Categories
Places

Beauty and the Beast

I have come to love this state: the beautiful scenery on my walks, the state’s role in so many important historical events, and the people who will chat with you at a hot air balloon show or on the trail. But this state has a darker side, the beast if you will, and I’ve been seeing it more and more since the election in November.

This week sees the KKK triumphant when the Supreme Court would not intervene in this organizations desire to be part of the highway cleanup program. Based on this decision, the only way the state can avoid allowing the Klan into the program is drop it, something it is considering. Not only Missouri, but ten other states are considering this as well.

The adopt-a-highway program has been the single most successful approach to keeping our highways clean, and if we lose this, we go back to a day when we get to drive through miles and miles of garbage. I think giving up the program is bad, as well as giving this group too much power. I say to the Highway Department, let the Klan put up their sign, and we should leave it as is – on a patch of highway called Martin Luther King Jr. Highway.

Still, having this sign in that part of the state is an intimidation factor. I’ve long thought that if I were black, and I had to drive past the various Confederate flags hanging at houses along the way to the Johnson Shut-Ins, I would think twice. Now, seeing this sign in addition to the flags, would a black person feel welcome and safe in this park? Let’s face it: would any of us feel comfortable, or safe.

Add to this a second news item, this one about the Metro Link pulling ads for a white separatist group that had been running in the trains. The ads themselves aren’t offensive – basically providing a link to the site’s web page. But the group is the National Alliance, a leading neo-Nazi group with, according to the paper, a ..relatively large and active membership in St. Louis.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; not when you consider the people of this state elected a 34 year old poster child for the neo-conservative movement, as governor. A governor whose first act was to gut the Department of Natural Resources–that pesky agency that keeps the corporations such as Monsanto under some environmental control in this state. Of course, this could give me something to look forward to…tripping through the forest in the future, trying to see how many plant mutations exist because of uncontrolled runoff from plants and experimental orchards flowing into our waterways.

Maybe all of this is the writing on the wall. I have been considering the possibility of moving from St. Louis, not the least because most of the jobs in IT here are J2EE. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything with Java, much less J2EE that I’m not sure I could even write a program within either the language or framework anymore. And its hard to hide the fact that you’ve come to despise the technology if you’re working in it eight hours a day.

Thinking about where to go though is not something that fills me with enthusiasm. There is the fact that I have come to really feel at home here in Missouri, white racists excluded. And I’ve lived in so many places: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Grand Isle in Vermont, Boston, and other places. The heavy areas of technology are in the coastal areas, so these seem like a natural destination. In fact, if we account for IT concentrations, the following is how the United States should really look.

 


 

Come to think of it, that’s how the US looks from a weblogging perspective at times, too. Interesting distortion. Looks a little like New Hampshire’s Old Man on the Mountain. Before the fall, of course.

Categories
Diversity

My first man woman post of the new year

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I never feel totally complete until I’ve written my first man/woman post of the new year. Thankfully, I’ve been given an opportunity tonight. Lauren from Feministe points to an article written by a Fox journalist about opening a door for a woman and her getting irritated by the act. Michelle of A Small Victory joined in on the discussion at her site, which can usually be counted on to be a good show.

Lauren and Roxanne debated the truth of the story, primarily because they have not seen a woman respond angrily for having the door held open for them.

Michele, though, thinks the story is accurate and puts on a pretty good rant about women such as this. The part I liked best follows:

Yet there are women who feel coddled and like lesser beings when someone – in particular a male someone – extends a courtesy to them. I can’t imagine the size of the stick that needs to be up one’s ass in order to feel slighted by an act of politeness. It must be painful to walk around like that all day. And I wonder what the same woman would think if a man walked into a store in front of her and let the door just close behind him – she would probably tell him that he’s insensitive to the needs of women and is therefore a misogynist.

You can’t win with people like that. You’re either making them feel like puny humans or you’re being condescending by trying to not make them feel like puny humans. If having a door held open for you makes you feel weak, then I suggest you have some deep-rooted problems in regards to male figures and your militant feminism is only going to exacerbate your already seething hatred towards the male species. Here’s their core belief:

Men are evil.
Men who are nice are even more evil because they are only being nice in order to subjugate you.

Personally, I like evil men. I like men with black hair, black eyes, and black hearts. When they have their way with you, they’re doing so because they really want to, not because they’re being polite. It’s a boost to one’s self-esteem.

Seriously, I have never seen a woman get mad at a man for him holding the door open for her. I have seen people a little frustrated when the person holding the door is 50 feet away, thereby forcing the recipient of the courtesy to sprint for the exit so as not to seem like they’re taking advantage of the kindness.

I hold doors open for anyone behind me when I deem letting it go would close it in their face. I also open doors for elderly people, people with lots of packages, lots of kids, or both. I have rarely seen anyone who doesn’t perform this simple act of courtesy.

But I think that Lauren, Roxanne, and Michele all missed something in Cavuto’s description. According to his writing, earlier he had stepped out of the way to let the woman off the elevator. I think readers assumed that he did so when he was getting on. However, if he also held the door open for the lady, he must have been getting off at the same floor as she, and was in the front of the elevator. When the doors opened, he would have probably stepped aside and gestured for her to leave first.

Now, I also do this in elevators – for old people or others who are infirm, or if the elevator is full and I have the best access to either the door or the open button. If this happened to me, and it was only the two of us, I would have felt uncomfortable with the gesture. Now, if he did this, and then sprinted ahead of me to hold the door open, and did so with a coy flourish, I might have made a comment to the effect that I am neither old nor infirm, but thank you all the same. Depending on how much flourish he used would determine the degree of crispness I imbued into my response.

That’s the devil in tales such as these: making a judgment of behavior based on one event and one perspective, when acts such as these usually follow on a sequence of intricate, interwoven events.

I would agree with Michele that the writer is most likely not lying, but I do think he has a biased perspective. Of course he has–all writers do. I would also say that the woman’s response could be accurate as portrayed, but when viewed from the perspective of the events I surmised from the writing, could also be quite understandable.

Additionally, and this to Mr. Cavuto: I don’t know about the door thing, but following a woman who obviously has no interest in your company and asking what got the bug up her butt will get you arrested here in Missouri, and most of the other 50 states. It’s called harassment.

My, that was a fun exercise. Now, where are the women of weblogging?