Bite-Sized Subversions

Why are women more religious than men?

Why are women more religious, in belief and in practice, than men?

1. Religious belief is more of an emotional thing than a cognitive thing. (Consider the fact that merely thinking about religious beliefs is usually sufficient to reveal they’re unwarranted.) And women are raised to be more emotional than cognitive; men are raised to be more cognitive than emotional (in fact, they are encouraged, even taught, to deny their emotions).

2. Religious authority figures, mythological (God, Allah, Zeus, and so on) and real (priests, rabbi, ministers, and so on), are male. And since women are raised to be subservient to males, to regard males as authorities, it’s easy for them to accept God, for example, as an authority and subordinate themselves to him. Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to be the authority; they’re also encouraged to compete with other men. So to accept God, for example, as an authority and subordinate themselves to him would not be easy — in fact, it would be emasculating. (Which is why the macho Promise Keepers came to be.) (And why its popularity didn’t last very long.)

3. Except for the war element (note that men are okay with claiming religious belief when it’s associated with war), religion is very much about morality. (Or so people think.) And it’s women are the designated moral guardians: young women are the ‘gatekeepers’ when it comes to pre-marital sex (often considered immoral), wives are referred to by their husbands as ‘their better half’ (‘better’ referring to some quality of moral goodness), and mothers are assumed to have the primary responsibility of teaching their children right from wrong.

When a man introduces the matter of morality, questioning, for example, whether it’s right to do whatever it is that’s about to be done, he is accused of ‘going soft’, or being weak, or being a ‘boyscout’, or being a bleeding heart, and so on. (Note that the last accusation, with its reference to the heart, connects morals with the emotional realm, which neatly connects this point with the first one — as does this excerpt from a novel, whose author I unfortunately failed to note: “The boy’s nothing more than a bleeding heart waiting to cry over this injustice or that!…you’d think we raised a bloody priest.”)

June 29th, 2010 Posted by Peg | religion | no comments

On Demonstrations

Though I consider myself to be rather socially conscious, and while I have written many letters and cheques, I’ve never been part of a demonstration. For a number of reasons.

Let’s consider first to whom the demonstration is directed. Perhaps primarily, it’s meant for the people in power. It’s meant to send them a message. But what possible message could be sent by a mass of people, some carrying placards, many shouting their contents. What’s in a phrase, or even a complete sentence? If the goal is change, presenting claims without evidence, without argument, is surely insufficient. Do we really expect others to change their minds, their policies and practices, without evidence or argument? Do we really want them to be so stupid?

Perhaps the message is not in the placards but in the masses, in the show of numbers. Why are numbers important? Are we thus insisting the majority should rule? First, a demonstration, consisting of self-selected people, is hardly representative enough to justify claims of being any majority. Second, why should the majority rule? I know that our system of democracy is based on this principle, but consider it for a moment. ‘Majority rule’ is really an appeal to popularity, a bandwagon appeal. Should the opinion of the majority rule, no matter how ridiculous, immoral, or simply unsupported it is?

The only message masses can send is one of intimidation, of threat: ‘Listen to us or we’ll beat down your door!’ And the answer is Kent State or Tiananmen Square. Perhaps the intended purpose of the demonstration is not to convert the people in power but to convert others in the general populace to the cause. By merely proclaiming a position? I want people to agree with me for good reason. But the tool of persuasion here is not reason, it’s peer pressure. (or the promise of party time.)

In any case, demonstrations tend not to increase social responsibility among their participants but to decrease it. When three or more human beings are gathered together, something called ‘the diffusion of responsibility’ kicks in and the chance of people/property damage increases. Unfortunately, many riots start as demonstrations. But then what can you expect, given that mass gathering facilitates emotional expression rather than, as argued above, rational expression-and given that the motivating emotion in the first place is anger and frustration.

To consider a third possibility, perhaps the intended audience of the demonstration is the media. Thus, we encourage their bad habit of responding to and reporting about (only) spectacle. Aren’t we tired of such sensationalist coverage? And while a picture may be worth a thousand words, most of those words will have to be fairly superficial. After all, to demonstrate is to show. It is not to tell.

June 22nd, 2010 Posted by Peg | Uncategorized | no comments

Against the Rape Shield

Sexual assault, like many other crimes, usually occurs when no one’s watching.  Given the absence of a third party witness, how are we to decide guilt/innocence?

Circumstantial evidence is often not helpful because consent, that which differentiates between legal and illegal sex among adults, is essentially a mental event, and of this there can be no evidence: a brain scan won’t show us whether or not a person consented.

Considering consent as a behavioural event, a gesture or a word expressive of consent, is not much better: evidence is possible, but unlikely-even if an audio or video tape of the event exists, one must establish the absence of coercion for any consensual gestures and words.

In a way, things were better when force and resistance differentiated between legal and illegal sex: evidence of this is easily available-torn clothing, bruised body parts, etc.  However, we recognize that force and resistance, and perhaps more often torn clothing and bruised body parts, may be part of consensual sex; we also recognize that force may not be physical and resistance may not be wise.

Left without such circumstantial evidence, we must therefore base our decision of guilt/innocence on credibility-specifically (1) which person is more likely to be telling the truth, and (2) which story is more likely to be true.  In both cases, the ‘rape shield’ hinders rather than helps our decision.  Questioning the accuser about her/his sexual history, as well as about her/his character and motive, may indeed provide relevant information.  Questioning the accused about his/her sexual history, character, and motive may also provide relevant information.  Both lines of questioning should be common in cases that must be decided without circumstantial evidence.

Consider Woman A: she is sexually active and often goes to bars to ‘pick up’ men; she cruises, chooses, and queries-if he consents, they drive to her place.  Suppose she once changes her mind and the man persists.  She may, quite reasonably, decide not to lay charges of rape; she would not expect anyone to believe her.  Given her past practice (her sexual history), it would, in fact, not be reasonable to believe her.

Consider Woman B: she is celibate and solitary.  Suppose a man were to enter her residence and rape her.  She, reasonably enough, would lay charges; she would expect to be believed.  Given her past practice (her sexual history, or rather the lack thereof), it would be very reasonable to do so.  It is crucial therefore for that past practice, the fact of her long term celibacy and solitude, to be admissible.

Likewise, the past practice of the man should be admissible: a history of habitually raping women, for example, is relevant; a history completely devoid of aggression is also relevant.

Such information is relevant, however, only insofar as we are creatures of habit, people with tendencies.  To say past practice is relevant is to assume that people by and large are consistent in their behaviour.  This may not, in fact, be the case: people are inconsistent, people change, people do things for the first time, people do things ‘out of character’-all of this is true.  Just because a woman consented to sex with twenty strangers before this one doesn’t mean she consented to this one.  And just because a man raped twenty women before her doesn’t mean he raped her.  Just because the sun has risen every day until now doesn’t mean I can know with certainty that it will rise tomorrow; but probably it will.  And probabilities are all we have, especially when there are no witnesses.  If a person typically gets drunk on Saturday night and becomes very generous, lending cash and car keys, then his/her charge of theft some Sunday morning is going to be a tough one to make stick; people will reasonably conclude that probably s/he consented to the transaction.

Yes, information about one’s past may be misused; but this is not a good reason to prohibit its use: baseball bats can be misused too but we don’t therefore make them illegal.  Rather, it’s up to the court officials to say ‘Wait a minute, that’s a non sequitur, that’s irrelevant’.  And if the case in question involves consent, sex, and a stranger, probability based on past practice with regard to consent, sex, and strangers is what’s most relevant; information about such past practice should therefore be admissible.

It may, however, be the only information that’s relevant: arguments to character are of questionable validity-’She’s sexually active, therefore she’s a slut, and sluts lie’; ‘She’s a teacher, therefore she must be morally upright, therefore she would not lie’; ‘She’s an atheist, therefore she’s immoral, therefore she would lie’; etc.  Arguments to motive are also questionable, if only because this takes us back to the unknowable mental event.

Most of the items mentioned in discussions about the rape shield would also be irrelevant-medical records, adoption files, child welfare records, and abortion files.  A personal diary, however, may be relevant: if the woman had written in her diary the night before the alleged rape, “I intend to get laid tomorrow night and it doesn’t matter by who-and the more it hurts and the more afraid I am, the better-and I’ll lie about consenting just to make my life a little more interesting,” then that entry should be admissible; likewise, if the man had written in his diary “Tomorrow is Victim Number Ten-I’ve got my knife sharpened and ready to go-I get hard just thinking about raping whoever it’ll happen to be,” then that should be admissible.

However, hearsay has always been inadmissible, so entries such as “He said he was going to rape me” or “She said she wanted me” would not be admissible.

If judges do order such irrelevant records to be turned over, then that’s the problem-and the solution is not a restriction on the admissibility of all personal records/history but mandatory Logic 101 for court officials.  (To use one example, drug use does not show general disregard for the law, and most of my students could point out the fallacies in such an argument.)

To summarize, (1) we can’t have certainty, we can have only probability; (2) past practice can be (not is) relevant to probability; therefore (3) information about relevant past practice, of both the accuser and the accused, should be admissible in court.

June 3rd, 2010 Posted by Peg | gender issues | no comments

The Part-time Ghetto

What is the difference between people with part-time jobs and people with full-time jobs?

If you’re part-time, you don’t get sick days (so when you’re sick for a day, you lose a day’s pay); you don’t get time and a half for overtime (time and a half starts after 44 hours, not after the numbers of hours you’ve been hired to work); you don’t get seniority (it simply doesn’t apply to part-timers); you have to pay for your own dentist appointments, your prescription drugs, and your glasses (so you don’t make dentist appointments just for check-ups, you don’t buy prescription drugs unless they’re absolutely essential, and your glasses are for your eyes of five years ago); and your only pension plan is the CPP and whatever you save on your own (which is not a lot if you’re only part-time).

But more significant than these monetary differences are the differences in your perceived value: your input is less often solicited, whether regarding shift schedules or company policy; your work is thought to be less important, no matter what you’re doing (your paycheque is thought to be less important too, so you often have to wait longer for it); you’re automatically considered a beginner who needs more supervision, who’s expected to ‘prove’ herself; in short, if you’re part-time, you don’t get treated or taken seriously. And don’t kid yourself – the differences exist along the whole job spectrum: the differences between the part-time and full-time waitresses are the same as the differences between the part-time and full-time professors.

Let me ask again, what’s the difference between part-time and full-time? Usually, about ten hours. Why is this such a big deal? (I mean apart from ‘It’s a man-made world and men are obsessed with quantity differences.) (It is not insignificant that most part-time jobs, the second-class group, are filled by women. And I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg: was part-time work devalued because women did it or were women put in the part-time positions because such positions were devalued?) There’s no difference between the cleaning done by the part-time custodian and that done by the full-time custodian; there is no difference between the lawyering done by the attorney who’s part-time with the firm and that done by the one who’s full-time.

Quite simply, an elementary but serious error in logic is made by those who perpetuate this two-class system: they have assumed a causal relationship between quantity and quality. (Again, who is it who keeps connecting quantity with quality, who keeps believing bigger is better?) They have assumed that those working less than 35 hours/week are not doing as good a job.

Good as in as committed? But it’s often not people’s choice to be part-time instead of full-time; they’d be full-time if they could! And in fact, the desire to become full-time often leads to more, not less, commitment to one’s duties.

Good as in competent? The part-time worker is not necessarily less qualified or less experienced. In fact, given the glutted job market, the younger employees who must settle for part-time work are often more qualified than the older full-time workers. (And again, they have good reason to try harder, to be more competent.)

Good as in enthusiastic? Wouldn’t it make more sense to assume that the more hours one works, the more tired and burned out, i.e., the less enthusiastic, one is? In fact, how can one be a healthy individual, how can one live a balanced life, when 80% of one’s waking hours are spent in the same place, doing the same thing?

It doesn’t make sense. That’s all there is to it. Why should the number of hours per week determine whether you are a first-class employee or a second-class employee? What’s so magical about the number 40? And will the magic disappear if and when we scale down to a 30-hour work week?

May 27th, 2010 Posted by Peg | work | one comment

A Man Shaken by a Bomb

I picked up a sci-fi novel the other day at a used bookstore. The jacket said it was set after a nuclear war and written by someone who’d rubbed shoulders with a lot of military people. Well, I figured it’d be interesting to see what they imagined life’d be like after a nuclear war. (The pages weren’t blank.)

What can I say, it was slow reading. For example, the author said, “A man who’s been shaken by a bomb knows what it feels like.” So I had to stop and wonder why a woman wouldn’t know. Is he saying women never get shaken by bombs – because they’re never in bombed areas? Or they are, but for some reason, they don’t get shaken by them? Or they do, but they nevertheless don’t know what it feels like?

And that was just the preface. Chapter one introduced Florence. Who gossiped. She didn’t design state of the art CD players. And she certainly wasn’t looking for the cure to cancer. She gossiped. However, “If your sister was in trouble and wired for money, the secret was safe with Florence. But if your sister bore a legitimate baby, its sex and weight would be known all over town.”

Only if my sister was in trouble? What about me? I realized then that this guy hadn’t even imagined the possibility that women might read his book. And, well, we might. After all, we can read.

And apparently it didn’t occur to him that someone’s sister, a woman, might have money of her own. Or that she might ask another woman – not a man, not her brother – for a loan.

Then of course we have the phrase “in trouble”. Being pregnant, having a life begin to grow inside your body – that’s not being “in trouble”. It’s either amazingly wonderful or incredibly devastating. But it’s not being “in trouble”.

Then there’s that word “legitimate”. First I had to back up and figure out that being in trouble meant, to him, not only being pregnant, but also being unmarried. Which would make that baby illegitimate. (And that’s why she decides to abort?) Right. As if men alone confer legitimacy on life. My, my, aren’t we a little full of ourselves. (‘Course that might explain why they feel they have the right to take it so often, so capriciously. Coupled with the gross underestimation of its value indicated by the phrase “in trouble” to describe its creation…)

And what precious information would Florence, otherwise, spread far and wide? Whether his sister survived the birth? No, apparently that’s not important. What’s important is the sex and weight of the baby. And presumably it’s important that it be male and that it be big. Okay, and why is that important? Well, the best I could come up with was that the guy has in mind a world in which food and shelter and so on is gained by one-on-one physical combat (not our world), and the combat is such that brute force is an advantage (what, no weapons?), and he’s assumed positive correlations between maleness and size and capacity for said brute force (not a valid assumption).

Okay, onto the next couple sentences…

May 21st, 2010 Posted by Peg | gender issues | no comments

Free to be – Offensive (You are such an idiot.)

What does it mean to say you’re offended?

If it means merely that you disagree with what I have said, then surely we have a right to offend. Surely the freedom of speech allows the expression of dissent. Even if your disagreement includes any number of unpleasant emotions (embarrassment, shame, displeasure, irritation, annoyance, anger, distress, outrage, shock, fear, disappointment, frustration, envy, humiliation, guilt, sadness, anxiety, discomfort, disgust, a vague sense that my words are inappropriate or indecent, whatever the hell that means). Though often there is no awareness of disagreement; there is only the unpleasant emotion.

If ‘offend’ is the verb form of ‘offence’ as in ‘offences’, then to offend (also) is to do wrong. But, why, how is it wrong for me to express a view with which you disagree? Are you hurt by dissent? Harmed in any way? Disagreement aside, can words harm? Well, yes. Insults, in part, can cause psychological injury, which in turn may or may not cause physical distress. If I call Dick an idiot, and you disagree, do you feel hurt? Probably not. (Though I suppose it depends on whether Dick is your boss or your son.) But if I call you an idiot, you may feel hurt. Your blood pressure may rise. (Though that may depend on whether I’m your boss.) (Or your son.) So the real questions are do you have a right not to hurt in such a way, do I have a duty not to call you an idiot, is it wrong for me to do so?

Okay, are we talking about moral right, duty and wrong or legal right, duty, and wrong? Because it may be morally wrong to do X and yet we may want to retain the legal right to do so – some moral wrongs are ‘worth’ illegalizing. Is my calling you, or Dick, an idiot one of these?

We might want to distinguish between dissenting opinions (‘Dick is an idiot’) and insults (‘You are an idiot’) – after all, the latter are generally characterized by intent to harm whereas the former, generally, are not. But perhaps all we need do is distinguish on the basis of severity (rather than on the basis of kind). That would cover threats as well. (‘If you continue to be an idiot, I’m going to kill you.’) If I’m your mom (or otherwise important to you) (let’s just say) and you are young (or perhaps otherwise psychologically weak), then my calling you an idiot, especially on an hourly basis, is likely to cause permanent damage. You’ll never develop sufficient confidence or esteem to become a rocket scientist.

But surely at some point we are responsible for our psychological weaknesses. If you are an adult and such an idiot that you take to your bed at being called an idiot, or at hearing Dick called an idiot, surely the blame for such severe injury is not all mine. (And if instead you take up arms, then it is I who is the idiot.)

What if you don’t take to your bed? What if you continue to show up for work, but my continuous insults (or dissenting opinions?) just annoy the hell out of you all day, but so much so that you become exhausted by the effort not to take up arms against me and so become less exceptional at your job? Which means you don’t get the promotions or commissions that would’ve meant you could send your son, Dick, to college, so he could become a rocket scientist. Surely I’m in the wrong here. Should you therefore have legal as well as moral grounds for – something short of taking up arms? Even if – and perhaps especially if – I’m unaware that my remarks (jokes, taunts, full-page ads and billboards) are causing you such distress?

And surely we are responsible for our own opinions and beliefs. I know people say they were ‘born Catholic’ or whatever, but don’t they really mean they were born to Catholic parents? You can’t be born believing anything, let alone the tenets of Catholicism. Our opinions, our beliefs, values, attitudes – these are within our control, we voluntarily hold them.

Does it matter whether or not you actually are an idiot? Taking to your bed, or taking up arms would seem to prove its truth – but does truth put me wholly in the right?

Another consideration is the practical consequences. If we prohibit offense – my god, if every time I opened my mouth I had to be sure not to offend, not to in some way challenge every opinion, every belief, every value, every attitude, even if said opinions, beliefs, values, and attitudes are held unconsciously such that disagreement is bypassed and the unpleasant emotion is just a sort of psychological– well I don’t even know what to call that unawareness, that mental laziness, that apparently vehemently felt response whose cause is unknown to the one experiencing it, perhaps usually occurring with ‘offenses to one’s moral, religious, or patriotic sensibilities” (what the hell are ‘sensibilities’?) – well, I wouldn’t gotten past ‘my god’.

Which brings us to another consideration: the standard of reasonableness. If because of your unreasonable beliefs, you are offended by my expression of a reasonable opinion, doesn’t that put you in the wrong? As well as make you an idiot?

May 9th, 2010 Posted by Peg | Uncategorized | no comments

First (and last) Contact

Women have a long tradition of being diplomats. “Historically, … marriage has been the major alliance mechanism of every society, and little girls are trained for roles as intervillage family diplomats…, the married woman straddles two kin networks, two villages, sometimes two cultures” (The Underside of History, Elise Boulding, p.53-54).

Many women have decades of experience, settling a dozen disputes a day. To whom do the kids go crying “It’s not fair!”? Mom. She’s the mediator, the negotiator extraordinaire.

Girls develop language skills before boys, and their level of proficiency continues throughout their lives to be superior. Women in languages and linguistics degree programs outnumber men. Translators? Women. Writers? Women. In short, women are better at communication.

(And) (So) We talk a lot. (Well, when we’re not interrupted by men.) Although ‘gossip’ can be superficial and mean, much talk among women is unjustly dismissed with that term—when women talk, they’re doing social cohesion work.

But of course communication doesn’t involve just words. Well, women are better at reading facial expression and body language too. And they go deeper: men actually avoid any kind of psychological understanding (of themselves as well as others); women actively embrace such knowledge (“But why did you do that?”).

Lastly, women, whether by nature or nurture, are more predisposed to cooperate, whereas men are more predisposed to compete. We prefer a win-win solution; men love a win-lose one.

So why is it that when presidents fill their ambassador and diplomat positions, they appoint men? Is it because their ambassadors and diplomats will be talking with men? And men are more comfortable talking to other men? That would mean ambassadors and diplomats are men because they’re men.

Or is it (also) because the goal of a diplomatic exchange is not to cooperate, not to resolve conflict, but to conquer, to come away ‘one up’ on the other? Diplomats are really just smoke screens; mediation isn’t the goal.

And why is that? It could be as simple, and as awful, as (1) Women are good at mediation; (2) Whatever women are good at is devalued; therefore, (3) Mediation is devalued.

Well, look where that’s gotten us. Planet-wide, we spend more on weapons than food, clothing, and entertainment put together. Unless of course you consider weapons to be entertainment. Which apparently men do. (Turn on any tv show during prime time, and nine times out of ten a gun will be fired in the first five minutes.)

But hey, when the aliens come, NASA’s first contact team had better include a bunch of women. Because please, guys, all those weapons of yours? They will surely be but mere slingshots.

April 30th, 2010 Posted by Peg | gender issues | no comments

Having Kids and Having Religion

Most people associate pronatalism with religionism. Either because of its ‘go forth and multiply’ view, its ‘sanctity of life’ view, or its ‘we have to outnumber them’ view. I agree there’s a relationship, even a causal one. But it’s not that religion ’causes’ pronatalism; rather, some other thing causes both religionism and pronatalism.

What is this other thing? An inability to find fulfilment in the here and now. The sci-fi stories featuring a ‘last’ generation always seem to show some sort of widespread malaise, even despair. What, no kids? Many, not content to die in a few years, decide to kill themselves immediately. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it an existential crisis. One not handled very well. (‘I’m too unimaginative or too lazy, or both, to have made my life worthwhile. I know! I’ll have kids—they’ll make my life worthwhile!) (And then in a really clever leap of logic, they even blame the kids for their existential black hole—’How can I be out following some dream when I gotta put food on the table for you kids?’)

The same people insist on believing there’s a heaven no matter how many photographs of ‘up there’ they’re shown. (Never mind the extensive non-visual physical evidence against the possibility.)

In short, those of us who have purpose and value in our own lives have no need of kids—or heaven. Those of us who don’t, pass the buck.

April 25th, 2010 Posted by Peg | religion, sex | no comments

Guns

Guns have a tendency to kill people. Usually when injury would have sufficed. What to do. (Assuming killing people isn’t always a good thing.) Hm. I know! Let’s replace bullet guns with dart guns. Darts filled with something that temporarily disables or immobilizes the person, causes an hour of paralysis or unconsciousness. Or severe nausea. Or diarrhoea.

Nah, that’s too humane. It’s okay for elephants, but for people?

Or probably, more importantly, it’s too expensive. I would guess that a dart costs more than a bullet. But maybe only because of supply and demand. And surely if we add in the lawsuits for accidental injury and death, the price of bullets increases substantially. (We won’t add in the loss of limb or life because apparently that doesn’t count for much—otherwise we wouldn’t have so many bullet guns in the first place.)

Or well, it wouldn’t work. What if you missed, what if, in a shoot-out, the police shot some innocent bystanders instead of the bad guys? They’d be the ones lying there unconscious. Well gee. Some might think better that than lying there dead.

The police might even think that. Even for the bad guys. In fact, I can’t think of any policing situation in which instant and total, though temporary, disability wouldn’t serve the purpose. (Reluctant cops might want to take a minute here to review that purpose.) Permanent injury and death is simply unnecessary. (Well, except for the really bad guys. That’s why we’d bring back the death penalty right after we ban all the bullet guns.)

And as for non-police situations, well, again, a dart gun would be sufficient: if attacked, one could just fire the thing and then watch one’s assailant collapse; an hour should be long enough to escape and arrange for police to be present when he or she regains consciousness. (And if not, well, let’s make it for two hours. We surely have the technology—the elephants, remember?)

As for illegitimate uses, well, first, any adult who without just cause uses a dart gun would probably have done the same with a bullet gun. Second, such an idiot could safely assume that his or her victim would return fire later. Probably on more than one well-timed occasion.

What if said victim didn’t have a dart gun with which to return fire? Well, why wouldn’t he or she? I mean, why not allow every adult to own one? Most men already have the ability to knock someone unconscious for an hour. So do most women, but they tend to be crippled by socialization. This would just even things out.

But it would make fighting so easy, surely violence would triple overnight. Hm. One, to judge by young male behaviour, fighting is already pretty easy. Two, my guess is that a fight in which one of the guys goes unconscious immediately, and stays that way for an hour—or starts vomiting copiously or suddenly gets severe diarrhoea—I don’t think that’s going to be a very fun fight. So I don’t think dart guns will detract from the popularity of fists, knives, or baseball bats.

April 19th, 2010 Posted by Peg | violence | no comments

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-not 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? But 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.

April 9th, 2010 Posted by Peg | gender issues, music | no comments