Tag Archives: society

Talking in code

life,

If we blog about our lives, we inevitably share information about other people. Usually nothing terribly consequentially, but it is still not, technically, our information and ours alone to share. When we’re having a conversation with friends, no one blinks if we mention friends, co-workers, or relatives. “My Mom sent me a funny picture,” perhaps. Or “this guy I work with is always telling the most groan-worthy puns.”

All harmless, right?

But sometimes something that seems just amusing and/or unimportant to us may be highly embarrassing to the person we’re talking about. An off-the-cuff comment might make a few friends laugh, or it might ruin someone’s job prospects.

Corporations tend to be more cautious about that sort of thing, which is why we occassionally read stories of people being fired for something they tweeted or shared on Facebook.

Long before those services became ubiquitous, I adopted the practice of referring to my place of work by a code name. Even then leaving out details, always discussing things in generic or abstract terms. I ofent described my work load with juggling metaphors. Heavy workload with tight deadlines and/or a lot riding on the success of the projects, and I’m juggling chainsaws, one or two of which may have time bombs attached. A lull between major projects where I’m doing lots of project clean up or administrative stuff with one or two tiny things on deadline, then I’m juggling a few bowling pins, rubber balls, and a knife.
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Losing history

news, people

I’m not ancient, but sometimes I really feel like it. Such as when I was explaining to someone recently that the legal notion that a woman’s body was the property of her husband, rather than herself, was still fully active in U.S. law only 35 years ago (and that some vestiges of that notion still survive in the law today).

I remember when I was in junior high school people were still quoting parts of the Bible (that had been previously used to justify slavery) to argue against civil rights laws to protect racial minorities. The federal civil rights act had been passed some years before, but politicians and activists were still openly arguing that some races were inferior to others — and they were using the Bible to justify it.

One such politician ran as a third-party candidate for president in 1968 on an explicitly racist platform and won several states. He softened his proclamations when he ran again in 1972, but his compaign speeches had enough racist “dog whistles” (including some biblical ones) that it was clear he was still appealing to racist voters. And he was doing very well in the democratic primaries, until a nutjob out five bullets into him in an attempt to assassinate him (and even then, he did well in the next two state primary votes while recovering in a hospital).

So it is disheartening to learn how many christian journalism students at a recent conference didn’t realize that when a speaker said the Bible had been used to justify slavery he was simply reporting a fact, and not even one from ancient history, but rather within his own lifetime.

Just because it didn’t happen on twitter doesn’t mean it is ancient history, totally inapplicable to the here and now.

Gazing into the kookie

nature,

It had never occurred to me that either Mad Magazine or Cracked were still in business. I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious that in a world with I Can Haz Cheezburger and Rob Enderle as a technology pundit, of course Mad and Cracked’s brand of juvenilia and mockery would have sufficient audience to generate some ad revenue.

Recently a political cartoon from Mad Magazine was making the rounds, “Who Said It? Mitt Romney or Mr. Burns?” And now Cracked has published David Wong’s “5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women.” I think a more accurate title might have been “3 Ways Men Are Trained to Think of Women as Objects and 2 Ways That Manifests as Resentment” (or maybe “3 Ways Men Are Trained to Think of Women as Objects, 1 Way Men are Trained to Hate Themselves, and 1 Way All That Resentment Manifests”) but that isn’t quite as catchy, and wouldn’t drive as many clicks to their website.

The thing is, even with the words “boner” and “boobies” scattered throughout, the article is a decent exploration of how men are socialized to be jerks. And in the end, while it certainly doesn’t offer any solutions to the problem, at least Wong apologizes on behalf of his (our) gender for a specific set of recent rather public manifestation of the demeaning of women.

The same forces also teach women that they deserve to be thought of that way, or at least that the only way to succeed in life is to play into those expectations of the men around them.

And while Wong’s approach was focused on heterosexual men, us gay guys don’t escape those forces unscathed. We get told we’re supposed to want the girl, et cetera, and if we don’t that’s one of the ways we get threatened with “losing your man card” as he says. Some gay guys simply transfer all those demeaning notions to the men they themselves are attracted to. More seem to transfer it to guys that they perceive as being less masculine then them, or more masculine. They don’t always put it that way. I mean, yes, many will say “no fems” and refer to themselves as “straight-acting,” but they’re more likely to say “no flakes” or something similar. The ones at the other end sometimes say derogatory things about people who describe themselves as “straight acting,” but most will use other code words, like “game players” or “aggressive.”

Which just plays back into the whole messed up vicious circle.

I wish I had a brilliant point or a solution other than “don’t perpetuate this stuff,” which is just a longer way of saying “don’t be a jerk.” But I don’t.

So, don’t be a jerk (And I’m sorry so many of us are).