Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Tennis fans and children of the 1960s will appreciate the movie Battles of the Sexes. The dialog is anachronistic, with the female tennis players of the day using 2017 gender warrior terminology, but it is still fun to see all of the 1970s cars and styles.

I wonder if the commercial failure of this movie is related to the roughly 50 percent devoted to a same-sex love story between Billie Jean King and hairdresser Marilyn Barnett. Even folks who are passionate advocates of marriage equality on Facebook don’t want to see an hour of two women in love on screen?

We have “Scarlett Johansson Withdraws From Transgender Role After Backlash” (nytimes). A cisgender actor is not allowed to play a transgender character. But in Battle of the Sexes, without any public protest, two heterosexual cisgender female actors (at least if a quick search for gossip is any guide) play two lesbian characters. Why is that okay? Or is just a difference between 2017 and 2018?

In the dialog and in the roll-out text following the movie, the march of progress in gay rights is celebrated. We learn a lot about the post-1973 lives of the characters with the exception of Ms. Barnett, who had occupied a tremendous amount of on-screen time. Why not follow Ms. Barnett? Wikipedia provides a clue:

King acknowledged the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 “palimony” lawsuit filed by Barnett

The filmmakers apparently did not want to reveal that the sweet lover of the movie turned into a family court predator.

One thing that the movie shows is how much more money our society devotes to spectactor sports in general and tennis in particular. The prize money offered even to the best men at the time was laughable by today’s standards. The nytimes article on the Barnett v. King lawsuit says “Women now compete for about $10 million annually in prize money in tournaments around the world” (compare to $25+ million in women’s prize money for the U.S. Open alone). Is it that we are crazy richer than we were in 1973? That more people spend more time watching TV so that the value of a tennis show is higher? That air travel has gotten cheaper and more comfortable so that the value of a ticket to a live match is higher and therefore there is a lot more revenue from those attending live? What?

The movie is streaming on HBO. I’d be curious to know what readers think of it.

Related:

• “I Got Gay Married. I Got Gay Divorced. I Regret Both.” (nytimes)
• “‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’ SUGARCOATS BILLIE JEAN KING’S TRAGIC LOVE AFFAIR” (Newsweek)
• “BILLIE JEAN KING IS SUED FOR ASSETS OVER ALLEGED LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP” (nytimes, 1981, suggesting that the paper’s gossip rag incarnation is not new!)
• Karsten Braasch v. Williams sisters (a battle of the sexes with a 13-year age gap instead of a 26-year gap)

 

 

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I’ve wondered here why there isn’t a massive migration of homeless Americans to Santa Monica and other warm beach-side California towns. What do the economics look like in comparatively cold and rainy San Francisco? From NBC, Bay Area:

San Francisco is slated to spend nearly $280 million this year on housing and services for the homeless — a roughly 40 percent increase compared to just five years ago. Over that same span, however, the number of homeless in the city has largely remained the same at about 7,500 people, according to city counts.

So they’re spending $37,333 per homeless person. In other words, if San Francisco simply gave each officially “homeless” person this money, instead of shoveling out the cash to the official do-gooders and bureaucrats, those who are homeless would be receiving, on an after-tax basis, roughly the same as the median full-time American worker (Wikipedia says $44,980 is the median for pre-tax earnings). I think that this is not counting whatever the state and Federal governments spend on these folks, e.g., for Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphones. Thus, if they could convert all of their welfare benefits into cash, they would presumably be above-median earners.

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My parents told me that in the 1950s to describe someone as having “beautiful eyes” was code for “fat”. “‘I love you but hate feeling like a booty call’: Harvey Weinstein rape accuser gushes about his ‘beautiful eyes’ and says ‘no one understands her like him’ in newly released emails sent after her alleged assault” (Daily Mail) suggests that the practice continues! (whatever one thinks of Harvey, presumably we can all agree that he is fat)

Related:

• Where can Harvey Weinstein go for a peaceful retirement? (why did the guy stick around in order to be carved up by prosecutors and defense lawyers?)

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On the joys of working in a modern tech company, from a friend via Facebook Messenger:

[Rosalie] has been hiring whoever is best for the job. She was spoken to and told that she cannot hire any more men until they have a lot more women at the company. One of the other people in charge is a “big proponent of getting women into the workforce.”

This woman also spent the last several months on building a webpage of the “company values” and is making other employees write up what they think the company values should be.

Before Donald Trump was elected, Hillary and the media warned us that the U.S. would enter a dark cruel age for women and minorities. It has been 1.5 years since Trump took office. Yet at my friend’s wife’s company, there is now more opportunity for women than ever.

What about at the biggest and best employers? Here’s an article on Google’s 2017 diversity initiatives:

The civil complaint explains that Arne Wilberg, who is described as a 40-year-old white man by The Wall Street Journal, worked as a recruiter for YouTube for seven years. In his job, Wilberg was tasked with helping to select engineering and tech talent for YouTube and Google.

According to the lawsuit, Wilberg received high marks for his performance as a recruiter until he began pushing back against Google’s efforts to hire a more diverse workforce in 2017. His manager, Allison Alogna, informed Wilberg and his colleagues that they were to “only accept” a certain rank of engineers (“Level 3”) if they were diverse.

[excerpt from Complaint] In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request.

If we are to believe the facts as alleged, it seems that the opposite of what was predicted actually happened. Shortly after Donald Trump took office, Google reduced employment opportunities for white males and increased them for women and desirable minorities.

How about the #MeToo movement? Wikipedia dates it to 2017. It is tough to see how white males have been the primary beneficiaries of the #MeToo movement.

What are the concrete disadvantages that women and minorities have actually suffered as a consequence of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton?

Related:

• Casting out the heretic at Google
• No free lunch (at Google) for thought criminals

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“Why Americans—Especially Women—Are Drinking More Alcohol” (TIME, 2017) was recently highlighted by a Facebook friend because of this passage:

Added stress is another factor that might drive anyone, regardless of their sex, to drink more. High-risk drinking was higher among minority groups, and the authors argue that wealth inequality between minorities and whites has widened during and after the 2008 recession, which may have led to “increased stress and demoralization.” Income and educational disparities, as well as “unemployment, residential segregation, discrimination, decreased access to health care, and increased stigma associated with drinking,” may also play a role, the authors write.

In other words, some Americans are so poor now that they have no choice but to spend gobs of money on beer, wine, and mixed drinks.

I wonder how much of the extra drinking could be accounted for by heavier weights. Americans today can be 50 lbs. heavier than their counterparts from the 1950s. A person with 50 lbs. of extra weight will need additional alcohol to feel the same effect, no?

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A bunch of readers have sent me “Alberta man changes gender on government IDs for cheaper car insurance” (CBC). But this $1,100 (Canadian) hero was not a pioneer.

“Man legally changes his gender to identify as a woman ‘so he can retire five years earlier’ in Argentina” (Daily Mail, March 2018):

Sergia Lazarovich, 60, a government worker from the northern province of Salta, applied to change her gender in June last year, having lived for decades as Sergio.

The change was approved recently but a relative has since come forward to accuse Sergia of lying and trying to cheat the pension system.

Argentinian law allows any person to change their gender on identity documents to match their self-perception, without having to provide evidence of hormone treatment or gender reassignment surgery.

The law also allow women to retire on a state pension aged 60, whereas men have to wait until age 65.

Sergia has been in multiple heterosexual relationships including with the mother of her two children to whom she was married for 25 years.

She has never expressed an interest in men, and continued dating women even after registering for the change, the relative said.

Sergia has also never expressed an interest in living as a woman before and even made disparaging comments about gays and transsexuals, the relative claimed.

Confronted by the statement, Sergia accused newspapers of printing lies and said the decision to change genders was personal.

‘The motivations are mine and I do not have to explain anything to anyone,’ he told the El Tribuno newspaper.

Spanish-speaking readers: How is Sergia doing? Has she joined the Check of the Month club down in Salta?

Related:

• You can pay McKinsey to run a quota system at your company (discusses options such as paying workers to change gender ID)

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Parents who are gearing up for college application season will be cheered to learn that Ivy League graduates frequently ask local friends if their 6th grade gender-typically dressed boy-girl twins are identical or fraternal. Due to the parents having attended Harvard and our location being proximate to Harvard, many of the folks asking this question have at least one Harvard degree.

[This would not be a poor reflection on $500,000+ in education (private school plus Ivy League tuition) if we assume that the questioners are refusing to make cisgender-normative assumptions. The twins could have been identical (though they do look different) and then one decided on a gender transition. Separately, why isn’t it “sororal twins” as an alternative to “identical”?]

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We’ve been improving our minds lately by watching The Jetsons (aired in 1962; set in 2062), streaming on Amazon Boomerang. Some interesting items so far…

• the first episode has a reference to immigration; Mr. Spacely’s wife is involved in a “Martians Go Home!” campaign
• people still use paper currency
• Jane was 18 years old when she gave birth to Judy
• the writers did not foresee any changes to American family culture: nobody is gay, nobody is transgender, there are no never-married “single mothers,” nobody is divorced
• the writers did not foresee any changes to American diet. Machines prepare bacon and eggs for breakfast. International travel is supersonic, but there is no market for a restaurant serving the cuisine of a formerly exotic destination. Nobody is vegan, has a nut allergy, or asks for gluten-free pizza.
• there is a home computer, but no network, so the digital newspaper has to be delivered as a USB stick (packet switching was developed at roughly the same time as The Jetsons)

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We attended a semi-Orthodox Bar Mitzvah last month. Although we were happy to see our friend’s 13-year-old move onward and upward, the Bar Mitzvah is inevitably embedded within a long service in Hebrew. Young people of my generation were accustomed to managing boredom. But how can kids today sit through two hours of mumbling in what to them is an unintelligible language? They transition from an exciting phone or tablet game to staring blankly and daydreaming?

I wonder if Judaism and similar religions can survive the smartphone age.

Readers: What do you think? Public schools can continue to operate in an arbitrarily boring manner because children are required by law to show up and teachers are entitled to lifetime pay regardless of outcomes. But there is no law requiring young people to show up to a synagogue rather than stay home with Xbox and no law requiring parents to keep paying the rabbis. Judaism has survived for about 4,000 years, so it seems rash to forecast its demise, but we’re only in roughly Year 8 of the ubiquitous smartphone age.

Related:

• Facebook is bad for us (one of my posts on the book iGen, chronicling big changes since the introduction of the iPhone)

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