Star Trek misogynistic?

A friend’s Facebook status:

I just finished re-watching Star Trek (The Original Series).
WOW… every single episode is uncomfortably misogynistic.
EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE.

He then amplified this for a friend who questioned the above statement:

in this case misogynistic does not mean “hate” so much as objectification and dismissal — In the first few episodes of the first season we hear that women are prone to more emotional outbursts than men, that they are all searching for a man to care for them, that they need a man to be self actualized.
That women can be coaxed from their command duties (commit mutiny or traitorous activity) when a man shows interest.
Even the first episode which had a female officer as second in command (With Command Pike) the female officer was shown to be lustful toward Pike at one point and catty when compared (by the butthead aliens) to the younger ensign.

Me, always trying to be helpful on social media:

You could create a new series: Woke Trek. All officers of the Starship Safe Space have PhDs in Comparative Victimhood.

Readers: What would be the ideal science fiction series for our woke time?

Full post, including comments

Jet pilot hero considers returning to the Air Force Reserve

A friend used to be a military hero flying an exotic airplane for the U.S. Air Force. Due to the airline industry boom, a lot of pilots retired during the past few years, but now the Air Force hopes to get some back, at least part time, for the Reserve. A recruiter called. Here were the first three questions:

  1. What was your sex at birth?
  2. What pronouns do you use now?
  3. Have you tested positive for Covid-19?
Full post, including comments

Heteronormative Prejudice and Gender Binarism from the Census Bureau

Note the priority given to the options for a person who might live in the same house or apartment:

Image may contain: text

Textbook Heteronormativity.

The gender ID choices:

Textbook Gender Binarism.

Aside from the agency’s failure to get up to speed on LGBTQIA+ issues, I have to say that Census has given us a good example of web design. Maybe it is best not to try to figure out what these forms cost the taxpayer, but the overall IT budget is in the $billions.

A 2019 article, “2020 U.S. census plagued by hacking threats, cost overruns”:

The effort to move the census online aims to streamline the counting process, improve accuracy, and rein in cost increases as the population rises and survey response rates decline. Adjusting for 2020 dollars, the 1970 census cost $1.1 billion, a figure that rose steadily to $12.3 billion by 2010, the most recent count. The 2020 tally is projected at $15.6 billion, including a $1.5 billion allowance for cost overruns.

U.S. population was 205 million in 1970 compared to 330 million today. So a 61% rise in population corresponds to a 1400% increase in cost.

We are informed by the New York Times that Vladimir Putin does all of our voting for us (but it is the Chinese who post coronapanic on Facebook). Will Mr. Putin also fill out our Census forms?

T-Rex’s work, which includes security, data storage and performance testing, is projected to cost taxpayers up to $1.4 billion, according to the census budget.

So if the $1.4 billion in spending includes a firewall, we will have to complete these forms ourselves…

Full post, including comments

We’re gender-neutral, but all children are either girls or boys

Our town is building what is, on a per-student basis, the most expensive school ever constructed in the United States. Thus, when it comes time to do sex ed they need to rely on materials from Procter and Gamble. The conservative Midwesterners try to be up to date regarding the irrelevance of biological sex:

But notice that they commit the sin of gender binarism. The school population falls into just two categories: girls and boys.

Separately, although the materials are targeted at the full rainbow of students, including those who identify as “boys”, the only available role models in the teacher slides appear to be cisgender females:

Full post, including comments

Wailing over Elizabeth Warren’s defeat betrays heretical anti-rainbow flag religious beliefs?

A Facebook friend who is passionate about both Elizabeth Warren and the Rainbow Flag (LBGTQIA+) religion posted “Elizabeth Warren endured sexism at every step of her campaign” (Guardian):

The next president, it is now assured, will be a man.

Setting aside the insulting dismissal of Tulsi Gabbard, this statement betrays extreme cisgender-normative prejudice and a denial of gender fluidity. How does the author (or anyone) know that Joe Biden won’t identify as a woman by the time January 2021 rolls around?

Nobody predicted Bruce Jenner adopting a new gender ID, right? Is there something more inherently male about Joe Biden than there was about Bruce Jenner? (an immigrant friend after Super Tuesday: “I can’t believe they picked the most demented puppet. The guy had to be defended by his wife from a vegan. He needs a physical and a head CT. Strikes me as a guy with cortical atrophy.”)

If there is nothing special about being born with a doctor-identified female biological sex, how can there be anything special about Elizabeth Warren compared to Joe Biden purely on account of her (potentially transitory) current gender ID?

From March 9, 2020 in our righteous neighborhood (Lincoln, Massachusetts, soon to be home of the most expensive school building, per student, ever constructed in the United States):

Related:

Full post, including comments

Black Death lesson: immigration will discourage women from working

“The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, includes a great lecture on economics. One of the effects of a reduction in population was a rise in wages. Market-clearing wages turned out to be high enough to induce women to work in much larger numbers than previously. This, in turn, was one reason it took hundreds of years for the European population to return to pre-Plague levels. Working women would elect to delay having children and would have fewer total children.

Via immigration and children of recent immigrants, the U.S. has been expanding its population, the reverse of what happened during the Black Death. Simultaneously, Americans are decrying (a) stagnant wages for the working class, (b) the lack of women in the workforce, and (c) the wages paid, specifically, to those who identify as women. (One definite difference between the Middle Ages and today is the percentage of the population that can qualify to be placed in the “women” category!)

Full post, including comments

Elizabeth Warren bows out with a dose of cisgender-normative prejudice

From NPR:

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her bid for the presidency on Thursday, acknowledging her place as the last major female candidate in the race “and all those little girls who are gonna have to wait four more years.”

Absent cisgender-normative prejudice and the heretical assumption that gender is not fluid, how does she know that the U.S. won’t have a president who identifies as a “woman” starting next week? Did God call up Elizabeth Warren and tell her that Donald Trump will never experience gender dysphoria?

Related:

  • “Elizabeth Warren: ‘Girls will have to wait for woman president'” (BBC)
  • “Transcript: Elizabeth Warren Speaks After Suspending Campaign” (WBUR): in response to people saying that she was too angry to appeal to voters, Elizabeth Warren uses the word “fight” three times in the first two paragraphs. “I say this with a deep sense of gratitude for every single person who got in this fight, every single person who tried on a new idea. … I guarantee I will stay in the fight for the hardworking folks across this country who’ve gotten the short end of the stick over and over. That’s been the fight of my life and it will continue to be so.”
  • “If Elizabeth Warren doesn’t become president… will the New York Times blame voters’ prejudice against women or voters’ prejudice against Native Americans?” (post from January 3, 2019)
Full post, including comments

NYT “How to Make Your Marriage Gayer” article has a simpler explanation?

“How to Make Your Marriage Gayer: Same-sex spouses feel more satisfied with their partners than heterosexual ones. What’s the secret?” (NYT):

Women in different-sex marriages reported the highest levels of psychological distress. Men in same-sex marriages reported the lowest. Men married to women and women married to women were in the middle, recording similar levels of distress.

Complex theories are proposed, especially regarding dishes (presumably the author has never met an actual man, e.g., Don Gorske, and therefore does not realize that an American man in his native environment does not generate any dirty dishes, only McDonald’s wrappers).

Could there be a simpler explanation? What if men get on women’s nerves after a few years (half of women will stop wanting sex with a husband after four years of marriage, says Good Housekeeping)? This makes those who identify as “women” unhappy. As a reflection of that and being constantly around a resentful person, those who identify as “men” in heterosexual marriage are not too happy.

This would explain why homosexual relationships are less distressing: there is no man to make a woman unhappy.

It wouldn’t be enough to explain why male homosexual couples are happier than female homosexual couples. For that, though, we could just posit the simple statement: “women are generally more open to expressing unhappiness.” Now everything in the article is explained without reference to who washes which dish.

[See “The happiest children in Spain live with two daddies”: “children who lived with their two mothers were extremely unhappy, one of the most dramatic differences in any two populations presented at the conference” (i.e., a same-sex marriage in which both adults identify as female is the most miserable situation from a child’s perspective, even worse than having separated or divorced different-sex parents).]

(The author suggests an alternative explanation for why male homosexual partners are happy: they’re having sex with their friends and neighbors.

One distinctive strength of male couples is that their tendency to candidly discuss respective preferences extends to sexuality as well, including choices that may startle some heterosexuals. For example, while the extent of non-monogamy in gay-male partnerships is often exaggerated, openly non-monogamous relationships are more common than among lesbians or heterosexuals. Many gay couples work out detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.

If we assume that sex with new friends makes people happy (litigators told us that the only thing that makes Americans happier than this is getting paid to have sex with new friends), this would also account for male-male couples being happier than female-female. )

Separately, I think this article is consistent with a long line of American journalistic thinking. Americans can become like the French and run an awesome low-cost (as a percent of GDP) health care system. Americans can become like the Japanese and give up both guns and violent crime. Heterosexual Americans who identify as “men” can become just like homosexual Americans who identify as “men”, except when in the bedroom, and extra happiness will ensue. (Diversity is our strength, but we don’t want glum heterosexual married people. Everyone needs to strive for the level of happiness achieved by homosexual married people.)

Some fun reader comments:

Molly in Boston: Can only speak for myself and my own experience, but I feel that my queerness by its very nature makes me a better partner. Both my girlfriend and I–via the process of realizing our own sexuality in a heteronormative world and coming out in that world–have done a great deal of soul searching and work to know ourselves which in turn helps us to state our emotional needs more clearly and address each other’s needs in turn. In general, it just seems that we have more practice in emotional intelligence than a typical different-gender couple.

AW, NYC: They make more money and don’t have kids. Simple.

A New Yorker: As a gay man who has been life-long single (by choice), I would like to note that this article might be missing the ultimate summary. Among gay men, only those who really want to get married and have kids, go that far. That maybe why their marriages work better. Hence, the corollary could be that maybe fewer heterosexuals should get married and even fewer should have kids.

GP, from Oakland: This is fake news. First, the article makes the mistake of conflating correlation with causality. “Doing the dishes” may correlate with “marital unhappiness,” or whatever, but the author doesn’t even try to show causality. Couples who share the dish-doing might also enjoy greater wealth creation or longer lives, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with dishes. Second, why look at only one household task–one that typically women have been expected to perform? Why not look at lubricating the deadbolts or replacing missing shingles on the roof? Because in fact, the “studies” knew the answer they were seeking before they asked the question. Not exactly scientific. Third, when you’re writing about some group or other, always reverse the order to see how it reads. How about an article entitled “Gay Couples Should be more Hetero” or the like? Immediately the bias becomes clear. Articles like this encourage right-wing pushback, and for good reason. The articles are biased, the logic is specious, and the data corrupted.

Angelica, Pennsylvania: Dishwashing is just symptom of a larger, hidden issue not openly discussed in the article: women are expected to fully carry the burden of planning and managing the household. It’s meaningless if my husband washes dishes when I have to ask him vs him taking initiative. If I have to manage my “partner” the way I manage my kids, that is a problem that causes discord. Who wants to have sex with someone who needs the same level of management as kids do? I’d rather be single in that scenario.

David H, D.C.: I bet that a study of second marriages among heterosexual couples would reveal far less stress for women. [At a minimum, they’d have a lot more cash to spend if they planned that first marriage properly!]

Amanda, Nashville: Same-sex couples have chosen each other largely on the basis of sexual compatibility, which is a big predictor of marital satisfaction. Heterosexual women in particular are often guilty of entering into marriages where their sexual needs aren’t being met, if they even know what those needs are.

British Columbian: Also, I would expect that hetero couples engage in child-rearing more often than same-sex couples do. If that is the case, it’s well-known that much tension between partners arises from the stresses of child-rearing. So this could well be another explanatory factor.

Charlie L: It’s always “dishes and laundry”, the wicked duo of drudgery. Worse, actually, than being shackled in the hull of a slave ship. Two jobs which are done indoors and have been made vastly quicker and easier by machines invented by men. [A Bill Burr fan?]

Stephen, NYC: The problem with opposite sex couples, is that men and women may be lovers, but they are also enemies. It’s a paradox. [Let’s send some woke “allies” to his apartment!]

Caroline st Rosch, Hong Kong: There is a theory that you should have 3 loves in your life – your first, young, romantic love; the love you have children with and the love you grow old with. [Until the “love you grow old with” lawyers up and sues: “When 80-Year-Old Parents Divorce” (nytimes, same date!)]

Nancy Robertson, Mobile, Alabama: “Would you like to guarantee the marriage and birth rates plunge even lower than they are today? Then go ahead and insist that straight men do more housework.” [She might have met Don Gorske!]

Full post, including comments

Every American welfare program eventually turns into welfare for rich white people?

“A Surprising Finding on Paid Leave: ‘This Is Not the Way We Teach This’” (nytimes):

One of the biggest arguments for paid leave for new parents has been an economic one: Research has repeatedly shown that women with paid time off after childbirth are more likely to keep working.

But a new study, the largest to be done in the United States, found the opposite. In California, which in 2004 became the first state to offer paid family leave, new mothers who took it that year ended up working less and earning less a decade later. They averaged $24,000 in cumulative lost wages, it found.

For first-time mothers, there was a clear negative effect. After 10 years, the new mothers who took paid leave right after they gave birth were 5 percent to 7 percent less likely to be employed, and those who were employed earned 5 percent to 8 percent less. The researchers said the earnings decreases could be because they worked fewer hours, moved to jobs with lower wages and more flexibility, or became self-employed.

These patterns held no matter the age or prior earnings of the mother, and were true for both unmarried and married mothers, though the decreases in employment were slightly larger for unmarried women

Not too surprising. Pay people to refrain from work and they discover how enjoyable it is to hang out at home!

Usually it takes a while for a welfare program to be co-opted by rich white Americans, but this one was immediately latched onto:

Despite the large sample, the effects were limited to women who took leave immediately after it became available. Only about a fifth of women who gave birth then did so, and that group might have been more inclined to step back from work in the first place.

A variety of research has found that this group was more likely to be older, high-earning, white and college educated than those who took leave after the program had been in effect for a while. Even later, awareness of the program was low, particularly among low earners — exactly the group that research has shown gets the most economic benefits from paid leave.

Related:

Full post, including comments

European + Eskimo/Inuit culture = female-led society

My Facebook feed recently lit up with righteous Americans celebrating the a new female-led government in Finland. “Change in Finland: A government led by five women and the world’s youngest prime minister” (Washington Post) was a typical article. More substantive, “Finland’s New Government Is Young And Led By Women—Here’s What The Country Does To Promote Diversity” (Forbes):

The new female prime minister’s coalition government was formed with all five party leaders being women – the majority being under 40-years of age, … Feminists across countries applauded and congratulated the new prime minister inspired what might promise more change and innovative solutions to come. … Research from the past 30 years suggests that quota provisions and the type of electoral system are good predictors for women’s representation in parliament across countries.

The Eskimo/Inuit world, however, reached this milestone decades ago. During our Northwest Passage cruise, I commented to an anthropology professor on board that all of the people we’d met in Nunavut with steady government paychecks were women: the mayor of every town, the teachers and other school employees, etc. She said that it was like that everywhere in the Inuit region of Canada: “Women are the ones to go to college and they run all of these towns, from the mayor on down.”

Here’s the mayor of Cambridge Bay:

In addition to some locally useful content, the library features Women Who Write Are Dangerous:

Traditional Eskimo society, which includes people from the Bering Sea through to Greenland, involved a strong gender-based division of labor (and there were only two gender IDs available). Men were responsible for hunting and making tools. Women were responsible for having babies, taking care of children, technical sewing, and cooking. This was a sustainable way of life for at least 2,000 years.

Europeans barged in with cheap industrial food and factory-made tools, thus devaluing the traditional role of men. Except for the sewing activity, the Europeans made the traditional female role more valuable. Where children had previously been a burden and a woman would have to find a man to help her feed the extra mouths, the government now frees women from all of the costs of child-rearing. As in the U.S., the Inuit woman who gives birth is entitled to government-supplied housing, government-supplied food, and government-supplied health care. What if she has 10 kids? “Every time a child turns 5,” replied a single mom, “the government has to give me a bigger house. It is illegal for children over 5 to share a room.”

The private houses that we saw advertised for sale were absurdly expensive compared to potential incomes for any non-government job. Public housing is $50-100/month; a comparable quality house across the street might be $300,000 to purchase.

(Inuit have among the highest population growth rates in Canada now:

source: https://www.itk.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Inuit-Statistical-Profile.pdf )

What’s left for the men to do? Some seem to have construction jobs, but there is a lot of alcohol (in industrial quantities, another gift from the European invaders) and Xbox. A teenager told us that his father had 9 children total and had not, as far as he had observed, done anything by way of gainful employment. Suicide statistics are frightening and nearly every Inuit person we met seemed to have a story about a brother or father who’d killed himself.

(https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/10/inuit-highest-suicide-rate/ : “If Nunavut, the semi-autonomous Canadian territory that is home to roughly 28,000 indigenous Inuit people, were an independent country, it would have the highest suicide rate in the world. The suicide rate in Greenland, whose population is mostly Inuit, is 85 per 100,000; next highest is Lithuania, at 32 per 100,000. Nunavut’s rate is 100 per 100,000, ten times higher than the rest of Canada and seven times higher than the US. When I visited Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, in July, virtually every Inuit I met had lost at least one relative to suicide, and some recounted as many as five or six family suicides, plus those of friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances.”)

Related:

Full post, including comments