Sep 12

Women Writing Science Fiction as Men — why bother?

I’ve just finished reading Mike Resnick’s collections Women Writing Science Fiction as Men and Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.  There were two rules for submissions to the anthologies: “First, each story had to be told in the first person of a man [woman]; and second, if changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria [or vice versa] didn’t invalidate the story we didn’t want it.”

So what he ended up with was a bunch of stories emphasizing the gender stereotypes we all know and hate so well.  The women wrote about men who were competitive and primarily interested in sex.  The men wrote about women who were nurturing and primarily mothers.  Ho hum.

What would have been far more interesting, and far more challenging (though a challenge sf writers, if anyone, are certainly up to), would have been stories in which changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria (or vice versa) would not have invalidated the story, would have made no difference whatsoever.

Those are the stories I want to read!  That’s a future (a fantasy?) I want to live in!

 

Sep 05

Macho Music for the Mensa Crowd

Music and men has always been an iffy combination.  If it involves banging on things and making a lot of noise, well, that’s definitely male, on both counts, so being a drummer is okay.  And if it involves plugging something in – that ultimate test which separates the men from, well, from the women – that’s good, so playing the guitar, lead or bass, is okay.   Especially since holding your hand at cock level is involved.

But what if your tastes are a little more classical?  What if you’re a little more intellectually-inclined?  Fear no more!  Electronic music is here!

To begin, like all good little boys, electronic composers are obsessed with how.  Their program notes are paeans to process: “The harmonic matrix for this construction was established with a dominant to non-dominant ratio of 7:5 and intra-note relationships determined according to a chance-randomized method…”

And yet, it sounds like shit.  But then they probably just forgot to consider the end product.  Kinda like Oppenheimer and the gang at Los Alamos, so absorbed by the sweet technicalities of the process, it wasn’t until they exploded the thing that they thought ‘Gee, this could hurt a lot of people!’

And what about the why?  Why did you write such a piece of shit?  (And why oh why are you playing it in public?)  Despite their claim to superior logic and rationality, men, macho men, are notoriously inept when it comes to reflective reasoning.  ‘Why?  Whaddya mean “why”?’  It’s not a question they’re used to, apparently.  Their professors (and make no mistake, classical music is music’s ivory tower – you need a Ph.D. to get in – and electronic music is its engineering department) never asked them why they wrote a certain piece.  And they never ask themselves.  And as in all locker rooms, concert hall dressing rooms are filled with competitive claims about equipment and technique, not rationale.  Certainly, reasons are nowhere to be found in program notes.

The notes do reveal, however, a certain attention to complexity.  Failing that, to apparent complexity.  They make what they do sound as complicated as possible.  “Intra-note relationships determined according to a chance-randomized method”?  Heads it’s major, tails it’s minor.  So why bother telling us, I wonder, since communication is so obviously not your purpose.  Ah.  Because you don’t really want us to understand – you want us to applaud: ‘Look at me, I’m so clever, I understand something too difficult to explain.’  Actually, what you’re saying is ‘Look at me, I have no communication skills whatsoever.’

People who think ‘complexity good, simplicity bad’ have obviously never heard of Bach’s Prelude I.  Or the wheel.

Maybe the idea is that if you make it complicated enough, no one will be able to replicate it.  So you’ll be the first and only to have composed such a piece.  But what’s the big deal about being first?  I have never understood that.  In any context.  First to land on the moon, first to discover insulin, first to cross the finish line, first to get on the bus – first to discover where that land mine was.

Truth is the first to do X is often merely the first to be recognized as doing X.  Do you really think that Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes?  Talk to the descendants of the guy who wasn’t on the cheetah’s lunch menu that day.

And what’s the big deal about being the only?  Why the desire to be unique, singular, with no company, no community.  Ah.  The myth of the unconnected male.  Hm.  Can you spell ‘denial’?  Good thing the first guy to write a piece for the piano didn’t worry about there being others who could do the same thing.  (And good thing the second guy to write a piece for the piano didn’t let not being first stop him.)  Different is not necessarily better.  Ask any black living in Alabama.

It’s a quantity thing, really.  Do you guys see that?  And the first (quantity) is seldom the best (quality).  For example, the first time I walked – well, I can tell you I’m much better at it now.  I almost have it mastered.  What is it with you guys and this obsession with number, with quantity, with size.

Consider the speakers.  Have you seen the size of the speakers at an electronic music concert?  They’re bigger than those commonly found in a single guy’s apartment. They’re even bigger than the deejay’s.  Why so big?  (I’ve heard that there’s a direct relationship between penis size and foot size.  Or is it hand size.  Whatever, I suggest that there’s an inverse relationship between penis size and speaker size.)  And why so many?  I’ve seen eight at one concert, spread out around the room.

I recall someone asking an electronic composer once why all electronic music was so loud, and he said something like “Do you mean apart from the obvious answer that all electronic composers want badly to fill empty spaces with lots of sound?”  Obvious?  But okay, so it’s not just an obsession with size: the obsession with size is connected with the obsession to fill a space, to occupy.  Could this be connected to the irritating habit men have of taking up, occupying, more space than they need – the way they lean on counters, sit in chairs, take over small countries –    Ah.  Now I understand, imagining what my dog would do to those eight speakers spread out around the room.

Then there are the machines.  Have you ever looked at the liner notes of an electronic music recording?  Fairlight CMI, Emulator, Moog 55, Arp 2600, DX7, Prophet V, Obxa, Simmons SDS V, SequencerMax, EMS Vocoder, Boss PRO SE 150, Korg DDM 110.  And that’s just for one piece.  (Writers don’t usually list the equipment they use.)  (Microsoft Word.)  But this is macho music.  Real men play with machines.  They tinker and twiddle and tune –   What is it with men and machines?  I mean, just look at their behaviour with the remote control.

Ah – that’s it.  Remote control.  Real men have control.  And if they don’t, they take it.  I’ve always wondered why electronic composers mix their pieces in public.  I mean, why not get the perfect mix once and for all in the studio and then just press the ‘Play’ button in the concert hall?  I understand that some adjustments need to be made to compensate for the unique acoustics of the hall, but these can be made during the soundcheck, can’t they?  Yes, but then they can’t do the ‘See me control this sound, this console, this computer’ thing.  Really, is anyone impressed anymore to see someone with their fingers all over a bunch of knobs, looking oh so serious?

Now of course all these huge speakers and fancy machines are expensive.  The more expensive, the better.  Another macho thing.  Real men have money.  Too bad they’re really bad at managing it.  Could be part of that unconnected thing.  They incur huge car payments and then, poor boys, can’t afford the child support payments.  (See what happens when you turn your back on the simple things – like addition?)

And speaking about looking oh so serious, why is electronic music considered serious music?  I mean, what’s serious about it?  SOCAN classifies music as Serious and Non-Serious (serious music gets higher royalties), but unless there are words, how do you decide?  If it’s played in concert halls, it’s serious, but if it’s played in sports arenas, it’s not?  If the performers are wearing tuxedos, it’s serious, but if they’re wearing spandex, it’s not?  If a piece lasts for a really long time, it’s serious?  (A hundred bottles of beer on the wall…)  If it uses more than three chords (or, alternatively, if it uses no chords at all), it’s serious?  If it takes more than a day to write, it’s serious?  (There goes most of Mozart.)  Electric violins are serious, but electric guitars are not?  (Because guitars come in red?)

Even if there are words, it’s hard to tell.  I mean, consider the opera Orpheus and Eurydice, a piece of serious music.  Basically the lyrics are “She’s gone, I miss her a lot, so I’m gonna get her back.”  Sounds like your typical country and western ballad to me.

Electronic composers, discoursing at great length about how they created their very complicated pieces, fiddling with the faders on their expensive machines that feed into their huge and many speakers, and being oh so pretentiously serious about it all – it’s macho music for the mensa crowd.

Aug 29

Gretel, by Chris Wind

Gretel, by Chris Wind (from Snow White Gets Her Say)  www.chriswind.net

 

We read fables in school to teach us a lesson. And we read fairy tales at bedtime to put us asleep. And indeed they do: especially those of us, a full half of the human species, who are lulled lower and lower into a semi-conscious state by their lessons.

Remember “Hansel and Gretel”? The one about a little boy and a little girl. Who was me. Not particularly proud of it, but there you go. I didn’t write the story. I didn’t intend those lessons.

That, first, women are deceitful. There are two women in the story, the stepmother and the witch. And both of them lie to us. When Hansel and I are taken into the forest to be left there to die, my stepmother says “We’ll come back for you.” And later, when we meet the witch, she assures us she will “do us no harm”. But of course they didn’t and she did. Both women used deceit to achieve their goals.

That, second, women aren’t very intelligent. It was my stepmother’s idea that a good solution to the food shortage was to leave us in the forest. Why not kill and eat the pigeon or the cat first? Why not hunt for squirrels and rabbits? The witch, as well, wasn’t too brilliant when she climbed into the oven to give a little demonstration.

That, third, little boys are competent and resourceful (and therefore can, and do, take care of little girls, like me). The first time we were taken into the forest, it was Hansel who thought to unravel a spool of thread behind us so we could find our way back. The second time, again he planned for our survival, leaving a trail of crumbs to mark our path. Clever though this was, he didn’t think about the birds, who ate the crumbs. I was quite resigned to our fate; it was Hansel who refused to give up so easily. Well, as you know, we found our way to a house, but it belonged to the witch and she locked Hansel in a cage. Still using his head, he held out a bone instead of his finger each time she checked to see if he was fat enough to eat.

However, if you’ve read the story, you’ll know that, notwithstanding this glowing portrait of my brother, I’m the real hero: it was my cleverness that saved us. You’ll remember that the witch told me to creep into the oven to see if it was hot enough to bake the bread. I knew, of course, that she was going to slam the door shut and bake me instead. So, I said, ever so sweetly, “I do not know how I am to do it, how do I get in?” You know the rest, I’m sure: she showed me, I shut the door on her, and then I rescued Hansel and together we escaped.

What bothers me is that I had to be clever in that way. To this day, I resent having had to resort to that ‘dumb blond’ ploy. To begin with, because it’s just that—a ploy, a disguise, a deceit; and it teaches us that pretence is our best method of operation. So we pretend to be something we’re not to get what we want, be it life, love, whatever. But more than that, I resent the ploy because it teaches us that for a woman, ignorance is valuable: it is her defence, her weapon, her salvation.

Why is that so dangerous a lesson, since my ignorance really is just a ploy, and not genuine? Because habits of behaviour become habits of thought which become habits of belief. If I spend most of my life acting like I’m stupid, people will think that I am. And then it’s just a short step to actually becoming what people already believe I am.

But if we wake up, we all will live ever after.

 

***

In the story “Hansel and Gretel”, two children are taken into the forest by their father and stepmother, to be left to die because there is not enough food to feed them; this solution is the stepmother’s idea, and her “We’ll come back for you” was simply a lie. The story unfolds exactly as I’ve described it—the spool of thread, the breadcrumbs, the witch’s house, Hansel in the cage, Gretel and the oven, their escape—and they find their way back home to live happily ever after. (The mean stepmother had died.)

Aug 22

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?

Aug 22

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

 

 

Aug 20

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.

 

Aug 15

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?)

Aug 12

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?

Aug 08

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?’

Aug 08

Smile!

If I had a dollar for every time someone (i.e., a man) told me to smile, I’d be rich.  (And if I had five dollars for every time that same someone did not tell a man to smile, I’d be really rich.)

Why is it that women are told, are expected, to smile a lot?  (Or at least a lot more than men?)

Could it be that there are (still) some men who believe women are their responsibility, theirs to look after, care for, and protect (these are the men who call us ‘dear’) – and so for them, an unsmiling woman is a reproach, an indication of the man’s failure?  ‘Smile!’ means ‘Tell me I’m a success!’

Could it be that women are (still) perceived to be the species’ emotional barometers?  Men are not allowed to be emotionally expressive (forget for a moment every hockey game and every soccer game you’ve ever seen men watch – I never said our society was logically consistent); a smiling man, especially, is effeminate.  So when men feel happy, the women have to smile.

Could it be that women are (still) perceived as having the responsibility for the emotional health of the relationship, the family, and well, the world.  And men want to think (not necessarily to know – different things) that all is well.  They want us to smile.

Well, for someone to smile that much, they’d have to be in denial about cancer rates, ethnic cleansing, teenage violence, political corruption, big business subsidies, population growth rates, the nuclear industry, and well, the world.  They’d have to be pretty sick, psychologically, to be able to smile with all that.

Or they’d have to be hypocrites.

Or they’d have to just not know about all that – they’d have to be pretty ignorant.  Or children.

Ah, maybe that’s it.  Men, when they tell us, expect us, to smile all the time, are telling us, expecting us, to be childish.

Next time a man tells me to smile, I’m going to tell him to fuck off.

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