20,000 Leagues All Over Me

In many ways, I reject traditional masculinity, but in other ways I embrace it. One obvious way is sports. I counted it up, and I now have items of clothing to indicate my team of choice in no less than seven different sports leagues. (MLB, NBA, NHL, CFL, NFL, MLS, and the latest addition, the National Lacrosse League.)

That's nearly all of my teams. Okay, there are some leagues where I have a favourite team based on something like a weird name. (Forced to choose a team among Indian Premier League cricket teams I'd go the Kolkata Knight Riders, but I can't pretend to be passionate about them.) Among teams I truly care about the only ones missing would be the family soccer teams, Aston Villa or Birmingham City. And I point that out not entirely as a gift idea for friends and family. 

But now I realize that this manifestation of my masculinity is about to get even more complicated. And ironically, it's because of the rise of women's sports. I jumped on the bandwagon of the Toronto PWHL team, but since they don't have a name yet, I have a reprieve before buying any merchandise. But as soon as they become the Toronto Narwhals or something, I'll be heading to the stores. And now Toronto is getting a WNBA franchise, so that will need another piece of clothing with their presumably non-plural name splashed across it. 

The fact is that we're entering into a more complex sports world. The days of just hockey in Canada and just baseball in the US are long gone. We've even moved beyond a Big-3 or Big-4 team sports. I'm wondering how that's going to change fandom in the future. Because at the same time, the ways of spending on your team has increased too; clothing is just one aspect of it. Above, I was just talking about cheap t-shirts and hats, but if you're going to go for the replica uniform route, you could be spending a thousand dollars on your full collection of teams, before we even get to the jackets, lamps, novelty home scoreboards, etc. And that's before we consider how much you might bet on your teams of choice. 

So I'm thinking that sports fandom could get watered down: The days of looking into the audience and seeing half the fans in the team uniform could be numbered. After all, it wasn't that long ago when such fans were a lot less common.  Maybe we'll return to those before-times of more casually-dressed spectators, and the current era of monochromatic crowds will seem like an awkwardly-obsessed outlier.

Or, we could see fans concentrating more on individual sports. Instead of just automatically maintaining fandom of all the teams from the local metropolis, fans may choose to specialize. That would be odd, because now we just assume that teams from different sports in one town are kind of allies, since their fans are mostly the same people. But if they have to fight to be the object of local fans' obsessions, that could get ugly. You think it's hard to back a team between Lakers-Celtics or Dodgers-Giants, how about when it's Dodgers-Lakers? Rich teams fighting over entitled fans? That's no fun. I'd be willing to keep buying sports merchandise just to keep that from happening.

Mass Romantic

You know how May 4th has become Star Wars day? Well fans of the epic sci-fi video game Mass Effect are trying to do the same thing with November 7th. See, the top level that a soldier can reach in the game's universe is N7, so that code appears on a lot of equipment and clothing in the game. Gettit? N7 : November 7th? Okay, it's even flimsier than the "May the fourth" pun, but it gives me the opportunity to tell you about my insights from playing the game. Now don't worry, non-geeks, this entry will be full of social commentary, not esoteric nerdery.

For non-geeks, it might be hard to explain the game's appeal. After all, you're playing a future soldier defending the galaxy from killer aliens, which is about the dorkiest premise you could imagine. But you know how there comes a point in every child's growth when they realize that "action figures" and "dolls" are really the same thing, and it's your choice how you play with them? Well that's where Mass Effect is, at the border between the two.

In between shooting aliens, you get to talk to, befriend, or argue with your fellow shipmates. And you can even sleep with them - oh, I'm sorry, "romance" them, in the parlance of the game. This human interaction seems to be a big draw for the franchise.

I've gone on Pinterest, where I've found a lot of creative work based on the game: humour, artwork, headcannons, and cartoons extending the series. I've discovered a few things: first, I can read Mass Effect comics all day, and second, that the interpersonal relations between the characters are what fascinates many fans.

And that leads to an interesting aspect: Your character in the game is a "Commander Shepard," but you can choose to make that "John" or "Jane" Shepard. According to research by the game's maker, Bioware, more than 80% of players choose the male version. Yet, a look through The cartoons on Pinterest shows most of them with a female lead. So that tells you something about Pinterest's user base, as well as who the hard core fans are and what they like.

I've played the game through as both genders, which has lead me to an interesting perspective. As a male, I could choose romantic partners based on my real-life preferences. But as a woman, the romantic side of the game offers a challenge. I could have decided she's a lesbian and approach it the same way as I did as a male, but that just seemed like such a cheesy, dorky, guy-thing to do. So I decided to make her straight, and just choose a partner that fit the character, like some interstellar yenta.

This brings up a subtlety of video games: do you regard the character you portray as an embodiment of yourself, or as a separate person that you are guiding through the game, sort of like you do in The Sims? Essentially, I was doing the former as a male, but the latter as a female.

Anyway, in the second game, I was going to match her up with Jacob, the brave but slightly bland soldier. But then while talking with Garrus, the gruff sniper, the game offered me some flirtatious dialog options, and I thought, actually, he makes way more sense with her. So I "romanced" him instead. Matching them together is kind of surprising, since Shepard is human, while Garrus is from a vaguely bird/reptile/insectoid race. So I thought this relationship was a rather bold and open-minded choice.

Until I see the cartoons, and find out that this pairing is what pretty much everyone did. It seems women can't get enough of Garrus. Now that came as a surprise for me. No, not because Garrus is not human (I know enough geek lore to be aware of Kirk/Spock slash fiction.) The reason for my surprise is that usually when media creates a love interest for a female character, I find him unbelievable or transparent (yeah, I'm looking at you, Jess from Gilmore Girls! )

But in this case, I totally get it. There have been a few explanations for this character's popularity, but mine is that he is a new character archetype: the Principled Badass. Usually badass characters wind up being just that: bad and an ass. But Garrus manages to project the "dangerous" image without it seeming fake, or revealing a lack of morals.

In case you're thinking that this game has woken either latent homosexuality or a weird birdman kink, I want to be clear that this is nothing more than a bromance to me; If I were in the game's universe, I'd be happily playing the Archie to Liara and Tali's Betty and Veronica. But the game has given me insight and understanding of female attraction, and all it took was defeating a race of giant, unstoppable robots.

In Your Eyes

You may have seen the story about a man in Britain who is planning on playing the piano in a public square until his ex girlfriend takes him back. A few people have congratulated him on his romanticism, though more are thinking he should really move on. This is an example of a phenomena I've seen many people point out: that the behaviour portrayed in romantic movies - particularly rom-coms - would be creepy if not abusive in real life.

What's interesting is that although most people agree that the man's behaviour is not healthy, there's a divergence in the explanation for it. Some have seen him as just another love-crazed guy, albeit one who's taken it too far (and too public.) And some people have gone straight for a paternalist explanation, saying that he is acting out of a feeling of entitlement. They would say that he is unable to cope with a woman rejecting him, since he - as a man - feels he has a right to a sexual relationship with his chosen woman.

I'm certainly not saying that doesn't happen; there are a lot of men who look at the world that way, including many that you would think would know better. But that's hardly the only explanation. After all, our messed-up sex roles make people do crazy things, but love alone also makes people act plenty crazy. I'm not absolving him of blame - harassing behaviour is harassing no matter the reason. But that's also kind of my point; bad behaviour doesn't necessarily have a bad cause.

There are a couple of lessons here: One is that we have to be careful when we go from trends to individual cases. For instance, even if you know that many blacks are unfairly treated by the police, that doesn't mean that you can assume that any particular black person who gets arrested is being framed. Secondly, we as a society still have a long way to go in figuring out heterosexual men. There's an assumption out there coming from people of many backgrounds that all a man's actions are motivated by sex, and that sexuality is purely about ownership and dominance. I doubt it was ever that simple, and in today’s world, you just can’t jump to conclusions about a person’s motivations.

You (Practically) Da Man

Let's say you hear a story about someone facing prejudice. A person discriminated against at work, or treated unfairly by the judicial system. Assuming you're a reasonably compassionate person, you want to show that you care. But there's two general ways to do this:

You could portray yourself as a sort of comrade in arms, either by comparing it to your own situation ("I know what that's like") or by highlighting a common enemy ("You tell 'em! Stick it to The Man!")

The other way is to act as a representative of society as a whole ("We really need to change as a people.") Or even to take responsibility as part of the problem ("On behalf of all X, I'm really sorry.”)

Which attitude you take largely depends on who you are. If you're a member of the same oppressed group as the victim, you'll surely commiserate. And probably, if you're from a group that had suffered similarly, you'll probably also compare your struggles. On the other hand, If your life situation is quite different, you'll probably avoid comparison, and try to show sympathy from the outside.

As a straight, white, able-bodied cis-male, I'm generally restricted to that second approach. It's going to sound silly if I try to compare my experience to someone who has lived their life with systematic discrimination. ("I know what you mean, let me tell you about how long they're taking rebuilding the expressway interchange I use.") Or, to put it another way, I can't say "Stick it to The Man" if everyone knows I am The Man.

And in a society that is prominently white, many of the people I know are in the same boat. Generally, if I'm talking to someone who ticks any of the oppression boxes, it's a woman. That is, a straight, white, able-bodied cis-female. So how do they react when looking at someone else's struggle?

I've noticed that in these situations, they're pretty quick to go to that first reaction. They align themselves with the victim, and jump to a very negative view of society. This always makes me feel kind of awkward. Sure, I'm quick to acknowledge the unfairness of society, but in this case, I'm like, excuse me, The Man is right here, I can hear you.

But here's the interesting point: In recent years - thanks to social media - I've had the chance to see the perspectives of more people with many different backgrounds. And I've discovered that although white women may see themselves as part of The Oppressed, many others definitely don't see it that way. There's a widespread feeling that white women are hardly worse-off than white men, with a lot of pent-up anger aimed at them.

I don't know how fair that is. It often seems like a grass-is-greener situation, in which white women have taken on a mythical status among frustrated activists, envisioned as incredibly privileged, hardly different from folks like myself. That’s clearly inaccurate; domestic abuse and sexual assault are problems that are not easily dismissed.

But ultimately that just adds to my point: There’s a big divide there amongst progressives, and a lot of misunderstanding. So please realize that people don’t understand one another’s struggles as much as they think they do. You may not have the oppression-cred that you think, and it will look fake if you pretend you do. But conversely, you will look out-of-touch if you assume that another’s life is easy.

Ripley, Believe It Or Not

So far, here's the reaction I've seen to Doctor Who announcing the first female Doctor:

• 25% people happy about the new casting
• 12% people saying “it’s about time”
• 5% dudebros complaining
• 30% people eagerly anticipating the dudebros complaining
• 20% progressives complaining she isn't also black, Muslim, gay, etc. 
• 5% arguing whether she is now a “Time Lord” or “Time Lady”
• 3% fans trying to correct newcomers ("You call her 'The Doctor,' not  'Doctor Who.'" “Oh,  I get it: it’s only the show that’s called 'Dr. Who’” "No! you have to spell out ‘Doctor!’”)

As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised by how little complaining there was.  Of course, social media is not a representative sample of opinion on anything.  But there are people who were perversely fascinated by especially sexist criticism, and they seemed to be having trouble coming up with particularly extreme examples.  So I’m assuming they didn’t have much to choose from.  Of course, that could be because they’ve been burnt by past campaigns against women in science fiction.

But on the other hand, I’ve been surprised by how many people are acting like this is completely unprecedented. Trekkies are off to the side, waving their arms to get our attention and point out that they did have a female captain for seven years. It’s like when Wonder Woman opened, and people were talking about how this was a new era with a female-led action franchise, there were a number of memes showing Buffy, Xena, and Katniss looking miffed at that. To be clear, I’m not denying that women have been tremendously under-represented as characters in these genres, I’m just curious as to why we keep forgetting the previous steps we’ve taken.

It reminds me of something from the music business. I remember years ago someone pointed out how, at the end of the year, when they’re writing their retrospect stories, they always seem to declare this the Year of the Woman, that this was the year women finally asserted themselves in the music industry because of the success of singer X, singer Y, and Madonna.  And yet, things never seemed to change much, and popular music continued to be male-dominated.

I’d always assumed that was because the music business has women in visible positions, but not powerful positions.  There are lots of women singing songs written by men, being produced and promoted by men, with most of the profits going to men. So we’re constantly overestimating how much real power women have in the industry.

But now I’m not so sure. Maybe we do have a problem with shifting our perspective in response to incremental progress. That’s not too surprising, really, since our ideas about the state of the world are deeply ingrained. And humans are notoriously bad at noticing slow, steady change. So I guess the lesson here is to revisit our assumptions more often.

Persuasion

This summer, I wrote a post about how Prime Minister Trudeau went to the Toronto Pride Parade and didn't end his career. In particular, I showed a photo of him at the parade, and marvelled that we've come far enough as a society that it didn't end his career.

Then I pointed out that inevitably someone would try using it against them, and this would blow up in their face. And sure enough, this week Facebook showed me this:

Of course, Bill C-16 isn't really the newspeak law they're making it out to be. You won't be send to jail for failing to memorize your alternate pronouns, and men still aren't allowed to enjoy the lush Victorian decor of public ladies' rooms.

I didn't really think the photo would be used by some conservative news outlet who fell victim to a massive breakdown in targeted advertising. I was picturing it being one of the Conservative leadership candidates, presumably Kellie "Values Screening" Leitch. But perhaps we should wait until the next election to see how far into the Trump playbook Canadian politicians are willing to go.

Don't Tell Me 'Cause It Hurts

It's been a week since the election, and I've seen a lot of articles passed around social media from disillusioned liberals. A lot of them have been good: They explain people's perspectives and how the result affects them personally. It's informative, and can be emotionally healthy for people to share their burdens. And of course, they can show people how they can do constructive and/or cathartic things to help the causes they believe in.

However, I've seen a few themes that are not helpful. Please think before posting anything with the following ideas:

Bernie would have won

Yes I know, you have that poll from the primaries that showed he'd beat Trump. Well, there was also a poll showing Hillary would beat Trump. You know when it was taken? The day before the election!

We should run Michelle in 2020

A lawyer and ex-first-lady from a centre-left ideology who we look up to because she seems very intelligent and self-confident? I'm sure I've heard that before somewhere...

First of all, note that she - like any famous person entering politics - benefits from the fact that she hasn't taken a stance on anything yet. She'll drop in popularity once she starts taking stands on things. And of course, see my write-up about how we only like strong women when they're not looking for more power.

At least the campaign is over

My fellow straight white able bodied cis males really need to stop saying this. I'm looking your way, Stephen Colbert. Yes, for us, it's over. But for many others, it's only starting.

It was a vicious campaign, we as a nation lost perspective

I'm still looking your way, Stephen. Actually, it was one ordinary campaign, and one over-the-top negative, vindictive, dishonest campaign. And it was the over-the-top negative, vindictive, dishonest campaign that won, so we're going to see more of that in the future. So once again, it's only beginning.

Let's remember, we're all Americans

That's kind of the point. One campaign was built around exclusion, and that was the side that won. So if you're now saying, "can't we all just get along?" the answer is no, Americans apparently don't want to get along. This appeal to work together is another example of a plea we hear a lot: "Let's put aside our differences, and work together to achieve the things my side wants."

This Is On You

I think Hugh Laurie summed up the U.S. election recently when he appeared on Colbert. Most news focussed on Dr. House diagnosing Donald Trump. But that's not what I'm talking about - after all, do we really need one more person trying to explain what's wrong with him at this point? No, what I thought was insightful was his confusion at people's attitude to Hillary Clinton. As he put it:

The people who hate Hillary hate her so much...I feel as if I've missed the first reel of the film where she burned down the orphanage or something.

That's been my attitude all along. And it's fitting that I saw my views spelled out so clearly on a talk show, because I also had another moment of clarity about Hillary Clinton while watching a talk show.

It was back during the 2008 election campaign, when Bill Maher was on Leno. He happened to mention her name, provoking a few boos from the crowd. Rather than use that as a springboard to take easy shots at her, he challenged the booers, saying,

If you hate Hillary Clinton, that is so on you. She's a bland centrist. If you hate her, those are your issues. You were molested by a real estate lady or something.

Ironically, I could only find the exact text of that quote at a right-wing blog. But back to the issue. Maher has got a point. Centrist Democrats are the vanilla of politics: not everyone will like it, but no one will really hate it. When you actually look at what Hillary stands for and does, you can certainly explain why Republicans will not be won over, or why the far left won't be excited about her. But there's really no explanation for hatred.

But the understanding of Hillary hatred gets more difficult when you look back at her long-term popularity as a poltician. Sady Doyle points out that she's actually been quite popular once she has a job. Her highest popularity was only a few years ago when she was Secretary of State, but her approval ratings plummet when she runs for President. Of course, you can expect a politician to lose some popularity when exposed to political campaigns, but even that can't explain the night-and-day difference in how she's been seen over the past eight years.

People grasp at different explanations, like a lack of charisma. But I don't remember anything this antagonistic against Mitt Romney or Al Gore. But a bland poltician who gets instantly hated when she shows career aspirations? Let's face it: it's all about gender. We've reached a point where we're okay with women in positions of power, but we still haven't accepted women being assertive or striving to achieve.

Armed with that perspective, you can also understand everyone's sudden love affair with Michelle Obama. She's campaigning for Clinton, essentially saying the same things, and getting heaps of praise for it. And people are saying - with varying degrees of subtlety - how much better it would be if she was the one running against Trump. But that's naive. Of course we love her; she's not running for president.  Give her the nomination and the knives will come out.

One of the most disappointing aspects of this problem is how the prejudice is perpetrated by both genders. Throughout the campaign, I've seen so many women express the same vague-but-strong dislike of Hillary Clinton. There'll be talk of attitude, mannerisms, maybe a comparison to a disliked woman you knew in the past.

I know, as a man, I'm not normally in position to school women on sexism. But as a straight-white-able-bodied-cis-male, if there's one thing I do know, it's prejudice. So let me tell you: prejudice doesn't feel wrong. In fact, it doesn't feel like anything. It feels like you, your feelings. When you hate someone but there's no logical reason why. Or when you're okay with Group X, you just don't like this particular member of Group X. That's what it feels like, and you have to challenge yourself on that. It's something we all have to learn to do.

Try To Keep Up

Today I saw a news bite that Jamie Lee Curtis had criticized Donald Trump for his attack on Lindsay Lohan.  I was like, wait, what?  I thought it was Marlee Matlin that he had criticized.  Oh, that was earlier today, leaked from Celebrity Apprentice. The loan insult was from an old Howard Stern. That's it, even for a person like myself, who tries to keep up with current events,  even with our 24 hour news cycle, the scandals are coming to fast to digest. We have reached the scandal singularity.

The reaction to accusations of sexual assault against Trump have followed a predictable pattern. You may have heard of Lewis' Law "Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism." I think we need a new law: People's reaction to women finally coming forward to talk about sexual assault is why women are so reluctant to talk about sexual assault.

On the one hand, there seem to be more people willing to listen instead of dismiss the allegations. Some of it is because people are finally getting experience and understanding of the issue. Though I suppose it's also because the allegations square with Trump's public personna more easily than they did with Bill Cosby. It's also easier to understand their desire to keep quiet given the accused's quickness with litigation. But on the other hand, the partisan nature of this issue had meant that people ate dug in on both sides, so the fight is going to be extra toxic. But it's further evidence that people are coming to accept this election as the referendum on civility that I always saw it to be.

Three Hot Tips For Designing Cars!

My appologies for doing two straight articles on cars, but while researching yesterday's article, I came across news that Cosmopolitan has designed a car for women. And I can't let something like that go by without comment.

Not surprisingly, it's a big pile of stereotypes, emphasizing the car as a place for "gossip sessions" and noting that the headlights are "eyeliner shape." But this is a surprise for some, as Cosmo is currently trying to revitalize its image, becoming more than just the supplier of an apparently endless list of sex tips. I had no idea; I'd lost track of the cultural positioning of that magazine when my grocery store introduced self-checkouts. But whatever they're trying to do as a magazine, their car is just a pretty ordinary subcompact.  It comes in a bold shade of purple, which is unusual in our monochromatic auto market. The interior is pleasant, but hardly the height of style or practicality. It's not too different from a Fiat 500.

This is the hardly the first time anyone has tried making a car for women.  Automotive historians will remember the Dodge La Femme, a 1950's attempt to crack the female car market. Of course it was a monstrosity of male preconceptions, with flowery seats and a palette of colours directly from a tampon ad. So that was kind of a non-starter.  Since then, car companies have slowly realized they need female customers, but they've mostly responded through marketing, rather than making cars specifically for women.  Yes, seriously, for the last thirty years, car ads have been made by people who know they're supposed to be marketing to women.

In the early 2000's, Volvo took a stab at a woman's car, though only as a concept car. Being in a more enlightened time and a more enlightened country, they actually assembled a team of female engineers to design it. The YCC (Your Concept Car) was a modern-looking, seemingly pretty nice car. A lot of interesting ideas went into it, though I'm not convinced it's the perfect women's car. Their central thesis was that women demand more out of their cars than men, so the YCC was loaded with lots of features your average car doesn't have, from run-flat tires to a dirt-resistant body.

And that's why the project stuck in my mind: I had to ask whether that thesis is correct.  I don't really think it is.  I mean, I'm sure that women would appreciate a car with all those features, but then so would I.  The question is, would women be any more willing to pay for them.

As a thought experiment, there used to be a person in my apartment building who drove a BMW SUV.  Of course, that's a very nice, expensive car, but I was still surprised to see it in my parking garage.  Sure, I'd love to be able to afford such a vehicle, but if I could afford it, I'd move someplace nicer.  Apparently, this person had different spending priorities to me, since they bought a nice car rather than find nicer lodgings as I would have. So I'd invite you to think of the men and women you know, and think about the cars they drive and the places they live. This is totally unscientific, but in general, the women I know have more basic transportation and nice houses, while the men I know are more likely to have nicer cars, even if they have to stretch their finances. So I'm skeptical that women would want an expensive but feature-laden car.

Not Apparent

So the Emmys happened this weekend.  As a Canadian geek, I mostly only cared that Tatiana Mislay won best actress for Orphan Black. But I also saw that Jeffrey Tambor won best actor in a Comedy for Transparent, for the second straight year. That's going to be a bit controversial, since that program, despite being about a trans woman, is not popular with all transgender people.

See, they're kind of ticked that their story is being told by a cismale actor and a cisfemale show runner, rather than hire actual transgender people.  That dislike of the program went into overdrive after Tambor's Emmy win, because he used his acceptance speech to call on Hollywood to hire more trans people.  On the one hand, good on him for calling for that, but on the other hand, he is taking one of those potential jobs, so it comes off as hypocritical.

So I can understand why people would be angry with the show.  But I've been bugged by the complete dismissal that I've seen in online discussion. That is, there's an attitude that because this show is not coming directly from transfolk themselves, that renders the show useless.  Or worse, it's condemned as worse than nothing, because it's seen as the mainstream assimilating a culture.

But I don't buy the idea that it's not doing anything positive.  The fact is that there is a positive effect of helping people get inured to a group of people who are different.  A lot of prejudice comes from fear and uncertainty, and as I've mentioned before, that lack of experience is going to be a problem for transgender people seeking acceptance.  Though Transparent may have problems for other reasons, getting cis people to see a trans character on a popular TV program will go a long way to making them less mysterious and thus less scary. That positive effect doesn't go away just because it's not the oppressed group themselves doing the storytelling.

One Last Olympic Controversy

As the Olympics draw to a close, we've had more controversy around Caster Semenya, the South African runner. She's widely believed to have some sort of intersex condition, which may help her athletic ability.

People always seem to have a fit when presented with this case, as they can't wrap their heads around the idea of a person who doesn't fit clearly in either gender. The fact is that there are a number of ways to explain this. For instance, there is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, where a person's body is genetically and internally male, but externally female. This isn't even the first time the issue has come up in the Olympics. It's a difficult subject, since it brings up the Olympics' unfortunate history of gender testing. Yes, they once physically inspected female athletes to determine that they were, in fact, female. That goes beyond a desire for fairness, and into paranoia.

Whatever the exact cause, Semenya's condition probably gives her an advantage over most women. You might be quick to call it an unfair advantage, since extra injections of testosterone are one of the performance-enhancing substances they test for. But, is there really a problem of fairness here? After all, most athletes have some sort of genetic advantage; hers is merely an easily-quantified advantage. And that's where this gets awkward, because we have to confront the question of what exactly sports are supposed to be measuring. We often kid ourselves that it's a competition of who had the most dedication, who's practiced the most, or that old cliché, who wants it more. And those things do contribute, but really we're often just running one person's genes against another.

But then we also have to ask the question of what exactly is the purpose of separate competitions for women. If we're just going to concede that sport can be a simple measure of genetics, you could argue that having a Y chromosome is just one of those physical advantages. Taking that argument to its extreme, we wouldn't have divisions for gender at all. But that isn't a situation we want. So you could argue that if we're going to have separate competitions for women, then they should be open only to people who have a similar physical starting-point. For that reason, we should probably make the gender-distinction based less on how society defines gender and more on the physical capabilities. That's more of a scientific question, which will take a while to sort out.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 28

CoverGirl has a line of Star Wars makeup.

A Two-Four And A Six-Pack Of Canadians

Yesterday Canada's new Liberal government unveiled its cabinet, and there was more excitement than ever before. By that I mean, there was some excitement.  It was because Prime Minister Trudeau promised to have the first gender-balanced cabinet.  And he managed to do it, with the thirty members split right down the middle. So there was a lot of talk about how the cabinet "looked like Canada."

That had me wondering about just how representative it was. People have complained about a phenomena where we misjudge how representative groups are.  For example, if everyone expects the group to be dominated by men, but the genders are actually 50-50, people will think of it as over-representing women, because there are more women than expected.

With that in mind, I looked up some of the statistics for this cabinet and for Canada as a whole.  At least I think these are accurate statistics; it seems someone has cancelled the long-form census.

Group	Cabinet	Canada
People from Greater Toronto	23.3%	16.3%
Quebeckers	20.0%	23.61%
Ontarians	36.7%	38.4%
Albertans	6.7%	10.9%
Nunavummiut**	3.3%	0.09%
Sikhs	10.0%	1.4%
Aboriginals	6.7%	4.3%
Men	50%	49.0%
Women	50%	51.0%
People with physical disabilities*	6.7%	13.7%
African-Canadians	0%	2.9%
Visible minorities***	16.7%	16.2%
LGBT*	3.3%	5%
Astronauts	3.3%	0.000026%
* as far as I know
** people from Nunavut
*** Did you know that First Nations aren't considered "Visible Minorities"?

So it's not perfect, but it is surprisingly close.  Except for Sikhs, who are statistically way over-represented; not sure how that happened. Commence "Sikhs are taking over" paranoia in 3, 2, 1...

Societal Transformation

Lots of people are celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court's granting of gay marriage rights. Yeah, I remember supporting gay rights; this was back before most people had even heard of it. It was cool then, but then it went mainstream, the big companies got involved, and it just wasn't the same. Hey, you know what is hot right now? Trans rights. You should look into it; it's gonna be real big soon.

But seriously, there seems to be an assumption that the trans movement is just going to follow along and repeat the progress that homosexuals have made. The gay rights movement went at incredible speed: I’m sure it didn't seem that way to people struggling to win rights for themselves, but compared to the progress of blacks or women, it's pretty amazing.

So can transgender people expect a similarly quick breakthrough? It could be that there is an accelerating effect in social justice. That is, each movement we go through gives a push to the next one to come along. During the gay rights push, there's been a lot of talk about being "on the right side of history" as people seem to be automatically looking at the issue in the long term and considering the comparison to other previous struggles. I've also been impressed at how other groups are drawing lines between the Indiana protests and their own struggles for acceptance. That empathy makes me hope that we are developing a more universal attitude to equality.

But there's also reason to believe that we'll be slower to accept the T than we were to accept the L, G and B. One problem - that trans activists themselves seem to have missed - is a lack of knowledge.

The fact is, society doesn't know much about the concept. I mean, homosexuality wasn't widely accepted when I was young, but we were still taught about it in health class. Pretty much everyone knew what it was, and that was a big part of its quick acceptance: it didn't seem mysterious or scary.

But for most of us, transgender people are a mystery. Most of what the mainstream knows about the concept has centred around reassignment surgery, and that's only been reported on as a novelty. That was an easy sitcom joke in the 80’s with some vague relationship to Sweden, but people didn’t learn anything about the actual transgender experience.

And this is where I believe the trans community has done itself a disservice by assuming that the wave of acceptance will be quick and easy. There's been a frosty reception given to people who ask questions of transgender people.

Of course, some of that is completely understandable. There have been a few embarrassing interviews where transgender celebrities have been asked about the state of their genitals. I think we can all relate to that; no one wants to talk about their genitals on national TV (hopefully.)

But I've also seen condemnation of people being unaware of the difference between transgender people and, say, drag queens. While I'm sure that's aggravating to people living in the trans community, I have to admit that only a few years ago, I wouldn't have known the difference. I consider myself fairly open-minded, but that ignorance would have been due not to prejudice or lack of concern, but just from not having the opportunity to learn.

But there's another roadblock to trans acceptance: the sheer amount of rearranging of concepts we're all going to have to do. As the last century has shown us, it takes a while to change our view of gender. Feminism has been a coherent political force for over half a century and we're still working on how we see women. Now we have to change the very idea of gender, that's not going to be easy.

This reminds me of the criticism often levelled at the campaign for gay marriage: that they are "redefining" marriage. That argument has never been convincing to me because 1. Who cares? Let's make a new definition if the old one is no longer adequate. And 2. Gay marriage really wasn't redefining marriage, since marriage - even among heterosexuals - had come to mean a commitment between people in love, not a basis for procreation. I think that's a big reason why the acceptance of gay marriage spread so fast: it fit into most people's idea of what marriage is.

The acceptance of transfolk really is a redefinition of the popular concept of gender though. The fact is a lot of people really do think of gender as defined by our genitalia. We've had enough trouble trying to grasp the idea that gender roles can't be universally enforced while still acknowledging that there may be differing tendencies between the genders. Now we have to see the genders as highly fluid and changeable, but without throwing out the idea of gender altogether.

One of the more interesting (and disturbing) aspects of the trans rights movement that I've seen is that there is a subset of feminists who are highly opposed to them. That may come as a surprise if you think - as I do - that feminism and other struggles for rights are based on the philosophy that people should be free to be the person they want to be, without having to conform to what society expects of them. But if you’ve dedicated yourself to allowing everyone freedom from the restrictions of gender roles, then changing your gender seems unnecessary, and indeed seems like undoing your work against prejudice.

Don’t shoot the messenger here, I’m just trying to explain others’ point of view. Personally, I don’t buy it, since transgender people don’t really seem like exaggerations of their adopted gender. They usually are no more feminine/masculine than cisfolk. My point is that people from all over the political spectrum are going to have their views on gender challenged by the acceptance of trans rights, so this is going to be an uncomfortable struggle for all of society.

Take My Name, Take My Name

A lot of people are talking about actress Zoe Saldana getting married, and her husband taking her last name, rather than vice versa. That’s pretty controversial, and it’s great for our modern media, since it’s something they can talk about without doing any research or delivering any facts. Just run down all the possible reactions people have to it, and that’s considered enough. Though I am surprised none of the news stories have mentioned that there's already a male celebrity who took his wife's last name. I'll give the answer at the end.

Is amusing that this is such an unusual thing that the media isn't sure how to report on it. I just read an article reporting that Marco Perego changed his name. I believe that should be, "Marco Saldana, nee Perego." Seriously, you reported that a man changed his name, using his old name.

I'm actually pretty surprised that the wife-taking-the-husband's-name tradition is still as strong as it is. I never would have believed that we'd have gay marriage at a time when it's still expected that women take the man's name. For that matter, there seems to be more open vitriol and debate over a man changing his name than changing his gender.

It's not just the tradition’s longevity that surprises me, it's the enthusiasm with which it is still enforced. I've seen women get quite upset with women who don't take their husband's name. I've heard of businesses that automatically change a woman's name in their contact info when she gets married; they find they gave less anger from women about the automatic change than they get from women annoyed the change wasn't automatically acknowledged.

So why is it still going strong? It could be self-perpetuating: as long as women think of their name as belonging to their father, the less attached they are to it. And one could argue that a marrying woman is choosing between her father’s name and her husband’s, so neither is really a unique part of her identity. I haven’t talked to many women about this, but what I have heard - and read in a brief online search - is that there aren’t many deep explanations of why women change their name. It seems that the costs of changing your name are small, so if the expectation is that you will take the husband’s name unless you have a good reason not to, then you probably will. While the man will keep his name, because he doesn't have a reason not to.  Unless you're Jack White, then you'll take Meg's name.

XX: The Unknown

Yesterday was International Women's Day.  It doesn't get a lot of publicity, but there seemed to be quite a few people and organizations making note of it.  As someone interested in science and technology, a lot of my chosen media streams focussed on women's contributions to those fields.  That's good, since those are often overlooked.

And generally, they did a good job getting publicity to women in science.  By that, I mean that we're slowly discovering that there are women in science other than Marie Curie.  I was also glad that Hedy Lamarr's contribution to communication technology was portrayed more accurately.  In recent years, I've seen some people describe it as her inventing Wi-Fi in the 1940's.

But I have to take issue with the treatment of computer scientist Grace Hopper.  Everyone focuses on her finding a moth in an early computer, leading to the terms, "bug" and "debugging."  Yeah, that's nice and everything, but she also invented the compiler!  Yes, I know hardly any non-programmers know what that means, but it doesn't change the fact that it's really important, and worth mentioning ahead of some cute anecdote.  After all, we all know that Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, and endlessly quote E=mc², even though hardly anyone one knows what it means.

Other than that, nice work.  Maybe next year we can practice saying "Crick and Watson and Franklin."

War Sells...But Who's Buying?

It's interesting how the marketing of video games has changed.  In recent years, we've seen an explosion in casual gaming. That means the relatively quick, cheap gaming on apps or social media that has a wider audience than traditional PC or console gaming. For a while those games were either cutesy games like Angry Birds, or social games like Farmville. But the market is expanding and traditional gamers are playing on their phones, and casual gaming fans seem willing to try new things.

I've mentioned in the past how the AAA war games have settled into comfortable clichés for their TV ads. But now the Finnish company Supercell has been pushing their cartoony war game Clash Of Clans with cartoony violence in their ads, and it has lead to a new level in the evolution of game marketing.

On one hand, the ads feature the sort of lightly satirical humour that plays well in our culture. But it still seems odd to see that applied to gaming. I mentioned on Twitter that I couldn't imagine my university friends and I playing Warcraft while speculating that the wizard was having a bad hair day. Actually, no, that is something we'd probably talk about, it's just hard to believe it was on TV. It was like that time SNL did the sketch with Rob Ford: I'm used to that style of humour, I just didn't expect to see it applied to this part of my life.

Now they're doing ads for Boom Beach, which a more modern war game, and thus, a little harder to joke about.  Again, they're making the ads appealing through their humour.  What's interesting is that they are built more around satirizing the experience of playing games:

• Sometimes you do the same thing over and over hoping for a better result.
• Sometimes you find yourself going through the motions against ridiculous odds.
• You find yourself ignoring the incredible violence of the games.
• Apparently gaming has gotten big enough that they feel they can make these references in the mainstream without alienating people.

In contrast, there is the Game Of War ad featuring Kate Upton.  They eschew references to gameplay itself, instead going for melodramatic narration. They also eschew mainstream appeal by going for a monsters-and-hot-women approach that seems to be aimed directly at twelve-year-old boys. I'm curious whether the ad has made more money for Game Of War or for Anita Sarkeesian.  If gaming culture continues to be displayed in the mainstream media, it could accelerate the evolution of that culture.

Get Cracking

I remember the "Bored Elon Musk" parody twitter making a good point:

Taking a photo of a check with our phone? This is the solution we've come up with?
— Bored Elon Musk (@BoredElonMusk) March 1, 2014

Based on past suggestions, I'm sure this fictionalized version of Musk would suggest brain implants that let us think our money to another person. But really, he does have a point that this isn't the optimal solution.

In the past I've complained about technological solutions that don't think through the implications of their own innovations. For example, suggesting that you could replace conventional mail with with mail that is sent electronically, then printed out and delivered to the recipient. Well, there is a related flaw, one demonstrated in the picture-cheque complaint: using technology to get around an existing problem, instead of removing the thing that caused the flaw. It's like people who spend hours on the phone while driving: if you can communicate with anyone, anytime, why the need to travel so much? And if we can move money around purely electronically, and everyone has a device they can use to do all the things that used to require a bank branch, then why bother with physical cheques at all?

I thought of this today as news went around that Facebook and Apple would pay female employees to freeze their eggs so they can work for those tech companies without giving up on having children. Yes, in a world where we have the ability to make work incredibly flexible, we instead use technology to rearrange our lives so that we can stick with the old fashioned way of working.

An Ebbing Tide Lowers All Boats

I heard a joke once about the Russian people trying to decide which revolutionaries to support. I couldn’t find it online, but I remember the punchline was that they had to choose between the group who wanted the tsars to be as poor as the common folk, and the group who wanted the common folk to be as rich as the tsars.

Which brings me to the Trivago guy. A lot of people have been criticizing his appearance. But this is just a lot of piling-on with a particularly visible person. Honestly, if you saw him on the street, I'm sure you wouldn't notice him.

Some people have welcomed the extra scrutiny on Trivago Guy's appearance as a new level of equality, since his being judged brutally on his appearance with no consideration of his personality is very much like the female experience. Well, that's true, and hopefully some men will learn from that, but this isn't what I had in mind with equality. The idea wasn't to bring everyone down to women's predicament, it was to get everyone the rights and privileges that had previously only been available to men. Or, to put it another way, when looking at women's income disparity, I would think that all but the most radical would fix it by increasing women's salary by 30%, not dropping men's salary 30%.

When it comes to appearance, I think men have it pretty close to ideal. Yes, I know everyone has their anecdote of a fashion disaster, but for most of the people you see in an average day, the men generally look quite acceptable, yet spend very little time getting to look that way. It's a balance between looks and effort that I think most women would choose if media and beauty magazines had not set the bar for respectability so high. So instead of criticizing men as though  they're women, we should cut women slack like we do men.