Daily Archives: October 12, 2008

Appalling

Brent Curtis pens a front page piece in the Times Argus/Rutland Herald today on the rise in infant homicides in Vermont. The first few brief paragraphs present his thesis, after which he goes into examples. If you turn to the rest of the article on the back page, you get a fair amount of details, including the opinions of “experts” on the reason for the grim phenomenon. For example, conditioning:

“I think to some extent that in general girls are brought up playing with dolls and being taught to nurture,” she said. “Dads don’t always know how to do that.”

Stupidity:

“I think that in a number of instances, these parents come to the belief that ‘Gosh, that’s a successful strategy’ without fully realizing the damage they’re doing,” Dale said.

Stress, despair and poverty:

Dr. Stephen Sarfaty, a forensic neuropsychologist in Connecticut, said the two most common elements in child abuse cases are a lack of resources for the parent, combined with a feeling of helplessness.

Curtis himself adds, on the back page, that there “is no typical profile” of the abusers.

Why, then, on the front page and in the first few columns, which present Curtis’s thesis for the piece, does he make this statement?

Experts say young fathers are more likely to abuse their babies because they don’t have the emotional strength to nurture crying infants.

With all his research and quotations, and in the face of a serious problem, what does Curtis present as a front page thesis? That young men simply can’t handle parenting. Absolutely outrageous.

 

Firstly, his own article offers a variety of reasons, from a variety of “experts,” but the repeated theme seems to be economic – lack of resources, eductaion, etc. The common theme, as Curtis says, is being “pushed past the breaking point.”

But again, despite all this background, the conclusion he offers casual readers looking at the front page is:

Experts say young fathers are more likely to abuse their babies because they don’t have the emotional strength to nurture crying infants.

Clear. Unambiguous. Young men can’t parent babies.

This kind of essentializing nonsense is toxic. It’s needlessly insulting to all men, but in the long run it’s societal poison to women.

Why? Because essentializing an entire gender into neat little boxes like this doesn’t ever just work one way. You mess with the balance on one side, it affects the other. If men are told they aren’t emotionally as capable of handling parenthood, they simply will give up faster, as they’ll feel they’re at a hardwired disadvantage. If women are told that men aren’t emotionally capable of handling parenthood, they will be inclined to assume more and more of the parenting themselves.

And where does this take us?

1950, anyone?

Women’s place is in the home, men’s place is in the workplace. Period.

What’s particularly infuriating is the obvious linear connection to this attitude – which is still all too prevalent – and the very crisis discussed in the piece. Men still feel the pressure to be the breadwinner/provider, and still at some level question themselves and their identity if they can’t fullfil that archaic expectation. Common sense tells us that this is often going to be part of why, in situations where poverty is an issue and a family is in play, you see more men lose it and act out, often violently. Shaken baby syndrome is just one psychic rivet that could pop. You also see greater spousal abuse, substance abuse and suicide from men as you head down into the pressure cooker of poverty, where mental illness rates increase across the board. As you come out of poverty, gender differences that remain become less easily understood, but are still difficult to cleanly cast as nature over nurture in an effort to promote biological determinism.

So Curtis would spout a simplistic line to his audience that nakedly fuels gross gender stereotyping. And he does so even though it’s contradicted by reality, and the rest of his own article.

And at a time when a major economic downturn makes it all the more important that we get these things right.

With this thesis, Curtis adds whatever small amount of weight he has towards pushing us backwards, even though the real solution is precisely the opposite – men need to be encouraged and supported in sharing the burdens of economics, both in terms of their identity as men, as well as in terms of day to day living – and they need that support from their families and communities, just as women need comparable, mutual support from families and communities to move beyond their traditional gender/power pigeonholes.

Nothing is more crucial to our collective future than gender equity. In the 50s and 60s, that meant redefining duties and responsibilities. Despite much progress made on these fronts throughout the 70s and 80s, we still have a ways to go on. The only way to make that final progress is to start redefining the gender identities that still bind us to that past, and that keep pulling us back into the same pathologies and bad paradigms. And that means an end to obsessing over which gender has the monopoly on leadership, nurturing, aggression, compassion, courage or what have you.

Reporter Brent Curtis just did his part to work against that goal, and in an exceptionally crude and non-subtle manner.

Electric Cars Are Sexy

My daily driving route is a mere 12 mile one-way commute from home to River Rock School in Montpelier, so it’s not like I spend a heckuva lot of money on gas. But rest assured, I have always hated buying gas even when it only cost $15 to fill up the tank. The dream of electric car ownership has always been “just a few years” away into a never-coming future. And when you actually see an electric car at Walker Motor’s, it’s about as practical as a moped, with a maximum speed of 25 mph.

So here are a couple of Sunday morning, coffee-sipping pieces on emerging electric cars. The Aptera caught my eye earlier this year, but now I’m looking at the Pininfarina B0 (pronounced bee-zero).

If you want to build a new car, even a small, economical car, get Pininfarina to design it. That lesson is made clear with the launch of the B0 at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, the best-looking small car we’ve seen here. The B0 has smart lines and a graceful arch between its front and rear wheels, yet maintains the dimensions and configuration to be a practical car. This car is actually a collaboration between Pininfarina and BollorĂ©, the latter being a consortium of companies with expertise in batteries and capacitors, and is intended to go into mass production late in 2009.

The B0 uses a lithium metal polymer battery pack occupying the undercarriage of the car, with an electric motor driving the front wheels. A super capacitor provides short-term storage for electricity recovered from regenerative braking. Solar cells set into the roof and front of the car trickle energy to the battery.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10057558-48.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech

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The B0 is also reviewed in last Friday’s NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/automobiles/12PININ.html?ref=automobiles

Here is a 60 Minutes interview about the Karma and Aptera. But if you want to see exactly how sexy electric cars are, see the video below the fold!


Below the fold: “Electric Cars Are Sexy!” and other two more

The Changling ..

under the heading of “Duh!” …

Here’s a link to C-Span’s coverage of a November, 2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate.

I forced myself to listen to the full almost 1 1/2 hour, and I heard a funny thing. Palin pronounced all the ‘ing’s and there was no “betcha” and no “guys ‘n gals”.

Compare the Palin of 2006 with the Palin of 2008 … talk about a manufactured public persona!

Shumlin on the Lt.Gov.race

(Oh, good god. What is this “aw gee, I dunno, I guess if I HAVE to support SOMEbody…” nonsense? Especially since Shumlin helped get Costello into the race in the first place, reportedly. Shumlin throws precisely this kind of unhelpful fodder to the media WAY too often.   – promoted by odum)

With approval for Douglas and Dubie perhaps thin and Democratic turnout expected to be high every little nudge of support that can be added to a Democratic candidate could help could make the difference .With this in mind I was puzzled to read this quote about the Lt.Gov.’s race  from State Senate President Shumlin.I may be missing something here but isn’t this just a little shy of enthusiasm?

The struggle voters may face in deciding between the two is illustrated by the observations of Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin, D-Windham.

“I find myself in an awkward position because they are both my friends,” Shumlin said. “I think they both would make good lieutenant governors.

“Obviously I’m a Democrat and Brian is a Republican,” Shumlin continued. “So I’m helping Tom.”

If the race were close — and that’s hard to know because of a lack of public poll results — having party affiliation as a deciding factor should worry Dubie and encourage Costello. Why? If, as predicted, a group of voters flock to the polls to support the Obama/Biden ticket, they might be more inclined to mark their ballots for Costello than Dubie.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

When Their Credit Runs Out, The Game Will Stop

When their credit runs out, the game will stop. – Marriner Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1931 – 1934

I just watched the movie “Maxed Out.”

It’s worth a watch. It describes the real game behind the credit industry. The people they like most are the people who have “a taste for credit.” These are people who will run up and continue to hold a balance on their cards.

Their absolute favorite credit tasters: people who have filed bankruptcy.  They’re the best targets because they can’t declare bankruptcy again for years, so they’ll have to keep paying any credit they take on (even if it’s for something like life-saving medical procedures) until either they die or they can file again several years down the road.

Suicide isn’t entirely uncommon among those who get into serious debt.

Interviews included two women whose college-aged children hanged themselves over credit card debt.

These moms discussed the day they testified before Congress. The day they sat behind a bunch of banking industry bigwigs, who spoke of how much money they’d each donated to the very people who were conducting the hearing. The day they realized that no one would vote to ban the sales of credit cards to unemployed 18 year-old college students. Their dead children still receive solicitations for credit cards.