Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Our weekly allowance

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I had hoped to have the first release of Wordform out this week, but ended up helping a couple of folks with their sites, so I’m behind. Hopefully after tonight, I can re-focus on this application, the modifications to my own sites, and to the search for jobs and/or writing assignments.

I did get the Burningbird Micropatron list updated with those who have contributed in the last year. If I left your name off, it was purely accidental; please send me an email with a gentle nudge and I’ll correct the page post haste.

In the meantime, a couple of articles came out recently about women and journalism and women and weblogging that have sparked some interesting debate. Steve Levy writes Blogging Beyond the Boys Club and Mauren Dowd writes, Dish it Out, Ladies.

Dowd’s article has been mostly ignored, except for a rather scathing note from Roxanne, (drawing agreement from Glenn Reynolds), which read:

Here’s the shorter version:

Women with opinions are castrating bitches … Because I want men to like me, I imagine myself a sex pot, mind-fucking them all along the way … This job is hard work … I know there are other women out there like me. Maybe they’ll get J-jobs some day.

Someone needs to smack her square across the jaw.

This was completely different than how I read Dowd’s article. What I read is that it isn’t easy being a woman and an opinion writer, because men generally don’t like to receive criticism from women, and react accordingly:

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it’s seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater.

Dowd also wrote something I thought was rather key to much of this discussion. She wrote about wanting, at one time, to be seen as nice when she wrote; not as a hag or harridan. But contrary to how Roxanne interpreted her words, I think Dowd was making the point that opinion pieces are, many times, not ‘nice’–and if you want to do this type of writing, being ‘nice’ can’t be your first consideration. And if you aren’t ‘nice’, be prepared for the consequences.

This ties back into Levy’s piece, which I found to be vague and hastily put together, but which did have an interesting quote about Halley Suitt:

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: “It’s white people linking to other white people!” (A link from a popular blog is this medium’s equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to “promote myself among those on the A list.”

This “promoting oneself to the A-List” was echoed by La Shawn at Vodkapundit, who wrote:

I don’t think the top bloggers have much time to read a lot blogs, and I suspect mine isn’t on their agenda most days. Consequently, I made the same decision as Halley Suitt. I decided that I wanted to promote myself among those on the A-list. I have high aspirations for my career as a writer and blogger, and getting the attention of high-profile bloggers is a necessary step.

For example, I wasn’t booked on MSNBC because my blog is so fabulous. I got a guest spot because I’ve been linked to by top bloggers, and the right people took notice. Other black or female bloggers may be doing something similar or nothing like it at all, but to get where I want to go (in the time frame I want to get there), I must.

Whites are still the majority in America, and the Internet tends to be dominated by whites. It follows that the majority of bloggers will be white. I have no grand theories, at least none I’d care to discuss today, why white men in particular dominate the top bloggers.

Leaving aside La Shawn’s rather US-centric and not necessarily accurate view of the internet, is the trick for being a successful female weblogger to promote ourselves among the A-list? Does this mean, then, that we must act nice, be nice, to the A-List, in order to get the notice resulting in a ’successful’ weblog? Well if that’s true, then I’m really screwed.

I haven’t interacted with all the Technorati Top 100 but I have with a goodly number. For instance, though I’ve not exchanged any real communication with Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, I have been critical of Creative Commons and some of the work with EFF, and EFF is near and dear to his heart. More importantly, though, I’ve been critical of the actions of some of the people within his personal sphere, and I really doubt I could count on a link from Cory–unless I want to ditch my clothes and run naked down the street crying out, “I am naked in my blog and now I am naked to the world!”, and only then if I end up on the news.

As for Mr. Glenn Reynolds, we had a minor interaction a couple of years ago, where I think I said something to the effect that he waffles in his opinion and never really takes a strong stand on any issue. He got fairly strong in responding to me before we were through, so I think we can safely count him out.

Going down the list, there are several sites that I know that are political, and I’m not a “political” weblogger, though I do write on politics from time to time. Still, I don’t take all of this seriously enough to attract linkage from Daily Kos, Atrios, or Josh Marshall. From what Chris Nolan says, Josh Marshall rarely links to women anyway. And, frankly, I don’t want a link from Kos–it’s sure to feature the word ‘moron’ somewhere in the same posting.

There’s always Little Green Footballs, but I’d rather pass on being linked to by that hate-filled crowd. I will say one thing in Charles’ favor: I was pretty sure that LGF was the first to cast doubts on the letter that led to the whole “Rathergate” thing — not Powerline. However, I think that Powerline is a more ‘acceptable’ weblog, so it got the prize. I guess it goes to show that even within the neocon ranks, there are folks that can go too far.

NZ from Truth Laid Bear linked to me a few times, and even used to run a quote from me in his little quote bar from time to time, but as the chasm of respectability between the political weblogger and “the rest of us” widened, the less relevance we ‘resters’ have, so my ‘Bear’ time is a thing of the past — I think I’m an amoeba on the EcoSystem list now.

Though most of the the political webloggers in the Top are male, there’s a few women. I like Michele from A Small Victory and link to her from time to time, and she does the same with me. I made a prediction about six months back that Michelle Malkin would end up in the Top 100 within three months, and I was right. And as Michelle’s star rises, Wonkette’s falls. Seems to me that Levy’s article is going to be used as an excuse to drop Wonkette.

Now, Malkin did link to me once, and it was a nice link, too. But I couldn’t count on her to link to me again because there’s not one single thing on which we could agree. That wouldn’t matter if I also wasn’t Technorati 550–too low to be of interest, or use.

Same could be said of most of the political sites — if you want notice, you have to pay the price. You have to put in some serious time linking to the folks (what’s the going rate now? Twenty links to a top site can be traded for one link to your weblog?), or some serious time ‘marketing’ yourself to the Big Bad Bloggers.

Now, not all the sites listed are political; in fact, there are several technology webloggers on the list, and I’ve interacted with most of them.

It’s interesting how so many WordPress related folks are listed in the Technorati Top 100. I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that WordPress comes with links to WordPress developers and supporters already pre-loaded in the weblogging tool? Binary Bonsai also has a lot of links because of Michael’s very nice design and people giving him credit. (Now that’s an idea for me–I can finish Wordform and then load my weblog sites into the links. Or I can push Floating Clouds as the next, best weblog design.)

Unfortunately, I’ve managed to piss off the WordPress folk in the list because of my criticism of the tool, so whatever brownie points I make helping folk with their WordPress tool or saying good things about the product have been flushed down the loo.

(Odd, but Photo Matt used to be in the list and isn’t now — filtered out?)

Dave Winer used to link to me off and on in the past, and not necessarily always in a critical manner, but won’t any longer. I’ve crossed the line with that boy and would have to do major booty kissing if I want to get back into his favor. Frankly, I’d rather have oral sex with a crocodile.

I’ve long had pride in the fact that I’m the last link in Doc Searls blogroll. And Doc links from time to time, but I’ve been critical of him in the past, and more importantly, critical of people he calls friends, and Doc is one extremely loyal friend. Still, he’s not one to hold a grudge.

(Just joking about the recent “blogging babe” and “links are dicks” thing, Doc. Honest.)

There’s the folks who weblog at Corante, but the problem is that some of the folk there don’t like me because of what I’ve written in the past, and wouldn’t link to me no matter what I write, or its relevance to their own areas of interest. On the other hand, a few of the folks will link to me if I write something interesting enough, so I have a rather Schizophrenic releationship with that publication.

Scoble still links to me, even though I have been critical of what he’s written a time or two. I appreciate the honesty of his linking, even though I think his views of ‘the link’ itself, are cracked.

(Speaking of linking, the ghost of Mark Pilgrim past has resurfaced, in classic Mark Pilgrim fashion. Hurrah! It’s been too damn dull without him being around. Mark’s also a loyal friend, but whatever squabbles we’ve had in the past are in the past. So don’t Scobelize links to my site, too, Mark.)

Joi Ito not only links to me from time to time, he was an early ‘micropatron’ to this site–this even though I have been critical of Six Apart, Movable Type, Typepad and other ventures he’s involved in. Frankly, he’s a class act — even if he does post dubious emails to his site without any fact checking first.

I’m not sure if Zeldman has ever forgiven me for writing “Tyranny of the Standards” but he mainly hangs with the design crowd and the WaSPers. Most of the design folk here abouts don’t consider me a web designer, even though I’ve written books and articles on the subject. Why? Probably because I sell myself as a backend rather than a front-end developer. Some might say it’s also because my site designs suck. Other would say because I’ve been critical of the Web Standards group in the past.

But I’ve seen the light. Yessir, yessmam — I have drunk the web standards koolaid. Hell, I’ve even incorporated orange back into my site — that ought to be worth something in web design circles. Luckily, I haven’t managed to piss off Dave at Mezzoblue yet, and thankfully I’ll be able to write nice things about his and Molly’s new book later in the week, so there’s still hope for me in that direction.

There’s the “weblogger as journalist” crowd, and Dan Gillmor’s old site is still on the list, but I’ve been critical of his new effort, the whole ‘weblogger as journalism’ thing, not to mention his brother’s writing, so I don’t think I can necessarily count on support from him. As for the other “webloggers are journalists”, the only other one I see on the list is Jeff Jarvis, and unless I run off and have mad sex with Howard Stern, on the air, I doubt I’ll get mention from him.

Then there’s the old time blogger group of Ev, Kottke, Megnut, Anil Dash, and MetaFilter Matt, but if you’re critical of one of these people, you’re critical of all of them, and they don’t forgive or forget.

You know, now that I think on it–if I had just kept my mouth shut more in the past, why I’d probably wouldn’t be looking at taking a nighttime janitor job now. But I never was very good at marketing, and as Dowd said, if you’re a woman and don’t stick with ‘nice’, you have to accept the consequences.

My choices, my consequences.

It’s interesting but we can market ourselves to the ‘A-listers’ and think nothing of it; in fact, we applaud it as good weblogging protocol. But if we accept ads or actively look for sponsors on our weblogs, then our writing is suspect and our motives, impure. You would think that after all these years, we would realize that the coin of this particular realm doesn’t jingle in one’s pocket, or fit in one’s wallet.

Categories
Diversity

Eating dog food

This week is the week for conferences, beginning with SXSW in Austin, followed by O’Reilly’s Emerging Tech conference somewhere in California.

I was a bit disappointed to not be able to go to either, but was surprised by the number of emails from folks who thought I would be at SxSW. I guess it’s the whole “where are the women” thing, which from a post about Zeldman’s opening act, seemed to be emphasized. Interesting. If anyone attends the “Where are the Women” session, send me a link to your impressions.

Hopefully some of the sessions I’m interested in from both conferences will be posted online in one form or another. But did Zeldman really say something to the effect that Anyone good at web stuff is here, anyone who isn’t pretty much sucks? Nah — Zeldman is anal, but he’s not a snob. Must have been joking.

In the meantime, Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag sent me a copy of their book, “The Zen of CSS Design”, which promises hours of interesting reading. Maybe I’ll learn enough so that I won’t suck, and I, too, can be a SxSW attendee in the future.

Categories
Diversity Technology

Guys Don’t Link

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The Better Bad News folk did a take on the AutoLink fooflah, which is worth a chuckle, though not necessarily a guffaw. However, what I found more interesting about the page is the *list of webloggers that the BBN folks referenced:

1. Opt Out Petition
2. Dan Gillmor
3.The Scoblizer

4. Dave Winer
5. Cory Doctorow
6. Time
7. Mark Jen
8. Steve Rubel
9. Kas Log
10. Tim Bray

with sonic support from Plastikman

Aside from the Time article, which is actually written by a woman, and the petition, all of the webloggers linked were men. Every single one.

This matched closely what I found at Doc Searls, in his post on AutoLink. He references the following bloggers:

Steve Gillmor
Tim Bray
Dave Winer
Dan Gillmor
Fred Von Lohmann
Craig Burton

ubermostrum at kuroshin

Again, all guys.

Point of fact, if you follow the thread of this discussion, you would see something like Dave linking to Cory who then links to Scoble who links to Dave who links to Tim who links to Steve who then links to Dave who links to Doc who follows through with a link to Dan, and so on. If you throw in the fact that the Google Guys are, well, guys, then we start to see a pattern here: men have a real thing for the hypertext link.

Well, huh. How about that. Not being a guy, I couldn’t understand this male obsession with the link, so I decided to call on an expert on gender roles about the issue: Lawrence Summers, Harvard’s current President.

“Larry,” I said. “What is is with guys and links?”

“Well Shelley, statistics–now, don’t worry, I won’t show you any actual values because being a women and all, we know that you can’t do more than count your ten fingers and toes–anyway, statistic show that guys are linked more than women, and link to each other more than they link to women. And when one guy links to another guy, a whole bunch of other guys come along and link them both, and then start linking to each other.”

“I’m aware of the behavior, Larry. But what causes it?”

He beamed at me, patted me on my head and chucked me under the chin. “Why honey, it’s because the male brain is wired for linking!”

I’ll have to admit, I was taken aback by Larry’s response. I mean, it didn’t make sense that a guy’s brain could better handling linking, especially since women also use the link.

“Larry, are you sure that linking isn’t a pattern based on cultural and social similarities, rather than gender-based differences in the brain? Guys are linked more because our current society and most cultures still see men as ‘authorities’, regardless of demonstrated capability?”

Larry just smiled, somewhat sadly and shook his head.

“All too often we think that guys are linked more than women because of social patterns, but that’s really not the case. Look, there are three reasons why men are linked more than women, and I’ll take them in the order of importance.”

He held up the index finger on his right hand. “The first reason men are linked more is based on interest and time. Women just aren’t interested in weblogging as much as the men, and don’t have the time for it, even if they are interested. You ask both men and women the question, ‘What’s more important: your families or your weblog?’ and I bet you’ll find that women, overall, will pick their families over their weblogs.”

He held up the middle finger on his right hand. “The second reason is aptitude — men and women’s brains are different, and men are more equipped to handle the complexities of the link, as compared to women.”

Larry then held up the third finger, almost indifferently and said, “And then there’s the social issues, but I don’t want to get into this because anything having to do with social issues means folks like me have to change, and we don’t want that.” He quickly lowered his third finger. “And I don’t want to get into time and interest, because I’m running out of time and the topic has little interest.”  And with that, he lowered the index finger, leaving only the middle finger raised.

“And that leads us back to men and women’s brains being different, and men being better equipped to handle linking.”

At that point, Larry noticed the stunned look on my face, my mouth opened in astonishment. He said, “Seriously, I think it’s important to focus this topic on the hard wired differences between men and women, virtually to the exclusion of any other discussion.”

“To take an example I discussed previously, when I gave weblogging tools to my twin little girls, and they are Daddy’s good little girls might I add, it wasn’t long after I showed them what a link was that they were calling them ‘Daddy links’, ‘Mommy links’, and ‘Baby links’. Leaving aside that all the television they watch features ads with little girls playing house and pretending to be mommies, how else can you explain this behavior other than the female brain perceives the link in a different way from the male brain?”

The conversation continued from that point, but I don’t remember much of it as my brain was in a red haze–I imagine that Larry would say it was because I am a woman and we were, after all, discussing links. Later that day, though, not feeling overly satisfied with his answers, I sought out the one fountain of wisdom I always returned to, again and again, whenever I was troubled about gender issues: Mags the bartender down at the Bushels of Beer Bar & Grill.

When I got there, business was slow and Mags was wiping down the counter. Her hair was steel gray, though strands of golden blonde appeared here and there–she always did miss a few when she colored. Peering out at me from behind thick, fake glasses, she smiled broadly, easily re-cutting the lines long creases into her cheeks. She was a lovely woman, though she spent a great deal of time trying to live this down.

“Shelley! What are you doing here on a fine afternoon! I thought you walked during this time of day?” she said, reaching under the counter at the same time to get the mixings for my usual margarita.

“Skip the drink today, Mags.” I said, heavily, as I plopped down on the stool. “What I want from you is advice, not booze.”

I then proceeded to tell her all about Google’s new AutoLink, and my own findings on men and links, and the conversation with Larry the Harvard President. She nodded from time to time, as if nothing I said was unexpected. When I was finished, she looked at me a moment and then did something she rarely did — come out from behind the counter to sit on the stool next to me.

“Shelley, I’m not surprised by anything you’re saying. But you might be surprised when I say that I sort of agree with your Harvard President — men do think differently about links than women.”

I was surprised, and showed it.

“Oh, I don’t mean that men and women’s brains are wired so differently that men are naturally more adept at linking then women. No, the difference between men and women lies in how men perceive links, not their ability to use them.”

She leaned closer to me, even though no one else was in the place.

“You see, guys see links as an extension of themselves. ”

Extensions of themselves? Extensions? Slowly, understanding dawned.

“You mean…”

“You always were a bright girl, mores the pity.” She said, winking at me. “You got it in one. To you and me, a link is just a link. To a guy, however, a link is something special, a part of himself. The most,um, important part of himself.”

Time for plain speaking. “Mags, are you telling me that guys equate links with their dicks?”

Mags just smiled, patted my hand one more time, and then got up and moved back behind the counter.

“Shelley, to a woman, a link is a way of connecting and being connected. To hearing and being heard. But not so for a guy. Guys see links as power, and therefore something precious, and to be protected. They hold on to their links as tightly, and as lovingly, as a thirsty drunk holds onto a bottle.”

At that moment I had a mental image, of a male weblogger I know, carefully adding a link to his post, bright, feral grin on his face, manic glaze to his eyes. But instead of typing into a keyboard he was…oh, that’s disgusting!

I shuddered, world twisted upside down. “Surely, Mags, not all guys think this way!”

Mags shook her head. “No, this attitude isn’t universal among men. There are many guys who see a link as nothing more than a way of inviting a conversation or passing along useful information. They link without regard to the consequences, and the most they hope for is that it might spark an interesting discussion.”

She stopped wiping the counter and leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “The power-link guys have a word for men who link just to link,” she whispered. “They call them linkless.”

At that point, a couple of people entered the bar and Mags hurried off to do her job, leaving me to think on our extraordinary conversation. The more I thought on Mags words, though, the more I could see the truth in them. Much that has confused me about this environment is explained if one considers for a moment that some men think of links as some form of virtual penis.

For instance, ‘nofollow’ wouldn’t just be a misuse of HTML and a way for Google to solve the weblogger pest problem: it would be way of increasing the power of one’s link– literally a hypertext version of Viagra. As for Google, it becomes both the hand and the condom, enabling and protecting at the same time.

Sites such as Technorati become the internet version of a locker room, where the guys can hang around, comparing themselves to each other. Those that come up short look at their better endowed brothers with both envy and admiration; sucking up in order to increase their own stature.

When we women ask the power-linkers why they don’t link to us more, what we’re talking about is communication, and wanting a fair shot of being heard; but what the guys hear is a woman asking for a little link love. Hey lady, do you have what it takes? More important, are you willing to give what it takes?

Groupies and blogging babes, only, need apply.

And the phrases, “circle jerk” and “Google juice”, take on new depth and sudden meaning in light of this discovery.

I wandered home from the bar, in a daze of comprehension so strong, it literally staggered me. I thought back on what started this all: the AutoLink. Now, I could understand the concern: it was all about protecting the Link.

What I see is functionality that can only be used in one browser, in one operating system, and only when the weblog reader pushes a button; when pushed, the tool only autolinks a few items: addresses and ISBN numbers and a few other innocuous odds and ends. To me, this is no big thing, but to those who run afeard of this technology, if we treat this service indifferently, other tools will take this as a sign of easy compliance and do truly evil things with the link.

We could then have ‘neocon’ and ‘progressive’ linking toolbars, that automatically link words such as ‘patriot’ to either Michelle Malkin or Atrios if the reader pushes a button. Or syndication toolbars that convert the word “Atom” to a link to the RSS 2.0 specification. (Resulting in such fine combinations as: “RSS 2.0 and Eve” and “Water is made up of two RSS 2.0 of hydrogen and one RSS 2.o of oxygen.”)

Why, some toolbars might even link terms to Wikipedia entries, and modern civilization, as we know it, would collapse into tattered heaps of folksonomic trash.

But not all guys saw AutoLink as the damnation of all mankind. No, a few anarchists in the crowd are always looking for opportunities to rip open the constraints and just let it All Hang Loose.

Yes, so much is explained now. Where I saw AutoLink as a relatively uninteresting and innocuous innovation, to some guys it was a way of dropping their pants and swinging what they got, while to others, it was a big metal Zipper, just waiting to catch the unwary.

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?

Categories
Connecting Diversity

The extrapolation factor

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Doug points to a post by Broad at Bat who discusses a recent dinner with friends and one couple’s behavior to each other. Specifically, she focuses on the wife, Sandy’s, behavior to her husband, Mark.

Later, Mark was telling us a story – nothing rude or anything, just something that happened earlier in the day – and in the middle of a sentence Sandy told him that was enough and we didn’t need to hear any more about it. He tried to finish his thought and she interrupted again, even more forcefully. That was when he shot Doc the WTF look, and Doc could only shrug helplessly. It was just a story! And one that I was enjoying, thankyaveddymuch. Aargh. Again, mouth dropped open, bit tongue, jesus, it’s no wonder I have jaw problems, I suppress things I’d dearly love to say sometimes.

This could be nothing more than another story about a dinner and married couple not treating each other well, except that Broad at Bat then takes what she sees with Sandy’s behavior and extrapolates from the specific woman to women in general.

The scary thing is, Sandy isn’t any different from MANY women we know. MA-NY! I have sister-in-laws who do the same kind of belittling and condescending treatment to my brothers and it makes me want to puke. If we counted up all our friends who do this, I’ll bet it’s over half. Even Sandy’s best friend spent more time rolling her eyes and clucking and admonishing her husband for his behaviour at the table, than anything else. She actually — I swear to god this is true — on their way out the door that night she apologized to us for her husband’s behaviour. While he stood right beside her! I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I told this woman I had only just met that I thought her husband was charming, he hadn’t been the least bit inappropriate, and she had no business apologizing.

Doug concurs with BaB, drawing on his own personal experiences:

If you’re a woman you can not imgine what it does to a man to be treated to the kind of abuse that BaB talks about. Society expects men to be strong, in command and there are a thousand ways to punish a man who is not, all of them designed to make him feel a failure. I’ve known so many men who have suffered enormous amounts of emotional abuse at the hands of the woman they loved. Why do they stay in the relationship? Some of the same reasons women stay in abusive relationships: insecurity, love, fear of failure, children (men do not stand a chance in a custodial battle), financial reasons, broken spirit. Many men in such relationships live lives of quiet desperation, sick at the thought of stayin, afraid to leave, afraid if they do they’ll never have another partner, marked loser for life, some invisible cabalistic sigil planted on their forehead that only women can see and immediately reject them as a loser not worth her attention. Oh, most men have experienced that feeling well, but we don’t talk about it.

In my life I must have moved in different circles because most of the couples I’ve known seemed to treat each other with respect, affection, and humor. Not all–I have seen just such a woman that BaB describes. And while I may concur with BaB that I haven’t seen this as much with men treating women that way, that’s usually because with these men, the ‘little woman’ is left at home to care for the kids.

Still for the most part, the couples I’ve known treat each other decently in public. So much so that when they break up, it amazes me sometimes. But then, I know that many people were astonished when Rob and I broke up because we got along so well. We still do — heck we’re roommates.

However, to say that this type of behavior is predominately female, or that it occurs in many women, is to take the responsibility of ‘people behaving badly’ off the individual and place it on a gender, and that’s something I just can’t agree with. But then, I was an abuser myself, long ago, so perhaps I can’t really speak on this issue.

My first husband was an amazingly handsome man — black hair, brilliant blue eyes, the strong bone structure of his Native American heritage. He was tall and lean and moved like a panther and I was swept off my feet and into marriage far too quickly. And too young, being only 16.

Steve was not an unintelligent man, but he was an uneducated one, having suffered from learning disabilities and finally dropping out of school when he was 15. He was very sensitive about this, and in particular, his difficulty with reading. I, on the other hand, loved to read and had been reading since I was five and counted books as some of my best friends.

Steve worked but didn’t want me to work because this just wasn’t done in his family. So after he went off in the morning, I would do whatever baking I had planned for the day, do the house cleaning, and whatever else needed doing, and then I would spend some time either walking in the fields surrouding our house, or reading. We lived in the country and I didn’t know how to drive, and we lacked television reception, so I didn’t have many other options.

The county had a library system whereby a person could fill out requests for books and they’d be mailed. Then when we were finished, we would put them back into the envelopes provided, and mail them back. It was perfect for me, because I didn’t have to pay postage, and I could get books without being able to visit the library.

When Steve came home from work, to sit down to his home cooked meal (and I was, and am, a good cook), he’d talk about his job, what this person or that said or did. About the only thing I had to talk about was what I had read that day, so I would talk about the books. I used to love talking about whatever book I was reading — sharing the characters and the experiences one feels as the words wrap around one.

(I still do to this day, though I am reluctant to bore another individual with my ramblings, which is why all of you are blessed with my many writings — lucky yous.)

Now, I imagine to BaB, this would seem that I was taunting poor Steve — him with his reading disability, me with my love of, and discussion about, books. It was not the intended purpose, but perceptions are so dependent on the person. Regardless, Steve felt that I was ‘making fun of him’ and forbade me to have any more books in the house. Not one book.

Of course, I could disregard what Steve wanted and just continued with my reading as is, but I was dependent on him, in more ways than one, so I tried to give up books. I would fail, at times, and sneak one in, hiding it from him, but only rarely; only when I was desperate. To fill the hours, those long, long hours, I obsessed about ‘making’ things — once spending three months making Christmas stockings out of felt and hand embroidering and beading each individually, for everyone as a Christmas present.

This state couldn’t last and after a few years, we divorced. Since that time, I have developed this oddball habit of reading three or four books at a time, leaving them laying face down (I know, librarians cringe) here and there, even in the bathroom. And my mom says its a shame that I stopped doing embroidery, because my work was astonishing in its detail.

When BaB talks about Sandy’s behavior to Mark, I do empathize with Mark, and wonder why he doesn’t leave his wife if their marriage is so much hell. I empathize with anyone in a marriage where the partner is abusive, physically or mentally or emotionally. However, they do have a recourse: they can leave.

Easier said then done? True, especially when there are children involved. But it is doable, and in our society people have the legal right to not live in an abusive relationship. If Mark choose to do so, then perhaps there is more to the story to Mark and Sandy than meets the eye, but we’ll never know because the only facet we know of this relationship is what we’ve heard,

Doug writes of his own experience being emotionally abused, and brings up the concept of a person who is easy to abuse:

Guys like me are very easy to abuse. We love fully, unconditionally. We care deeply for our partners and we do not like confrontation, in fact we avoid it at all costs. That’s what happens to non-alpha type males in this society, if you can’t strut your stuff and rise to the top of the pecking order you better be non-confrontational or you’ll be destroyed. That makes it very easy for women to abuse us emotionally, making you feel even more like a loser.

I have to disagree, but respectfully, with Doug about a woman making a man feel like a loser; the only person who can make us feel like a loser, is ourselves.

I’ve also never believed that one should love anyone unconditionally, and this includes our parents, children, and especially our significant others. To do so is to put too high a trust on the other, which forms an unreasonable demand that the other never do anything that could cause harm. But what is harm? To a kid in high school, harm is not being able to stay up all night with his or her friends. In my first marriage, the ‘harm’ was me talking about books because my husband has a reading disability, and therefore I should give up one of the joys of my life in the interest of his self-esteem. Harm is not being perfect and never making mistakes, and not sharing equally all the enthusiasms of your partner.

Loving unconditionally also means that you stay with a drunk, even if they go back to the bottle; you don’t kick your kid out for bringing drugs and drug dealers into the same house where his young, pretty sisters sleep; you pretend not to see that your partner is sleeping around.

Unconditional love is a burden and a cage, on both partners, and one that I’ve rejected, absolutely and completely; so much so that I am ambivalent about now having another long term relationship. I have found a beauty, fragile as the finest Fleur de Sel, in those times of loneliness I experience, and I hesitate to challenge the balance I’ve been able to achieve in my life between wanting to be with another and being content to be only with myself.

But I digress. To return to BaB and her statement that ..when it comes to public degradation and disrespect, it happens way more than my stomach can handle, and always by the women , says as much about the person making the statement, as it does the statement being made. For instance, does BaB see this preponderance of mentally abusive behavior in other women she knows because it really exists in the people around her? Or does she only ’see’ this behavior in women, because doing so sets her apart? In her own words:

I, as usual, end up leaving to go sit with the men before I say something and make any more enemies. Not that doing that endears me to other women much either, though. Sigh.

(emph. mine)

Perhaps if BaB sat with the other women a bit and actually talked with them, she might find the answers she so earnestly seeks.