastate civilian populations that consist primarily of women and children?”  Good question.  So (and this explains the response to women in the military) war is really all about men getting together and hating, hurting, killing women.

Same old same old.

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