Context
I was perusing my library's catalog again, and this time I came across a book called Are All Guys Assholes?, by Amber Madison. It's described as an effort to answer this particular question by asking guys themselves about their behavior and attitudes.
Commentary
Please understand, looking over catalog entries is part of my job. I don't just troll around looking for blog material. Besides, this book actually looks like something I might read, if only because I'm fascinated by how people see themselves and others.
That being said, I'll ask this: is sexism the prejudice that just won't die? Most of the people I know wouldn't dream of lumping all African-Americans, all homosexuals or all Muslims into one category, but they will cheerfully say all men are obsessed with sex and all women are obsessed with shoes.
I think our sexuality exacerbates the problem. Straight people are obliged to try to attract people who are different from them, often in puzzling and frightening ways. This is not just "I have to get along with this person at work or on the street;" it's "I want this person to spend a considerable amount of time naked with me." So we'll look for any clue to help us navigate the weirdness, even the false security of a stereotype.
There's a scene in The American President where the titular character is talking with his tweenaged daughter about an upcoming date. She tells him that if he can't think of anything to say, he should compliment the woman's shoes. It's sound advice; you can rarely go wrong complimenting a woman's shoes, just as you can rarely go wrong offering a man sex. What makes it funny is that a non-fetishistic guy would rarely notice a woman's shoes (My husband only remarks on mine when I'm wearing impractically high heels or sandals in what passes for wintertime in Shreveport). The same thing is true of women, not because we rarely think about sex, but because we are constantly amazed by how high it ranks in a man's thought processes.
So the stereotypes are true, right? Well, sort of. I think there are general differences between men and women, some of them having nothing to do with either shoes or sex. And I think those differences are what both attract and confound us, if we happen to be of a heterosexual orientation. What worries me is how these differences affect our relationships, both intimate and otherwise.
Take the workplace. Does sexual harassment originate because we don't realize that gender differences are not usually relevant when people are trying to earn a paycheck? To put it crudely, this is not the place where you're supposed to pay attention to the fact that I have breasts. You're supposed to notice that I have a keen eye for cataloging mistakes.
And once you get past the initial attraction phase, it's not fair to treat your favorite guy as if he's an out-of-control horndog all the time, if only because you'll find yourself never speaking civilly to another woman again. Differences are fun, fascinating, and maybe even complementary, but your similarities are the glue that will keep you together. Besides, if you've singled him out, he must be different from all other guys, right? What good are the stereotypes then?
What did you see today?
2/28/2012
2/27/2012
I saw a call to action
Context
I was looking at my library's list of new audiobooks, when I came across Charles Moore's Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans. I don't plan to read the book, but I was horrified by the idea that there's a part of the ocean where plastic refuse has just taken over.
Commentary
Despite the fact that I haven't read this book, I'm still interested in its purpose. Not so much the environmental one, although cleaning up the oceans is a good and worthy cause, but the motivational one. This book probably contains accounts of both the sea captain's discovery and his quest, but I'm assuming the main purpose is to convince others to join him in the endeavor. In fact, if the description of the plastic-filled North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is horrifying enough, I'm thinking the author believes that will be a sufficient call to action.
It won't be, though.I've written before about how I see a great deal of information, care about only some of it and only act on a small portion of that. At the moment, just reading the basic premise of Plastic Ocean makes me care, but not enough to even take the action of reading the actual book.
Discouraging, no? You could have an epiphany, write a book about it, move people to care, even, and still get no tangible results from the effort. How can an experience that completely changed one person's life have little to no effect on another's? Quick! Hundreds of evangelical preachers are waiting for your answer!
Easy. People are different. Their priorities are different, their values are different, their very way of experiencing the same phenomenon are different. I am concerned about the amount of trash in the ocean. However, at the moment I am more concerned about taking care of my husband and the animals who live in our home, so I won't be changing careers in order to help refarm kelp. I'm concerned about saving time, so I'm not going to take the extraordinary measures necessary to create a zero waste household. And so on. Succinctly, it's not my thing.
And yet not so simple, because I believe our reactions to these differences cause the vast majority of conflicts in both our personal and societal relationships. In a bizarre combination of arrogance and insecurity, we believe if something is important to us, it must be important to everyone. Otherwise, they'll just be wrong. Or we'll be wrong. Or something. So we'll put a great deal of effort into changing others' minds, which is fine. But if that doesn't work, we'll decide to put a great deal of force into doing so. And preventing that IS my thing.
What did you see today?
I was looking at my library's list of new audiobooks, when I came across Charles Moore's Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans. I don't plan to read the book, but I was horrified by the idea that there's a part of the ocean where plastic refuse has just taken over.
Commentary
Despite the fact that I haven't read this book, I'm still interested in its purpose. Not so much the environmental one, although cleaning up the oceans is a good and worthy cause, but the motivational one. This book probably contains accounts of both the sea captain's discovery and his quest, but I'm assuming the main purpose is to convince others to join him in the endeavor. In fact, if the description of the plastic-filled North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is horrifying enough, I'm thinking the author believes that will be a sufficient call to action.
It won't be, though.I've written before about how I see a great deal of information, care about only some of it and only act on a small portion of that. At the moment, just reading the basic premise of Plastic Ocean makes me care, but not enough to even take the action of reading the actual book.
Discouraging, no? You could have an epiphany, write a book about it, move people to care, even, and still get no tangible results from the effort. How can an experience that completely changed one person's life have little to no effect on another's? Quick! Hundreds of evangelical preachers are waiting for your answer!
Easy. People are different. Their priorities are different, their values are different, their very way of experiencing the same phenomenon are different. I am concerned about the amount of trash in the ocean. However, at the moment I am more concerned about taking care of my husband and the animals who live in our home, so I won't be changing careers in order to help refarm kelp. I'm concerned about saving time, so I'm not going to take the extraordinary measures necessary to create a zero waste household. And so on. Succinctly, it's not my thing.
And yet not so simple, because I believe our reactions to these differences cause the vast majority of conflicts in both our personal and societal relationships. In a bizarre combination of arrogance and insecurity, we believe if something is important to us, it must be important to everyone. Otherwise, they'll just be wrong. Or we'll be wrong. Or something. So we'll put a great deal of effort into changing others' minds, which is fine. But if that doesn't work, we'll decide to put a great deal of force into doing so. And preventing that IS my thing.
What did you see today?
1/26/2012
I saw someone encourage divorce
Context
As referenced in this previous post, I like to read advice columns. I was reading Slate's version, Dear Prudence today, and a woman wrote in asking if it was acceptable to take a lover in light of her husband's brain hemorrhage, which has left him with the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. Prudie said no, it would probably be best to find him an assisted living facility, divorce him, and start a new life. Full column here, if you don't trust my paraphrasing.
Commentary
My snarky response to this situation is: have we become so enamored of writing our own wedding vows that we just leave out the "for better, for worse" part?
Here's my more well-considered response: I have no idea how I would respond in the advice-seeker's situation. Philosophically, though, I believe that although we may be attracted to a set of attributes, like mental capacity, sense of humor, and physical attractiveness, we don't marry those. We marry a person, and abandoning that person in their time of greatest need seems wrong.
Sometimes when my husband feels like he has disappointed me in some way, I'll remind him that I don't love what he does, I love who he is. I think he is alternately reassured and dismayed by this, but that's what he has to work with.
I suppose one might contend that a person is no longer himself after a dramatic cerebral change, but I'm not sure I buy that, either. My mother had middle-stage Alzheimer's before she died, but I have to say I never felt like she wasn't my mom anymore. She remembered less, and she didn't always know who I was, but she was still the same person. Perhaps this is what a soul is, the essential, unalterable part of ourselves. And aren't we supposed to marry our soulmates?
What did you see today?
As referenced in this previous post, I like to read advice columns. I was reading Slate's version, Dear Prudence today, and a woman wrote in asking if it was acceptable to take a lover in light of her husband's brain hemorrhage, which has left him with the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. Prudie said no, it would probably be best to find him an assisted living facility, divorce him, and start a new life. Full column here, if you don't trust my paraphrasing.
Commentary
My snarky response to this situation is: have we become so enamored of writing our own wedding vows that we just leave out the "for better, for worse" part?
Here's my more well-considered response: I have no idea how I would respond in the advice-seeker's situation. Philosophically, though, I believe that although we may be attracted to a set of attributes, like mental capacity, sense of humor, and physical attractiveness, we don't marry those. We marry a person, and abandoning that person in their time of greatest need seems wrong.
Sometimes when my husband feels like he has disappointed me in some way, I'll remind him that I don't love what he does, I love who he is. I think he is alternately reassured and dismayed by this, but that's what he has to work with.
I suppose one might contend that a person is no longer himself after a dramatic cerebral change, but I'm not sure I buy that, either. My mother had middle-stage Alzheimer's before she died, but I have to say I never felt like she wasn't my mom anymore. She remembered less, and she didn't always know who I was, but she was still the same person. Perhaps this is what a soul is, the essential, unalterable part of ourselves. And aren't we supposed to marry our soulmates?
What did you see today?
1/10/2012
I read a definition of a term
Context
I'm reading A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. I'm doing this because I'm thinking about attending a seminar on apocalyptic literature given by Dr. Susan Brayford, a professor emeritus at Centenary College, and she mentioned possibly using this book as a jumping off point.
Anyway, this footnote appears fairly early in the text: "The abbreviation B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the equivalent of B.C. (Before Christ), and C.E. (Common Era) is the equivalent of A.D. (Anno Domini, or "In the Year of Our Lord"). The abbreviations B.C.E. and C.E. are used by scholars to avoid the theological implications of B.C. and A.D., and I have used them here for the same reason."
Commentary
I don't care much for this book. I find it astonishingly disrespectful of people (like me) who take the Bible seriously and downright dismissive of the author of the book of Revelation. Usually I believe life is too short to read books I don't like, but I'm continuing with this one for two reasons:
1) It's an Interlibrary Loan. Since the library took extra effort to get it for me, I figure I should give extra effort to getting through it.
2) I am actually learning stuff, like how various apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible compare and contrast with each other.
All the above was to let you know I might be predisposed to snarkiness while reading this book. Here are the two thoughts that crossed my mind when I read the definition of B.C.E.:
1) If you're counting time forward and backward from what historic calendar makers considered to be Jesus's birthdate, calling it something different may avoid the theological implications of that, but the cultural ones are still glaringly obvious: there was some kind of history-changing event 2012 years ago.
2) Does the author really think there's anyone reading his book who won't know what B.C.E. means? This is an historical analysis of the impact of Revelation with lots and lots of references. I don't think people are going to pick it up unless they've at least seen one college classroom or done an equivalent amount of reading. And if any of that study has been in the realm of history, they've seen B.C.E. before.
What did you see today?
I'm reading A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. I'm doing this because I'm thinking about attending a seminar on apocalyptic literature given by Dr. Susan Brayford, a professor emeritus at Centenary College, and she mentioned possibly using this book as a jumping off point.
Anyway, this footnote appears fairly early in the text: "The abbreviation B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the equivalent of B.C. (Before Christ), and C.E. (Common Era) is the equivalent of A.D. (Anno Domini, or "In the Year of Our Lord"). The abbreviations B.C.E. and C.E. are used by scholars to avoid the theological implications of B.C. and A.D., and I have used them here for the same reason."
Commentary
I don't care much for this book. I find it astonishingly disrespectful of people (like me) who take the Bible seriously and downright dismissive of the author of the book of Revelation. Usually I believe life is too short to read books I don't like, but I'm continuing with this one for two reasons:
1) It's an Interlibrary Loan. Since the library took extra effort to get it for me, I figure I should give extra effort to getting through it.
2) I am actually learning stuff, like how various apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible compare and contrast with each other.
All the above was to let you know I might be predisposed to snarkiness while reading this book. Here are the two thoughts that crossed my mind when I read the definition of B.C.E.:
1) If you're counting time forward and backward from what historic calendar makers considered to be Jesus's birthdate, calling it something different may avoid the theological implications of that, but the cultural ones are still glaringly obvious: there was some kind of history-changing event 2012 years ago.
2) Does the author really think there's anyone reading his book who won't know what B.C.E. means? This is an historical analysis of the impact of Revelation with lots and lots of references. I don't think people are going to pick it up unless they've at least seen one college classroom or done an equivalent amount of reading. And if any of that study has been in the realm of history, they've seen B.C.E. before.
What did you see today?
12/03/2011
I saw a list of classroom rules
Context
There have been papers littered around the park next to my home for a while now, so I decided to go pick them up and dispose of them. Idly looking at some of them, I realized they were schoolwork for a freshman at our local high school, including a long set of rules for a math class. One of the rules was: don't criticize teachers or administrators.
Commentary
I taught high school for a year after I graduated from college, and discipline was my least favorite aspect of the endeavor. Some of that was surely because I don't like being told what to do and therefore don't like telling people what to do. This characteristic of mine is discussed in more detail in this post, if you'd like a blast from the past.
There was more to it than that, though. There was also the idealistic (and who isn't idealistic when they first get out of college) notion that what I was teaching should be interesting enough that the students wouldn't have to be forced to learn it, which is what classroom management sometimes felt like to me. Even then I realized this couldn't possibly be true all the time, and that even I was subject to discipline more than once from my favorite teacher in high school. To this day, though, it still seems like a good goal to keep in front of me when I teach. So if I concede that some classroom rules are necessary, I would like you to return the favor by understanding that the goals behind the rules are an important educational consideration.
A few weeks ago, I read Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough, which is a book about Geoffrey Canada's efforts to rescue kids in Harlem from the poverty cycle. One of the things the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College tries to teach parents is to not shut their kids up when they ask questions. After all, as Canada puts it, that's what "rich white kids" do all the time, and it gives them an important step up in formal educational settings. This is a struggle for the parents, though, because they want to emphasize good, respectful behavior, which in their eyes includes not pestering people with questions. These goals are in conflict, but I'm foursquare with the Baby College in believing it's better to be smart and annoying than dumb and pleasant. I will confess to having more personal experience with one side of this equation than the other.
I believe that if you're trying to grow smart kids (and I concede this may or may not be the goal of any given educational institution), you have to be understand that all questions in between the poles of completely innocuous (How are you?) and completely obnoxious (Are you always this idiotic?) spring from a void or a conflict within a person. I ask why the sky is blue because I don't know, but also because it is a different color than the grass and because I know the sky is composed of air and air doesn't look blue when it's right in front of me. In other words, I'm trying to make sense of stuff. Answering my question, or at least acknowledging that it's OK to ask it, teaches me that sensemaking is an appropriate thing to do.
The same thing is true of questioning authority, or criticizing it, as the case may be. If someone's beliefs, experience and/or feelings don't mesh well with what they're being told by someone in charge, saying so is a way of making sense of how the world works. I'm not saying this means those in power always have to accommodate what we want or feel, but there's no reason to pretend we don't have those individual needs. That's why the U.S. Constitution protects our right to talk about these conflicts. I guess I'll just be grateful I was reading the rules for a math class instead of a civics one.
What did you see today?
There have been papers littered around the park next to my home for a while now, so I decided to go pick them up and dispose of them. Idly looking at some of them, I realized they were schoolwork for a freshman at our local high school, including a long set of rules for a math class. One of the rules was: don't criticize teachers or administrators.
Commentary
I taught high school for a year after I graduated from college, and discipline was my least favorite aspect of the endeavor. Some of that was surely because I don't like being told what to do and therefore don't like telling people what to do. This characteristic of mine is discussed in more detail in this post, if you'd like a blast from the past.
There was more to it than that, though. There was also the idealistic (and who isn't idealistic when they first get out of college) notion that what I was teaching should be interesting enough that the students wouldn't have to be forced to learn it, which is what classroom management sometimes felt like to me. Even then I realized this couldn't possibly be true all the time, and that even I was subject to discipline more than once from my favorite teacher in high school. To this day, though, it still seems like a good goal to keep in front of me when I teach. So if I concede that some classroom rules are necessary, I would like you to return the favor by understanding that the goals behind the rules are an important educational consideration.
A few weeks ago, I read Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough, which is a book about Geoffrey Canada's efforts to rescue kids in Harlem from the poverty cycle. One of the things the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College tries to teach parents is to not shut their kids up when they ask questions. After all, as Canada puts it, that's what "rich white kids" do all the time, and it gives them an important step up in formal educational settings. This is a struggle for the parents, though, because they want to emphasize good, respectful behavior, which in their eyes includes not pestering people with questions. These goals are in conflict, but I'm foursquare with the Baby College in believing it's better to be smart and annoying than dumb and pleasant. I will confess to having more personal experience with one side of this equation than the other.
I believe that if you're trying to grow smart kids (and I concede this may or may not be the goal of any given educational institution), you have to be understand that all questions in between the poles of completely innocuous (How are you?) and completely obnoxious (Are you always this idiotic?) spring from a void or a conflict within a person. I ask why the sky is blue because I don't know, but also because it is a different color than the grass and because I know the sky is composed of air and air doesn't look blue when it's right in front of me. In other words, I'm trying to make sense of stuff. Answering my question, or at least acknowledging that it's OK to ask it, teaches me that sensemaking is an appropriate thing to do.
The same thing is true of questioning authority, or criticizing it, as the case may be. If someone's beliefs, experience and/or feelings don't mesh well with what they're being told by someone in charge, saying so is a way of making sense of how the world works. I'm not saying this means those in power always have to accommodate what we want or feel, but there's no reason to pretend we don't have those individual needs. That's why the U.S. Constitution protects our right to talk about these conflicts. I guess I'll just be grateful I was reading the rules for a math class instead of a civics one.
What did you see today?
11/24/2011
I heard my husband say something wise
Context
One of ads on the Thanksgiving Day Classic was for the Visa card Super Bowl ticket giveaway. In the ad, they say the Super Bowl is the most epic day in America. My husband Mark said, "No it's not; that's Election Day."
Commentary
Well, Mark said it all, but it's my blog, so I'll just add this: every four years we agree to govern ourselves instead of being governed. Frequently on these occasions, a new party comes into power and no guns are fired, except in what I consider a bizarre form of celebration. This has gone on for over 230 years. If that's not worth giving thanks for, I don't know what is.
What did you hear today?
One of ads on the Thanksgiving Day Classic was for the Visa card Super Bowl ticket giveaway. In the ad, they say the Super Bowl is the most epic day in America. My husband Mark said, "No it's not; that's Election Day."
Commentary
Well, Mark said it all, but it's my blog, so I'll just add this: every four years we agree to govern ourselves instead of being governed. Frequently on these occasions, a new party comes into power and no guns are fired, except in what I consider a bizarre form of celebration. This has gone on for over 230 years. If that's not worth giving thanks for, I don't know what is.
What did you hear today?
11/07/2011
I saw a writer's bio
Context
I was looking for more information about the criminal charges filed against a former Penn State football coach. That search led me to this article, which has the following printed at the top as the author's bio:
Jason Whitlock writes about the sports world from every angle, including those other writers can't imagine or muster courage to address. His columns are humorous, thought-provoking, agenda-free, honest and unpredictable.
Commentary
My first question is, have we become so enamored of the idea of personal branding that we think "bio" means "advertisement?" I think of a bio as being something that tells you where a person comes from, perhaps even what he's accomplished up to now, not a description of how awesome he is at present.
Or maybe someone thought it counted as a bio because it's written in the third person. Cynically, I think it was written by Whitlock himself, but I have no evidence one way or the other, because it's not attributed. This, of course, does not help its credibility. Even quote whores put their names on their opinions. By the way, the person at the top of that quote whore list in the link above works for the same parent company as Jason Whitlock, but I digress.
If you're getting the impression I don't believe anything in the "bio," you're correct. I know it's narrow-mindedness on my part, but after reading the bio, I pretty much wrote Whitlock off as a blowhard. Which is kind of sad, because the bio appeared before the article, so his writing didn't even get to speak for itself.
On the other hand, that may have been the bio's author's intent. It seems to me that if you have to say a writer is courageous, insightful and funny before allowing someone to read his work, you're somewhat afraid the reader won't come to those conclusions on her own.
What did you see today?
I was looking for more information about the criminal charges filed against a former Penn State football coach. That search led me to this article, which has the following printed at the top as the author's bio:
Jason Whitlock writes about the sports world from every angle, including those other writers can't imagine or muster courage to address. His columns are humorous, thought-provoking, agenda-free, honest and unpredictable.
Commentary
My first question is, have we become so enamored of the idea of personal branding that we think "bio" means "advertisement?" I think of a bio as being something that tells you where a person comes from, perhaps even what he's accomplished up to now, not a description of how awesome he is at present.
Or maybe someone thought it counted as a bio because it's written in the third person. Cynically, I think it was written by Whitlock himself, but I have no evidence one way or the other, because it's not attributed. This, of course, does not help its credibility. Even quote whores put their names on their opinions. By the way, the person at the top of that quote whore list in the link above works for the same parent company as Jason Whitlock, but I digress.
If you're getting the impression I don't believe anything in the "bio," you're correct. I know it's narrow-mindedness on my part, but after reading the bio, I pretty much wrote Whitlock off as a blowhard. Which is kind of sad, because the bio appeared before the article, so his writing didn't even get to speak for itself.
On the other hand, that may have been the bio's author's intent. It seems to me that if you have to say a writer is courageous, insightful and funny before allowing someone to read his work, you're somewhat afraid the reader won't come to those conclusions on her own.
What did you see today?
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