May 03 2013

Being Josh (Monday Night Basketball)

It’s Monday night basketball, an all-comers pick-up game, supposed to be fun and a good sweat.  But week after week I steel myself against the anger, the frustration of not knowing how to correct the problem, and the despair of not being able to even begin to do just that.  Eventually it happens: this time it’s Josh who yells at me to switch, to guard the new grade niner who’s just come onto the court to sub for the guy who’d been guarding Josh and Josh would guard the guy I’d been guarding.

I am distracted, as always, by the insult, the unwarranted assumption that I’m always the worst player there (even worse than the new grade niners) (although I’m thirty-five and played basketball for all of grade nine, and ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen), and by the faulty logic that weak offensive players* are weak defensive players and should therefore guard other weak offensive players. Continue reading

Apr 29 2013

How to End War

At one time, bank tellers and secretaries had a certain prestige – the time when such positions were held by men.  Schoolteachers used to be schoolmasters – before women entered the classroom.  People who boast that many doctors in Russia are women fail to mention that doctoring in Russia, well, someone’s gotta do it.

The thing is this: whenever women enter an occupation, it becomes devalued.  It loses glory.  It loses funding.  It loses media coverage.  It becomes unpopular, even invisible.  So if we were serious, really serious, about ending war, we’d fill the military ranks with women.  When becoming a soldier has about as much appeal as becoming a waitress (another archetype of the service sector industry) –

An added bonus would be that if the enemy army were (still) male, they’d start killing themselves.  Because better that than be killed by a woman.  It would certainly save on ammunition.

On the other hand, if the enemy army were (also) female, well, more often than not, the wars would probably just sort of fizzle out into some sort of stalemate.  We just don’t have the equipment for pissing contests.  But since no one would really care, or even know, because it would be a woman thing, well, that’d be okay.          We could live with that.


Apr 25 2013

Dr. Frankenstein, meet Dr. Spock

Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff.  I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve.  I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent minds, and perhaps a certain specific ability to boot. Continue reading

Apr 25 2013

On “hitting on”

I bet a man came up with that term as well.

But what most intrigues me here is how?  I mean, what exactly made the first man to introduce the term think that approaching a woman for, what, a date? sex? was like hitting (on) her???

It does not bode well when the very initiation of a relationship is imbued with violence even in the terminology.

 

Apr 21 2013

Barbie – great post at gendertrender

Great post here at gendertrender. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/life-size-barbie-scary/

Is it wrong for me to love most the line “If Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours”?

 

Apr 19 2013

People Skills

I’ve always been rather proud of not having any ‘people skills’.  Of not being able to ‘talk to people’, smooth things over, talk them out of their way of seeing things, talk them over to my way, persuade, influence, manipulate, control.  No wonder supervisors, salespeople, and customer relations people need good people skills.  And no wonder I resent them: I’ve always been the subordinate, the consumer, the customer – I’m the one the people skills are used on.

Of course, subordinates are expected to have good people skills too, but what’s meant then is the ability to get along, follow, fold, obey.  And, well, as I said, I’m not very good at that.

But no, no, I’m told, you’ve got it all wrong. Continue reading

Apr 18 2013

On “lurking”

So I’m noticing that although there are a lot of registered users here, no one’s commenting.  And that’s cool.  I guess everyone’s just lurking.  Wait a minute.  LURKING??  Who the fuck came up with that name for sitting quietly at the edge of the room, just listening to what’s being said, deciding not to speak up until one has something worthwhile to contribute?

Lurking is what one does prior to invading, prior to breaking and entering.  Or, as the case may be here, entering and breaking.

So, yeah, I’m gonna go with “A MAN came up with ‘LURKING’.”

 

Apr 12 2013

What’s so funny about a man getting pregnant?

I recently read The Fourth Procedure by Stanley Pottinger, in which, during a surgical procedure, a man is given a uterus containing a fertilized egg.  He is enraged when he finds out, afraid that if it becomes public knowledge he’ll be a laughingstock.  Turns out he’s right.  But I don’t get it.  What’s so funny about a man getting pregnant?

Continue reading

Apr 12 2013

Marriage: A Sexist Affair

Marriage, by its very (traditional) definition, is a sexist affair: it involves one of each sex, one male and one female.  And I suppose this is because, traditionally, the purpose of marriage was family: to start a family, to have and raise children.

This view is fraught with questionable assumptions, glaring inconsistencies, and blatant errors.  I’ll give one of each: Continue reading

Apr 07 2013

King of the Castle

Octavia Butler got it right in Xenogenesis when the aliens identified one of our fatal flaws as that of being hierarchy-driven (they fixed us with a bit of genetic engineering) – but she failed to associate the flaw predominantly with males.

And Steven Goldberg got it right in Why Men Rule when he explained that men are genetically predisposed to hierarchy (fetal masculinization of the central nervous system renders males more sensitive to the dominance-related properties of testosterone) – but he presented that as an explanation for why men rule and not also for why men kill.

And Arthur Koestler got it right in The Call Girls when, recognizing that the survival of the human species is unlikely, a select group of geniuses meet at a special ‘Approaches to Survival’ symposium (and fail to agree on a survival plan) – but I’m not sure he realized (oh of course he did) that one of his character’s early reference to a previous symposium on ‘Hierarchic Order in Primate Societies’ was foreshadowing.

The reason the human species will not survive is simple: Continue reading