May 03

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

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

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

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 18

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

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 07

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

Apr 02

Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t)

Is it physiological?  Do males produce a larger amount of saliva?  Even so, why the need to spit it out?  Why not just swallow it?

Would that remind them of swallowing semen?  Which is female, effeminate, gay?  (I’ll ignore for the moment the assumption that all, or even most, women swallow semen.)

But no, that can’t be right: it seems too…too reasoned.  Spitting seems to be more of a reflex, a habit, a that’s-the-way-I-was-raised sort of thing, a cultural thing, a subcultural thing: to spit is to be manly.  Little boys spit to appear grown up.  Grown up men.  So what’s the connection between spitting and masculinity? Continue reading

Mar 29

Redundant Women

I just read an article about the Brontes that mentioned “redundant women”. Apparently in 19thC Britain, there was such a male/female ‘imbalance’ in the population that about 500,000 women would remain unmarried. They were called “redundant” women and one of the big questions of the day was what to do with them. Geezus.

Mar 25

Freakonomics Indeed

I remember when I first read Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics, in which they present an astounding connection between access to abortion and crime: twenty years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. crime rate dropped.

Astounding indeed. That men are so surprised by that! I mean, just how clueless are you guys? About the power, the influence, of parenting, about the effect of being forced to be pregnant, to be saddled with a squalling baby you do not want, on an income you do not have, because you’ve got a squalling baby you do not want… What did you guys think would happen in situations like that? The women would get “Mother of the Year” awards for raising psychologically healthy adults?

What I find surprising is that access to abortion isn’t related to infanticide. Pity. Given the Freakonomics boys.

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