On cultural change

To first clarify my position, I am a feminist in that I support women's rights and advocate for equal rights between both men and women.

I am taking a women's studies class this semester, and while going over plenty in only three hour per week class session, something has occurred to me. Not that Micheal Bay is a blight upon the cinema going public, but that the United States needs to undergo a culture shift, comparable to the use of seat belts.
Bear with me this analogy will make a lot more sense after I explain it. When seat belts were first introduced, not many people wore them as it was taken as an insult to the driver. As it was explained in the book Superfreakonomics, "And so was it with the seat belt. Congress began setting federal safety standards in the mid 1960s, but even 15 years later seat belt use was laughably low: just 11 percent. Over time, the number crept upward, thanks to a variety of nudges: the threat of a traffic ticket; expansive public-awareness campaigns; annoying beeps and flashing dashboard lights if the belt wasn't buckled; and, eventually, a societal acceptance that wearing a seat belt wasn't an insult to anyone's driving ability."
the bold face is mine, and this would be the end result that anyone who is for equal rights between men and women, social acceptance of all genders and sexes being equal. A society where the comment about a woman being equal to a man is something that is taken for granted, ideally to the point where the comment would be met with a sarcastic remark about the color of the sky (It's still blue for those unsure). The next part of this is how to go about doing so. Those who advocate for political correctness and equality have done well in changing the language of most official organizations to be more inclusive, and at this point more accurate. This might seem silly to say chairperson instead of chairman, particularly to earlier generations, but it is important to send the implicit message that anyone can be the head of a company. I personally tend towards the gender specific chairman or chairwoman when appropriate, and when I don't know will use chairperson, or chair of the company, another term that works but often leads to the mental image of a physical chair that is owned by a company. Moving on from the office furniture, there are still issues for the women's rights movement, first of all the negative connotation of the word feminism. Pat Robertson, who is about as mainstream as I am, has argued that feminism causes lesbianism in an argument so irrational and impossible it caused by brain to hit full stop and contemplate what insane troll logic it took to reach that conclusion. I still can't fathom that level of delusional thinking for those concerned. This is less important on its own merits, but is more important in showing the cultural stereotypes, particularly of feminists. This stereotype should be familiar to anyone either from a particularly conservative area, like me, or anyone who listens to certain talk radio stations. The stereotype is probably best summed up by this tvtropes page on straw feminists here. There is almost nothing that can really change this beyond what is already being done. However if there was any feasible way to reinforce the idea that feminists are for equality to the whole mass of humanity, I'll take any suggestions. Seriously, any suggestions would be welcome.

On the Reaction to the "Tragedy in Tuscon"

To start out the only reason I used quotations is that someone else has already created the alliterative headline and to not put it in quotations would be plagiarism.

To say that there is a lot of news coverage on the events from last Saturday, is like referring to a rose as red, the white house as white, and the sea as blue. There is enough information out there and to talk about the shooting itself would be pretty much useless, but there is something I can talk about that might help. There is quite a bit about toning down rhetoric, which on paper is nice, but as Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation reminds us, paper is a flimsy thing. There is one thing we can do that will help. There is a psychological concept known as deindividuation, where when Identities are concealed or obscured, violence is increased. This was first proved in one experiment by Phillip Zimbardo in which he had subjects wear large pillowcase and referred only by number whereas the control group was referred to by name. The results indicated that when an individuals identity is known, that individual is less violent. This effect works in both directions, whenever an demagogue wants to rally people, only very rarely to the rail against individuals, and then only when those individuals are guilty of something, maybe criminally, more often not. More often than not, they railed against a group. There are many examples, one such would be Huey Long of Louisiana who used corporations as his proverbial punching bag. A more contemporary example could be Keith Olbermann who uses demeaning nicknames such as "Bill'o the Clown" for Bill O'Reilly, and "Lonesome Rhodes Beck" for Glenn Beck. Since he has apologized for a statement that implied violence, maybe he could keep a commitment to avoid dehumanizing nicknames. And then maybe Fox News commentators would stop referring to those in the country illegally as "Illegals", reducing them to a subhuman category. And maybe I could find an elegant woman who hangs onto my every word for a nice dinner date. For those uncertain the last statement was meant sarcastically. To put this in perspective I have a lot of respect for Keith Olbermann and find him entertaining or enlightening, but only very rarely both. I don't watch Fox News except for the clips shown on other news outlets to mock Fox News and the film Outfoxed which I recommend to anyone with an interest in the media.



Citation for the study: "The Human Choice" by Phillip Zimbardo