So this mediocre basketball player dude came out yesterday. Jason Collins, I'd never heard of him and neither have lots of other people. Probably only basketball fans who are really into knowing all the players and stats knew who he was. He has played for a bunch of teams and is now a free-agent. Maybe he will get a team, maybe he won't, I doubt it will be about who he dates, he seems like an inconsistent player, but like I said, I don't know much about him. Except that he's gay.
It seemed like a big deal at first, but something just kept nagging at me about the whole thing. All these great headlines about moving forward were floating around every news source available, but it didn't feel like a step forward. And then I realized why, because it's only a small step forward. It's some dude taking credit for being the first at something that so many women before him had done. It is a way for our society to continue the thinking that being a man = being good at sports and women, therefore a man who likes men is less of a man. (Also a man who is bad at sports is less of a man).
On the other hand, a woman who is good at sports and women...well she is basically one of the guys, so she gets instant respect. There are so many things messed up about that thinking. Why does "being a man" equal respect and not being one is a failure somehow? Why is manhood defined by such ridiculous markers as scores, in dating and sports.
This thinking is why we assume men who do things like figure skating, ballroom dancing, or yoga are gay. Because those are womanly sports, if you're not man enough to play a real sport like football, you're not man enough to date women. It's basic failed logic.
This type of logic tells us that women are less than men. They are not as good. When a football coach calls his players ladies, he is insulting them. We tell people not to throw like a girl, to man up and shake off that pain. And when we tell girls to be ladies, we mean put on a dress, cross your legs, and stop talking. Just giggle and agree with that man that escorted you here. These are all super gross concepts and even people that say they are not feminists will agree that it is absolutey absurd that we teach girls that being a woman means sitting down and shutting up. But people don't feel the same way about what we teach boys that being a man means.
They way we raise boys to be men is not by teaching them to respect the people around them, not by teaching them that real men have good sportsmanship. We don't teach boys that to be a man doesn't mean you have to be good at football, and if you like to do ballet that doesn't make you any less of a man. We don't tell boys that they don't have to fight. We teach boys that real men fight for what they want, women, pride, whatever, it's all worth a little blood. But wait, winning that woman is worth a little blood? No wonder men think they can beat women into dating them, they are taught to fight for what they want, not to respect another persons personhood.
And so we have today's sports culture. A place where real men make it into the NBA, so they can't be gay. And if masculinity = being good at sports and liking women, then any woman that makes it into the WNBA is obviously gay. Which means that when a woman who is gay comes out in a professional sport, its not courageous, its not a step forward, it's simply confirming what we already knew. But when a man does it, well that's courageous and barrier-breaking and proves that who you date has nothing to do with your sports talent.
We all know that sports is one big double standard having, rape apologizing, misogynistic place. But the actual sports part of the sports culture is great and I would appreciate if I could enjoy sports without having to feel guilty about perpetuating everything I hate about this society.
I would also really appreciate it if CNN and all the other news sources could stop saying, "first person to come out as gay in pro sports." Jason Collins did something great, but his headline has a lot of specifiers. Here is his real headline: "Jason Collins comes out as gay, making him the first active male American athlete in one of the four major sports to come out as gay." Sorry it takes a long time to say but lets not forget about all the people before Jason Collins that made this path easier for him:
Billie Jean King....Pro Tennis player: gay
Megan Rapino...Pro Soccer player: gay
Chaminque Holdsclaw...WNBA: gay.
Lauren Lappin...Olympic Softball (because we don't have pro women's base/softball): gay
Sarah Vaillincourt...Olympic Hockey (^ same problem): gay
Jamie Kuntz...Kicked of his college football team for being: gay
Stephen Bickford...Pro Soccer: gay
Wade Davis...NFL, came out after he retired: gay
Jason Somerville...Poker (which is not a sport and should not be on this list, but it is lol): gay
Luke Huff...Motorcycle Racing: gay
This could go on forever so I'll stop, but you get the point. What Jason Collins did was amazing and great and a step forward, but not the first step. I mean, guys, Billie Jean King. What if Neil Patrick Harris had taken credit for being the first comedic actor to come out, when Ellen really took that leap? So if you're wondering if sports still disregards women as actual people: yes, yes it does. Let's work on stoping that.
20.4.13
Some thoughts about Boston
A lot has been going around the internet about the events that unfolded at and after the Boston Marathon. Much like the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine and 9/11, this bombing will change how we think and act forever. We will each remember how and when we learned of the events and will take extra precautions around crowds. This will be the catalyst for a change in our thinking as a society, however subtle the change, we will change.
TERROR
Our idea of what terrorism looks like will forever be different. Before when the word terrorism was thrown around we thought of muslim extremists blowing up cars and planes; suicide bombers on missions from the middle east. Now, we can fully grasp what it feels like when it comes from inside. This is something that other countries deal with every single day, and we can now have some small idea of what that feels like.
Terrorists are not just Muslim men, and they can not always be easily detected before an attack. However tragic this event was, we can be sure the FBI, DOJ and homeland security teams have all learned a lot about what it means to track a potential terrorist, what new red flags and protocols can be put in place. This guy and his brother were both interviewed and tracked before the attack, back in 2011 but lived such normal lives the FBI saw no reason to be especially worried about what they might do.
It's important to not assume the FBI failed, or was in some kind of conspiracy. I'm not saying they are perfect, or that they don't make mistakes, I'm saying they can't tell the future, they don't have a crystal ball. If they interviewed these guys and found just two normal young men, no web posts, journal entries or anything like that to cause them to suspect terrorist activity, they would have no reason to arrest or follow these men closely. Just as if they tried to track me for terrorism, they would learn quickly I'm not a likely terrorist and move on, rather than spend resources tracking someone who has been checked out. Sometimes people will surprise you, in good ways and in bad ways, and do things nobody would ever suspect they do. It certainly tracks with what his friends and family are saying, that he was a nice kid with no serious red flags.
BOMBS AND GUNS
With the senate vote on background checks happening right in the middle of all the commotion, I realized that there are no gun control measures we can put in place that would have prevented this from happening. The devices were crude, and with enough time anybody can buy the stuff to make a bomb like that without setting off any red flags. The things that could have been done to prevent this are only things we think to do in hindsight. In the moment, in reality, checking every abandoned backpack at a marathon is not really a reasonable thing to do, unless you know what is about to happen. The officials there to keep everyone safe were more focused on typical marathon safety: making sure everyone stayed hydrated, being close in case someone didn't make it, or it got too hot, those types of things. Not so much keeping an eye out for bombs.
Whenever there is loss of life it is sad, and it should be prevented. But when you think about the number of lives lost in Boston vs the number of lives lost every single day by gun violence, or the number of lives lost in any of the school shooting that have occurred in the last 15 years, it's more proof that we need to put some laws in place to keep guns out of the hands of people that are using them to hurt other people. If this means making it hard for good people to get guns, I'm OK with that because the 2nd amendment gives you the right to have a gun, not the right to do it without regulation.
RIGHTS
I absolutely 100% think this guy needs to face the justice system. We need to find out why he did it, if there are others ready to carry out similar attacks or if he and his brother were alone. We need to know what happened if this kid was no nice and sweet, to make him do something so terrible. Was he the follower while his brother was the initiator? Is there an international group we need to know about? All these questions need to be answered, and the faster the better.
This does not mean we get to take away the rights of an American citizen. The Justice Department has decided they don't need to read this guy his Miranda Rights, invoking the "public safety exception" which is used when police and others need to protect the public from immediate danger. I get that we want information fast, and we want the truth, but that doesn't mean we get to take away somebody's rights. The thing about rights is that just because you don't tell somebody they have them, doesn't make them go away. Just because you don't like somebody doesn't mean you get to take away their rights (a concept seemingly lost on America right now).
Yes this guy is more than just some punk kid we don't like. Yes it is easier to think that he acted with an international terrorist group that to think that an American could do something like this. (And yes he was a real American, being an immigrant does not make you less of a citizen). But he has rights, and we have a justice system with rules for a reason. You can't just go around trying to take away rights because he committed a crime. That's not how our justice system is set up, and there is a reason for that. I just hope this kid payed enough attention to know his rights, but that doesn't make me any less hopeful he gives us some insight.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
"We need to do something about not letting potential terrorists become citizens." I think the only positive thing that comes from that type of thinking is realizing immigrant is not just someone from Mexico. But I think we need to be careful not to make the word immigrant a bad or derogatory word. We were all once immigrants, remember how the Europeans came over and committed mass genocide to give us this country? I don't know for sure, but I would bet that "potential terrorist" is already an immediate disqualification for citizenship. And if it isn't I'm down with making it one. But people who are NOT potential terrorists shouldn't be made into bad people just because they come from a country that might have some bad people in it. If that were the case Americans couldn't be citizens.
If we want to talk about immigration it has to start from a place of compassion. We have to realize that so many of the people we want to send back to their country are not here to be drug lords or terrorists or whatever other sort of criminal, they are here to have jobs and provide for their children.
I know what this guy did was bad, and he was an immigrant but we have got to stop doing that thing were we make a whole group into something that only one member of that group is. Not all muslims are terrorists, not all immigrants are criminals, not all black people are thugs, not all italians are in the mob, not all white people commit tax fraud, not all christians are hateful, not all football players are rapists. Judging good people based on what one person with a similar characteristic did is pretty ridiculous, and it has to stop, like yesterday.
I hope this guy tells us everything, and I hope we don't end up going to war with Chechnya (where he never lived).
TERROR
Our idea of what terrorism looks like will forever be different. Before when the word terrorism was thrown around we thought of muslim extremists blowing up cars and planes; suicide bombers on missions from the middle east. Now, we can fully grasp what it feels like when it comes from inside. This is something that other countries deal with every single day, and we can now have some small idea of what that feels like.
Terrorists are not just Muslim men, and they can not always be easily detected before an attack. However tragic this event was, we can be sure the FBI, DOJ and homeland security teams have all learned a lot about what it means to track a potential terrorist, what new red flags and protocols can be put in place. This guy and his brother were both interviewed and tracked before the attack, back in 2011 but lived such normal lives the FBI saw no reason to be especially worried about what they might do.
It's important to not assume the FBI failed, or was in some kind of conspiracy. I'm not saying they are perfect, or that they don't make mistakes, I'm saying they can't tell the future, they don't have a crystal ball. If they interviewed these guys and found just two normal young men, no web posts, journal entries or anything like that to cause them to suspect terrorist activity, they would have no reason to arrest or follow these men closely. Just as if they tried to track me for terrorism, they would learn quickly I'm not a likely terrorist and move on, rather than spend resources tracking someone who has been checked out. Sometimes people will surprise you, in good ways and in bad ways, and do things nobody would ever suspect they do. It certainly tracks with what his friends and family are saying, that he was a nice kid with no serious red flags.
BOMBS AND GUNS
With the senate vote on background checks happening right in the middle of all the commotion, I realized that there are no gun control measures we can put in place that would have prevented this from happening. The devices were crude, and with enough time anybody can buy the stuff to make a bomb like that without setting off any red flags. The things that could have been done to prevent this are only things we think to do in hindsight. In the moment, in reality, checking every abandoned backpack at a marathon is not really a reasonable thing to do, unless you know what is about to happen. The officials there to keep everyone safe were more focused on typical marathon safety: making sure everyone stayed hydrated, being close in case someone didn't make it, or it got too hot, those types of things. Not so much keeping an eye out for bombs.
Whenever there is loss of life it is sad, and it should be prevented. But when you think about the number of lives lost in Boston vs the number of lives lost every single day by gun violence, or the number of lives lost in any of the school shooting that have occurred in the last 15 years, it's more proof that we need to put some laws in place to keep guns out of the hands of people that are using them to hurt other people. If this means making it hard for good people to get guns, I'm OK with that because the 2nd amendment gives you the right to have a gun, not the right to do it without regulation.
RIGHTS
I absolutely 100% think this guy needs to face the justice system. We need to find out why he did it, if there are others ready to carry out similar attacks or if he and his brother were alone. We need to know what happened if this kid was no nice and sweet, to make him do something so terrible. Was he the follower while his brother was the initiator? Is there an international group we need to know about? All these questions need to be answered, and the faster the better.
This does not mean we get to take away the rights of an American citizen. The Justice Department has decided they don't need to read this guy his Miranda Rights, invoking the "public safety exception" which is used when police and others need to protect the public from immediate danger. I get that we want information fast, and we want the truth, but that doesn't mean we get to take away somebody's rights. The thing about rights is that just because you don't tell somebody they have them, doesn't make them go away. Just because you don't like somebody doesn't mean you get to take away their rights (a concept seemingly lost on America right now).
Yes this guy is more than just some punk kid we don't like. Yes it is easier to think that he acted with an international terrorist group that to think that an American could do something like this. (And yes he was a real American, being an immigrant does not make you less of a citizen). But he has rights, and we have a justice system with rules for a reason. You can't just go around trying to take away rights because he committed a crime. That's not how our justice system is set up, and there is a reason for that. I just hope this kid payed enough attention to know his rights, but that doesn't make me any less hopeful he gives us some insight.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
"We need to do something about not letting potential terrorists become citizens." I think the only positive thing that comes from that type of thinking is realizing immigrant is not just someone from Mexico. But I think we need to be careful not to make the word immigrant a bad or derogatory word. We were all once immigrants, remember how the Europeans came over and committed mass genocide to give us this country? I don't know for sure, but I would bet that "potential terrorist" is already an immediate disqualification for citizenship. And if it isn't I'm down with making it one. But people who are NOT potential terrorists shouldn't be made into bad people just because they come from a country that might have some bad people in it. If that were the case Americans couldn't be citizens.
If we want to talk about immigration it has to start from a place of compassion. We have to realize that so many of the people we want to send back to their country are not here to be drug lords or terrorists or whatever other sort of criminal, they are here to have jobs and provide for their children.
I know what this guy did was bad, and he was an immigrant but we have got to stop doing that thing were we make a whole group into something that only one member of that group is. Not all muslims are terrorists, not all immigrants are criminals, not all black people are thugs, not all italians are in the mob, not all white people commit tax fraud, not all christians are hateful, not all football players are rapists. Judging good people based on what one person with a similar characteristic did is pretty ridiculous, and it has to stop, like yesterday.
I hope this guy tells us everything, and I hope we don't end up going to war with Chechnya (where he never lived).
18.4.13
Hate society, not the victims of it.
Beauty product companies are flawed from the start. They prey on people who are afraid of how they look, promising with one swipe of a product they will be instantly transformed into something else. They create two products with the same ingredients (I’m not joking go read some bottles), make one blue, one pink and label them as strong vs beautiful and market them to men and women. I use 2-1 mens shampoo because it keeps my scalp from getting dandruff, sorry the bottle isn’t pink (no actually I’m not sorry) but it does the job. I don’t use weird cover ups that will make my skin itchy to cover the one crazy pimple I have on my face, even though I hate it and want it to go away immediately. I don’t like the idea that hygiene products and beauty products are grouped together. I don’t like that face lotion and body lotion are in separate aisles (which is less a commentary on society and more on how much shopping sucks).
Other people wear make-up. They use dark circles correctors and age-deifiers. I use the products I use because I feel better and more confident that way (you know...not having dandruff confident). Other people use the stuff they use because it makes them feel more confident and happy. Who am I to say that someone shouldn’t wear make-up? It’s not my decision. They get to look how they want to look and that’s their deal. But we all do these little things because we want to look good and feel good. People lose weight less for health reasons and more because they think they will look better skinny. We care a lot in this society about what other people think. Too much, I would say. But I am guilty, as is everyone, of caring more about what random strangers think sometimes than what I think.
And so when I watched the Dove Real Beauty commercial that is going around the webs, I felt good. Good because maybe my various flaws aren’t perceptible or important to the outside world. Good because maybe I should stop being so hard on myself and accept that I’m obviously way cuter than everyone else :-). Good because maybe the people I care about who hate themselves for how they look will realize that it’s not important to eliminate every single so-called flaw. As beauty product commercials go, this one was pretty solid.
Here watch it for yourself:
Enter the progressives who are just so much better and more liberal than, like, everyone else. They made some really good, really solid points: like, why are crows feet considered a flaw? Why is “round-face” a flaw while “long, thin face” a positive descriptor? Those are very very valid. But that is much more a society problem, and less a Dove problem. Dove is a corporation, they are not worried about making people feel good or beautiful, they are worried about making money, and being talked about...and they succeeded. Their message was, “hey buy our stuff so you too can have a thin face.” Not cool, but what did any of us really expect from a corporation? Outward beauty is Dove’s entire purpose for existing. If they don’t convince us that it’s outward beauty that matters, they have failed because they are a company that wants to make money.
But let’s talk about outward beauty, you know the thing you keep saying is a waste of time. Most (not all, but most) of the women who posted an issue with the Dove thing outwardly meet societies standards of beauty. White, cis-gendered, young, light hair, light eyes, and thin. And here you are telling the rest of the world not to care about outward beauty because it doesn’t matter. But it does. Looking good means being more confident. And I hate it as much as you do, but looking good helps with success. A resume can prove if you’re qualified, an interview proves if you look the part, can make the boss laugh, and aren’t lying on your resume. To say otherwise is to be lying, and first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have a problem. Problem: beauty effects every single aspect of your life, personal, professional, and relationship.
Dove didn’t set out to solve that problem, and I don’t fault them for that, we can’t solve every problem in one 3-minute spot. It doesn’t work like that. We have to chip away at the problem piece by piece. Step one: help people realize they are not as ugly as they think. Help people be confident in how they look.
Dove set out to simply make people realize those crazy flaws aren’t really noticeable, thats a good, solid step in the right direction. Attacking Dove will not help us get to step two: helping people realize those “flaws” aren’t really flaws, they are life markers, proof that you have lived. And incorporating men into the fold, because men are more then just rough skin from all the hard labor in their lives. We will get there someday, to the point where outward beauty isn’t so important, but we can’t get from airbrushed models to perfection in one step. It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes appreciating those that make even the smallest forward steps.
Dove is not perfect, I still won’t buy their stuff because I hate the overly-gendered marketing. But I will appreciate what they have done, because it made lots and lots of women feel better about themselves, and that is a good thing in my book.
Here watch it for yourself:
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