April 13, 2008

Gender: M / F / ? (part 2)

Continuing from Thursday's discussion about the differences between biological sex and cultural gender-roles:
So it does seem that throughout our human history, there have been quite a fair number of individuals who did not fit into the cultural gender role specified by their biological sex. I am not discussing sexual orientation, which to me, is a separate (although related) issue.

What strikes me about all of this is an issue which has always irritated me and is demonstrated most aptly by a modern example: the About Me box prevalent on every website with any real level of personalization. You can see the problem if you surf through Blogger blogs, MySpace, Friendster or the like. Some people have short, pithy About Me boxes - either their world is easily classified and categorized, or they've given up in frustration. Other people have About Me boxes which trail from the top of the page, down below the fold and then some, a long, skinny tail attempting to balance everything that person is.

The reality of humanity is that we are rarely easily categorized. People are so very much more than their religion, their race, their nationality, their ethnicity, their profession, their marital status ... and more than their sex or their gender.

So, what is it to be male or female in terms of expected gender roles? Well, obviously this changes from culture to culture.

My first-year college students, some 5-8 years ago, had to read a seminal article discussing how gender expectations led to male and female students learning and behaving differently in the classroom. When it came time to discuss the essay in class, the students immediately let me know exactly what they thought about the article: it was hopelessly out of date.

It was one of those moments in teaching that you can't plan, but when they happen, you wish you'd had a video camera to record the whole thing.

The students began by all agreeing that such preferential treatment of boys over girls simply didn't happen any more. It very quickly morphed into "boys and girls are better in different areas because boys and girls are interested in different things."

Girls don't like math.
Boys don't like reading.

As the students made these generalizations, I could see some of them starting to squirm in their seats. However, as first-year students, not all of them were willing to "take on" the entire class and it seemed like everyone else was agreeing.

And then one of the male students said, "Well, you can tell boys and girls are different just by what they play with when they're little. I mean, girls don't like to play with cars or get dirty or climb trees."

Before he could go on, there were a couple of mini-explosions across the room.

We spent the rest of the class having a great discussion on gender-roles and how those often differ from the reality of individual personalities. With a class that included several female engineering students, several international students and a couple of males in "non-traditional" fields, there was a lot of sharing of stories. My students left the class that day, still discussing the issues - a happy and semi-rare day for a required first-year course.

I think many people in the western world have come to the conclusion that it is not necessarily a trait of males to want to have a career. It's not necessarily a trait of women to want to stay home with the kids.

So, while some traits might be more prevalent in men or in women, they all seem to have not just exceptions (which implies they are not common) but that these traits might be tendencies, whether hard-wired or learned.

So what does hard-wire the male and female brain to be different?

Some research indicates that men use more grey matter, leading to a tendency toward more information processing; women tend to use more white matter, leading to more connections between various processing centers.

So, those people who say men and women think differently are right - in general. The problem is that there are always biological exceptions which muddy the waters.

For myself, I cringe when any survey asks me: M or F. I am not that easily categorized. They are not usually asking for my biological sex as that rarely matters in a survey. They are often asking for gender and I don't think that the majority of people in the western world truly fit into the expected gender norms. I know too many men who are "too sensitive" and too many women who enjoy the outdoors "too much." And if a researcher is simply quantifying us by M & F we're going to get pink Hello Kitty compound bows sized for a woman - which might make some of my friends happy (you know who you are!!), but which would just piss me off to no end.

Ultimately, what makes us what we think of as male or female is more complicated than our biological bits and there's a lot more overlap in both directions than M or F would indicate on a survey. As a species, we are programmed to look for patterns and to put everything into hierarchies. The problem is, most of our methods of classification are too simplistic to truly encapsulize who we are. There is no better example of this phenomenon than Thomas Beatie - someone born female, but felt like a man. So, he had his breasts removed, began the testosterone therapy ... but stopped short of a "full" sex change, citing that one day he might want to bear a child.

Is Thomas a man or a woman? Biologically, the answer is fairly simple as we sex people by their genitalia. However, if we were able to look at all of Thomas's systems, would we find all the hallmarks of female, or would we find female knees and reproductive organs, but a male brain?

Is the woman who is outside more than inside, who hunts deer and delights in dune buggies more male or more female?

And ultimately, does it really even matter? Aren't we simply ourselves?

Why should the exterior trappings of male and female dress or appearance matter to anyone short of potential mates? Why do we care?

In online communities, I try to not say if I'm male or female because I feel the question is far more complicated than the simple biological answer. I catch flak for it and I don't particularly care. If there's a shoutbox or live chat feature to the community, I generally find myself the center of a controversy - is "ender" male or female. People get angry when I won't answer the question. Eventually, I pose one question to them: "If I'm not looking to date you, why do you care? I am still the same person I was before the debate started here. Why does it really matter?"

So far, no one has been able to answer that question ... and they have all (so far) decided that it doesn't matter after all. They're still curious, of course, but we are an intensely curious species - and that's a good thing.

[Some further reading:
from the BBC
from

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:10 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Struggles | Stumble

April 9, 2008

Still Breathing

I was, apparently, a good baby. (I know, what happened, right?) As the first-born, of course, my parents had no real idea what they were getting themselves into, and like all new parents, they thought I probably cried too much. I was put on the very healthy soy formula, since that was the thing at the time. Apparently I was congested so much of the time as an infant, my mother was just certain that I would be claimed by SIDS. Part of that fear was "just" the paranoia of a new mom, part of it was my congestion. But it wasn't long before I settled into a fairly quiet routine. I'd play in my crib, gurgling and goofy in the morning until Mom was ready to get up - a note in my baby book says that it was a great way for Mom to wake up in the morning, greeted by baby's smile.

Despite my determination to play no matter how I felt, by the time I was three, it was obvious that something wasn't right. After a myriad of tests you don't want to give to a three year old in 1971, I was diagnosed with both allergies and asthma.

A partial list of allergies:
Foods: soy, tomatoes, green beans, peanuts, peas, broccoli, most every green vegetable and I believe every legume -- luckily I do not get the anaphylactic shock reaction, so I can tolerate some amount of these things
Outside: grass of multiple varieties, ragweed, pine trees, cedar trees, cottonwood trees, most flowers - pretty much everything that grows outside, I think
Animals: cats and dogs and bird feathers
Inside/Misc.: mold, mildew, dust mites, cockroaches, ampicillin

The asthma could be triggered by humidity, cold, smoke, and "excessive" activity. Yeah. What's excessive activity to a three year old?

The doctor told my mom the bad news: she needed to keep not just a clean house, but an ultra-clean house. My parents needed to stop smoking. And they'd have to watch me carefully outside. And, of course, I'd have to start getting allergy shots.

I started allergy shots.
Mom covered my box springs in a plastic allergy bag. And my mattress. I think we tried the pillows, but I couldn't sleep for the noise it made.
Mom gathered every single stuffed animal and doll that I owned, put them in bags and into the car. I thought Mom and I and my toys were going for a car ride - we did - straight to the Salvation Army. Stuffed animals and dolls were dust catchers. (Try explaining this to a heart-broken, screaming three year old. Doesn't work very well. Obviously, as I'm still whining about it.)
Mom began a cleaning regime which developed into a full-fledged OCD drama. Vacuum on Mondays and Fridays. All clothes, including the bedding, washed on Thursdays. I don't recall a specific day for the dusting, but it was also done often.
Mom was nervous every time I went outside, exhorting me to not run (didn't work).

Out of those two lists, what didn't get done?

I know it was the early 70s. Everyone smoked. Including my parents.

I can recall going clothes shopping (against my will) with Mom and everyone smoking in the mall. The clothing stores had ashtrays in the dressing rooms and I recall one time in particular when I was a bit older. Left alone in the dressing room while Mom went to hunt down another size (I was "saving" the dressing room so someone else couldn't take it), Mom left her lit cigarette in the little stall with me. Brave, I picked it up, surprised a bit at how warm it was, and I carefully stubbed it out, trying not to damage it, just to make it quit stinking up the place so bad. She came back, went for a drag, and was stunned to see that it had "gone out." She re-lit it, took a few puffs, tried on some stuff and again left me there while she went back out to find something else. This time I broke the cigarette and when Mom came back, I was really surprised, but she wasn't really mad. Just said she didn't realize it bothered me so much. That was the only time I ever held a lit cigarette.

So much of my childhood was structured around avoiding triggering my asthma and allergies - but the smoking was something that drove me crazy. I could feel the "dirt" in my lungs from it. The smell got up into my sinuses and drove me crazy. But it really started to get to me when other people assumed that I smoked simply because everything I owned smelled of it, and I smelled of it. The breaking point was the evening I went to babysit for a new client and the mother literally turned up her nose at me and said, "You smoke." I replied that I did not smoke and never had. She sighed dramatically and pointed to a remote location of the backyard. "Smoke over there, where the children can't see you. They are not allowed to see people smoking."

It didn't matter how I protested, I was a teenager, I smelled of smoke, and she was a judgmental woman. Of course, by then, the mid 80s, smoking was becoming a habit to restrict and to drop. I began a "quit smoking" campaign with my mother, but it wasn't until she decided to rejoin the workforce and was afraid that being a smoker was one strike against her too many, that she decided to quit smoking. And she did it, first time, with the help of the nicotine gum.

I know that in the early 70s, it was not easy to quit smoking. Hell, I realize that for most people, it's not easy to quit now, even with Zyban, the patch, the gum and all the rest of the quit smoking aids.

But it was truly one of the great frustrations of my childhood to know that I was expected to not run track, not join a swim team, have all of my stuffed animals given away in front of me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera - and still have my parents smoke in the house, the car - constantly.

It was a constant mixed message. We care so much about you we wrapped your bed in plastic and we restrict what you can do - just so you stay healthy. On the other hand, my food allergies were completely ignored and the most frequent household chores I had (besides doing dishes) was to dust and vacuum. Even though particularly dusting the house was prone to give me a terrible sneezing fit, clog my sinuses and irritate my eyes.

You have asthma, you can't run track. Go dust the house.
You have asthma, you don't need to be building a clubhouse. Go weed the front yard.
We want you to be healthy, as they blew smoke in my face.

Don't mistake me. I'm actually not trying to vilify them for this. I'm trying to understand it.

Mom once told me that when the doctor told her that she and my father needed to quit smoking, she knew that Dad never would. She made the decision at that time to do everything else possible. I told her, but the smoke wouldn't have been as bad if it had just been Dad. He was only home evenings and was outside most of the weekend during the warm months. Her unspoken answer was plain on her face: if he wouldn't give it up, it was unfair to ask her to give it up.

And to a certain extent, I get that. I can imagine how difficult the craving would be with no patch or gum, the moment Dad walked in the door with a lit cigarette. I have no doubt it would be maddening, and I am pretty certain that Mom simply didn't have the willpower at that time in her life to quit smoking under those conditions. I do get that.

But it doesn't really touch the double standard of how my allergies were handled.

Anything that impacted my parents in a serious way was ignored. Mom literally forgot that I had food allergies until I was digging through some paperwork one day and found the results of one of my old allergy tests. I was stunned at how many of the foods I really, really seriously hated were on that list. I tried to point this out to my mom, to point out how unfair it was that we bent over backwards to avoid using cow's milk because my sister was lactose intolerant - and yet I was told to eat food I was allergic to almost every day.

It was a few weeks after finding that paperwork, that I began to have a recurring dream, one that I would have until a few months after I moved out of my parents' house. In the dream, I was at my pediatrician's office (instead of my "grown-up" doctor) and he was listening to my lungs and tsk-ing. I just knew I was in trouble. I'd done something wrong, but I couldn't figure out what.

"She's got to stop breathing," the doctor told my mother. "It's going to kill her." Mom stood across the examining room and looked disapprovingly at me - as if I should have known better. As if she'd been telling me for years that breathing was bad for me and now I was making her waste precious time and money by having to go to the doctor - only to have him tell me to quit doing this.

In the dream, I am too shocked to say a word. How can breathing be killing me? Not breathing is what kills; not continuing to breathe! But they are both looking at me so seriously, so gravely.

The dream cuts to a return visit to the doctor. This time I'm attempting to hold my breath as the doctor examines me. To breathe on the sly, taking stolen tokes of oxygen. It's to no avail. He sighs, shakes his head and again ignores me to look at my mother. "She's been breathing again."

It's a pretty simple dream, really. Obviously by the time I was a teenager, I believed I was being held to impossible standards that other people were not held to. Some twenty years later, I can see that feeling was pretty accurate. I was expected to do everything exactly right, no matter how much that inconvenienced me, whereas my parents were very much allowed to take any shortcut they chose.

Of course, a portion of that is simply the difference between being an adult and being a teenager, but I can also see where my parents were simply not ready to take responsibility for their actions - to think through how what they did affected their children.

I see on a variety of blogs over at Cre8Buzz how different parents today are thinking through what they do and how it affects their kids. Of course, these parents are my age or younger. They've learned from their own mistakes and the mistakes their parents made. I've seen some amazing parents say, "Eh, ya know what? I'm spending too much time online. I'm going to take charge of my life and ration the time I allow myself to be online. I need to go play with my kids more." I've seen them discuss quitting bad habits, talking to their kids about serious issues, pulling their kids out of crappy schools and agonizing over whether to home school or take on an additional job to pay for private school.

I find that introspection and self-examination and honesty a breath of much-needed fresh air.

Ultimately, what many of these bloggers don't realize is that not only are they in conversation with other parents when they share a story about parenting or their kid. (Because by no means are all of these people "mommy bloggers" or "daddy bloggers" - many of them are "regular bloggers" who happen to include their family life in addition to everything else they write about.) They are also, in an odd way, helping those of us who did not have great parents or a great childhood to gain some perspective and attain some healing. Reading one parent say how they tackled a problem with their kid can lead to me thinking through how my parents handled a similar situation - and in spending time analyzing that it becomes easier to see what is a normal bump in the parenting road, and what was perhaps a freaking boulder from the sky.

I suppose, then, that this post is really a thank you to all the folks who brave the stigma of being branded a parent-blogger. You're not only helping out other parents with tips and techniques, you're not just making us laugh with you - you're also helping us to re-evaluate our own childhood and parents.

And that's a good thing.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:46 PM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

April 5, 2008

Focus On Your Own Damn Family

This is essentially a repost from January of '07, but one that I feel bears repeating, particularly in light of the people wailing and gnashing their teeth about Thomas Beatie's decision to bear a child.

I will admit that I am somewhat confused by a woman who undergoes much of the sex-reassignment procedures and becomes legally declared a man ... but does not wish to have the genitalia changed as well because "he had always wanted a child." That's not my understanding of transgender and sexual re-assignment, but I will admit that it's only my understanding of it. I'm not gonna dictate what Thomas can and can't do. It's up to him.

What I'm pissed off about, is how any time there is a non-traditional family brought into the media, people instantly begin wailing about "good old family values" and "these people are going to ruin their children's lives."

Give.
Me.
A.
Break.

I am sick to death of this utter CRAP about "traditional family values."

My father was raised by a mother and father. His dad worked hard. His mom stayed home with the kids.

My mother was raised by a mother and father. Her dad worked hard. Her mom stayed home with the kids. They went to church every week.

My parents were raised by people with "traditional family values." My parents had "traditional family values."

That did NOT make my parents good parents.

I did not turn out well because of my parents' traditional family values.

I turned out the way I did partly because I have always had an exceedingly strong sense of self. Because I stumbled upon books which nurtured me and encouraged me in believing that there was normalcy in the world. Because I had teachers who nurtured me even though they never did seem to realize just how much I needed that nor what was wrong.

What creates a well-balanced child ... and a well-balanced adult ... is not just a mother and a father. It is not what we erroneously call "traditional family values."

What creates a well-balanced child is love and attention and boundaries and knowing that all of this comes from someone who genuinely cares for you.

Is the ideal situation for a child a male and a female figure in their lives? Honestly, I don't know and I'm not sure that this is the best question to ask. The problem is that we simply do not live in an ideal world. We live in reality. And it's freaking messy and muddy and unclear down here in reality.

As for the idea that this Mom and Dad family is the Christian way to do things ... since in the U.S. and in the U.K. that seems to be the loudest voices of complaint ... let me set a few things straight.
First, it was not just Mom and Dad until perhaps the last 100 years (or less). Instead, it was most often either an extended family or something closer to a village or tribe. With multiple adults responsible for helping to love and discipline the children - not just one mother and father.
Second, Jesus was not born in the ideal situation. He was born to a mother and father, but he was not born in the rarified air of a good home. He was born, through no real fault of his parents, in the most real and common of places. In the mess and muck of a stable. Not the sanitized manger scene that we usually see.

Why bring up the manger? Because everything about Jesus in the Bible comes down to Jesus being very grounded in reality rather than intense numbers of rules.

To my mind, "family values" should simply mean that a child receives both love and discipline and knows that the person or people taking care of him care for him.

Ideally, children should probably know that they can trust all the adults around them ... that all the adults around them can administer trustworthy and valid and fair discipline.

But we don't live in that ideal world. And many of us prefer to discipline and raise our children according to our own ideas and our own beliefs.

So this old concept of "traditional family values" that is so carped on, is really something of a fallacy.

And, when we look at the reality that many children live in today: abandoned to orphanages, abused and taken from their family of birth, bounced from one foster home to another for a myriad of reasons. Children with "special needs" tend to be in a particularly grim situation. Their special needs mean they need more attention and understanding ... and often more discipline handled in a more thoughtfully fair way.

Is this the "family values" that people are carping about? Leaving these kids in the system?

If we can get children to an adult or adults who can handle the child ... who can give the child the love and discipline and let the child know how much they care about the kid ... isn't this preferable to keeping the kid in the system?

To my mind, this means no discrimination over the person's religion, their marital status, or ... if they're gay or not.

Those so-called "traditional family values" that people babble about ... what are they really?

Because to all appearances, my parents had those values. And I would not wish my childhood on anyone, much less a child. I said earlier that I would have been ecstatic to have lived in the worst inner city 'hood with a parent or parents who really loved me and cared for me. And I stand by that. I would rather have been raised by two fathers who loved me and took care of me. I would rather have lived with two moms who disciplined me and encouraged me in a rational manner.

I would have rather put up with the teasing and bullying at school for that ... than the utter isolation I went through.

And I think most children out there in orphanages, foster homes, and group homes would feel the same way.

Let's quit whining about what the absolute most ideal situation is ... let's live in the reality that these kids are living in. Get the kids adopted out to people who will care for them and not worry about if the family values of every family exactly and totally matches our own.

To borrow the words of those who seem to oppose gays adopting children the most, "please, let's think of the children."

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:19 PM | Comments (6) | Struggles | Stumble

March 28, 2008

Pop Pop Pop

It's is 2:22 a.m. early Friday morning. It's been a long week for me despite the fact that for some people, it was a short week following a 3 or 4 day weekend.

I couldn't go to sleep at first because I was kinda hyped up from choir practice. Then, there was the fire truck that crawled by with the sirens going full blast around 11. I finally started to get sleepy around 1.

When I heard gun shots.

I live in a nice neighborhood. But in South Bend, the neighborhoods go "bad" very quickly. A half dozen blocks in one direction and you're in gang territory, four blocks the other direction and you're in the area where Frank Lloyd Wright built some houses. (By which you can assume that the first set of houses are small and run-down and the second set of houses are huge, ritzy - places in which I can only dream of living.)

I used to live in a really bad part of town. It was good for a while, but by the time the crack dudes moved in across the street and the whorehouse opened shop behind us (less than 100 feet from an elementary school), things were not good. I heard sporadic gunfire when I lived there - though most of it was several blocks to the west of us. Probably at least 12 blocks, a mile. But on cold, winter nights, especially, the sound travels much further than you think it should.

I am one of those dumbasses who will go to the window when I hear things like this. I once reported a wreck when I lived in the 'hood - only to discover, as I watched with my face against the glass high up on my front door - that it was actually a drug deal gone wrong. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher when one man tried to run over the other one with his car. Only the timely appearance of a "random" dude on a bicycle kept me from witnessing a vehicular murder. When a police officer was shot and killed within a mile of my home and the entire police department put my neighborhood under a net, I had to be told to get back in the house.

Yeah. I'm one of those idiots.

Well, to be honest, I didn't leave the house. I opened my window and talked to the cop on the corner. But he was a bit annoyed with me even though we all knew we were on the edges of the net and not where the shooter was supposed to be.

So, around one this morning, I hear the pop pop pop of gunfire. I would have sworn it was twelve or more.

I go to the window and look out. Nothing unusual. I watch for a minute or more, trying to be unobtrusive in my surveillance. I go sit down at my computer. Surely I am exaggerating. I did not hear gunfire. This is a nice neighborhood. I am prone to getting alarmed.

Maybe someone's old shed broke up under the icy snow we received tonight. The pops keep coming. I wonder if a string of electric transformers are blowing up. But I've heard that sound many times in many neighborhoods - that sound is deeper, closer to the sound of a shotgun.

I can't help it. I know I heard gunfire. I certainly can't go to sleep now. Should I call the police? I've no idea where the sound came from other than north of my house and probably to the west. Blocks? a mile? I don't know. Sound travels funny at night in the cold.

By the time I've settled down enough to be tired and ready for bed again, it's about 2:30 a.m. My other half has to get up for work in an hour. If I lay down now, I'll probably turn off the alarms in my sleep and she'll miss work. Considering how anal her workplace is about even a tardy, this can't happen. So, I stay up, troll through the local paper online looking to see if it was my imagination or not.

It was NOT my imagination. There were at least four shootings in town overnight. The second was the one I heard.

a family told police they were asleep inside the home when they heard a car drive down the alley and six shots fired just after 1 a.m. Police sent to the scene found shell casings and bullet fragments in the home.

The next shooting happened about 20 minutes and perhaps 10-12 blocks away from the first. The final one happened just five minutes and perhaps a half dozen blocks from the previous one. These last three shootings were all drive-bys and supposedly only the first two are related.

It's a quiet neighborhood and I know the area to the north and west of us - where the shootings all occurred, get more and more rough. But three shootings within about a mile or two of the house is just ...

Especially after writing about Merrily Melson the other day.

It's nearly 6 a.m. now. Wonder if I'll get any sleep at all.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:22 AM | Comments (3) | Struggles | Stumble

March 26, 2008

No Guarantees

I enjoy playing an online semi-role-playing game called: Kingdom of Loathing. The whole game is tongue-in-cheek, full of delightful puns, absolute silliness, purposeful misspellings or "typos" - and the characters are all extraordinarily well-rendered, beautifully done stick figures. The site is white with black text. The concepts are simple and while it's not like a MUD with real-time interaction with the other players (except, perhaps in chat, but I haven't ventured in there yet), it's a really fun little game. You get 40 "turns" or adventures for the day, but you can --

Wha?

Oh yeah. I wasn't going to talk about the game. Suffice it to say that I spend an hour or so with the game every day. I also spend time at the fan site The Kol Wiki as well for tips and hints when I get stuck. (Or to find out for sure what some game piece actually is.) I don't always hit the main page, but I did today.

And I was chilled.

One of the people who play the game and apparently someone well known in the KOL community was attacked by her partner March 15th. Apparently, the man snapped and went after this woman with an ax which was inside their home. She escaped, with ax wounds to the head and upper body, went to a neighbor's and called police. When the police arrived, they realized that the man had taken their nearly 3 year old son with him.

The boy was eventually found dead. Apparently killed with a screwdriver.

Article one
Article two

The folks at KOL are doing an in-game fund-raiser for the baby's memorial. I believe there is also a bank taking donations. [El Dorado Savings Bank - 800-874-9779]

I cannot fathom what possesses someone to pick up an ax and attack another person. I cannot imagine that moment of rage and loss of reason which makes running after your partner with an ax seem a viable choice.

I cannot fathom the extended dose of adrenaline and rage and loss of reason which can make a person grab his son and run off, only to take a screwdriver and end the life he helped begin.

I cannot imagine living with the knowledge that I had done such things.

I cannot pretend to know what Melson felt or thought after her partner of six years did this. Or how she feels knowing that her wounds were treated that day and she was released ... but her son's wounds were beyond repair. There is a biological directive for a mother to protect her children - and a similar one which tries to tell you that the father might be mad at you, but he'd never hurt their child. How do you protect yourself or your child, much less both, from someone with an ax?

How do you live with the questions, the hindsight, the second guessing yourself?

My heart goes out to Merrily Melson. There are no magical words to make this better.

I am left speechless by the events and wishing I could offer some kind of comfort.

We live our lives full of hope. Even when things are pretty dark and we think we are hopeless, we are still, biologically, pretty trusting. We trust that our apartment will not crumble and fall. We trust that the water in our pipes is potable. We trust that we can walk from the house to the car without a piece of satellite falling from the sky. We trust that a traffic helicopter will not lose control and come down on the highway. We trust that the cars driving by on the wet streets will not lose control, slam into a curb and punch their way into our home.

We trust that we are relatively safe.

It is a semi-true piece of semi-fiction we tell ourselves because the human body simply can not live in a constant state of fear. It can live in long periods ... but not constant. It is in hearing about tragedies like this one that the fiction is stripped from us for a moment and we are chilled to recall that there are no guarantees.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:35 AM | Comments (4) | Struggles | Stumble

February 15, 2008

No Recession Here

This seems to sum up the job market in South Bend, Indiana, right now:

General - Seeking a position as a Personal Assistant. If you need more hours in a day, I can help. I am 31 and Ivy- League educated.

Yeah, it's that depressed here.

Jobs which ARE here: medical professionals ... holy crap, but all of the want ad boards are full of requests for nurses and doctors and specialists. Apparently we're a bunch of sick fooks around here. Also needed: CNC operators and truck drivers and sales people.

Don't get me wrong, those are all needed fields. I'm just not qualified in any of those. Nor do I have any real interest in them. Except maybe CNC operator... that one actually sounds really interesting. But I don't have the slightest clue how to use that machinery, so ....

Here's a snapshot of just South Bend. On February 15, 2008, that includes "274 South Bend jobs in 211 job titles." Of those 211 job titles, 127 are specifically for medical professionals. Not the shining outlook of jobs it looked like at first glance. Another 11 are for commercial drivers. So, now we're down to 75 job titles. Several of the remaining positions result in a "We're sorry. The position you're looking for is no longer being advertised" error. Most of the remaining positions are in sales or engineering or "WE NEED A GOOGLE CLICKER" type jobs.

Graphic design jobs = 0
jobs for English majors who suck at selling things = 0
jobs for ex-teachers = 0

I'm afraid I'm going to have to go to factory or warehouse work ... and honestly, they're not going to hire me because I'm "over-qualified." They're going to take one look at my education and where I used to work ... and assume I'm not a good fit, and pass me over. And they're right, really. I don't plan on staying in factory or warehouse work because my joints will fail and cause body parts to drop right off.

I should hustle up more freelance jobs, but that won't take care of a steady paycheck nor health insurance. I let my COBRA lapse this month after re-filling all of my prescriptions. I just can't afford $330 a month for the insurance when my meds are about $200 every other month. Now that I've let it lapse, I'm sure I'll get the flu or something. The economic "stimulus" rebate that will be sent out in May isn't gonna do crap for me and for a lot of people like me. It'll go toward paying off the debt load we carry rather than wontonly and recklessly spending spending spending to help the economy.

You want to help the economy? Spend within your means. Rich people oughta be spending more money so us poor schlobs can get paid and reduce our debts. Hire the people you need to hire for your company and quit outsourcing shit. Quit loaning people so much for houses that they can't really afford. Quit sending out pre-approved credit card apps like they are Halloween candy.

It's not hard stuff, people.

I still remember the first time I used my shiny new credit card.

I had just moved out of the house. My parents had divorced immediately thereafter. Mom and Dad had a "gentleman's agreement" (i.e., nothing in writing) that Dad would pay for my car when it broke down. When. Not if. Since he was making just about $100k in 1987, this seemed reasonable to me.

I drove to work Monday morning and discovered a bad thing about my car. The brake pedal went all the way to the floor. I slid the car into neutral and managed to get to work and then home safely, but I was constantly trying to figure out what curbs I should aim for if I needed to stop suddenly. I was terrified to even get into a minor fender bender in this car because ... well, let me put it this way. My mechanic was terrified of the car. The frame had been broken ... right at the driver's door ... and welded back together. Wonderful things can be done with welding, but when your mechanic comes out of the pit looking white as a ghost and telling you the car is dangerous, you tend to get scared about that particular weld. In addition to the glued together frame, the previous owner had installed a "moon roof." Himself.

This moon roof was probably 1/4" to 1/2" thick glass which spanned 80% of the roof of the vehicle. And I have NEVER seen so much caulk used on anything in my life. It was an ugly caulk job, but I tell you, the roof never did leak.

The thought of not having brakes in that car was enough to make most people wet themselves.

So, I called Dad the minute I got home from work. This would be the first time after the divorce that I called for help with the car. His reply? "Oh. Well, we'll deal with it on Saturday." Umm, work? school? These things were not important. There was no public transportation in our town at that time and it was far too far to walk to either place.

"Umm, Dad? I am putting the car into neutral to stop at all. There is nothing left of the brakes; they're gone."

"Saturday."

After I got off the phone and screamed for a while, I remembered the plain white envelope which had come earlier that day. My first credit card. I drove the car carefully to the mechanic's and got the brake job done ... paid for by Visa. Took me two or three months to pay that off, I think. Maybe four. That was back in the days of $3.85 minimum wage ... my rent with my first roommate was $201 (and then we split that in two) ... but having to pay off on the credit card hurt for months.

It's been years since I've been in that kind of financial position. And yet, when I look at the job market right now, that's what's coming for me, I think. A return to 1989 ... living check to check ....

But then I was in school and had high hopes for a career in teaching at the university level. I've since come to realize that's probably not in the cards for me as the entire "publish or perish" thing drives me mad. I'd rather focus on teaching my students than researching and writing about minutiae. (Okay, not all of it is minutiae, particularly not in my field ... but still ... I tend to be more practical than academic.)

There's a little less hope and a lot more cynicism now.

And, it would seem, a lot fewer jobs.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:22 AM | Comments (4) | Struggles | Stumble