h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, dinner will be out of the oven in 20 minutes, so here goes...

Patriarchy is a bad thing, yes. But no one can convince me that women, given the power and authority that men have, could make a matriarchy work any better. Women are worse. We're cattier, and we have more to say about each other than about men. Screw that solidarity, sisterhood is powerful thing. Given the opportunity, women would be just as ruthless as men. Or not. Sexual organs cannot define gender. What we call masculine and feminine are just dice rolls...we could just as easily say that aggressiveness is a feminine trait.

That said, men and women are negotiating new roles. I mean, look at your dad's generation. He went to work...did your mum? My folks, both of them worked, but my mother was always very conflicted about it, and got a lot of heat for it. I was deprived, some said, and I would never amount to anything. Frankly, I know my mother, and she would have been the worsst stay-at-home mom in the history of motherhood. She's not terribly patient, and while I know she loves me, I think if she'd stayed home when I was a kid, I would be neurotic. The same goes for my daughter. I love her to death, and I would sell my soul and lay down my life for her. But I cannot conceive of being alone with her day after day. The women who can do that, and find fulfillment in it, great, more power to them. But there are women upon whom that role should not be thrust...Andrea Yates, the woman in Texas, who killed her 5 children? Never should have been asked to do what she did.

And who's to say that your Dad would have rather spent time home with you, and that your mum would rather have worked? but they weren't given the options. My mother, she worked because she had to, and my grandmother went to work later in life because she wanted to. I do what I do, and will work soon (I hope) because I must. I would be nuts if I didn't. But that puts my husband in an awkward place. His whole life, his entire family has told him that his role as a man is to take care of his family financially. He's an artist, and frankly, until he gets his name out there, he doesn't make a whole lot. When I'm the primary breadwinner, what does that do to his sense of masculinity, to his self-identity?

I think we need to get rid of the binary of masculine and feminine. We need to recognize that yes, there are sexual differences -- based on organs alone, I can do a better job of having a baby. But that doesn't mean I can do a better job of raising a kid. And the same goes for men...your physical build allows you to have muscular strength I don't have, thus you are perhaps better at lifting things. What we need to do is recognize that each person has both masculine and feminine traits, and let them find the place in the world, be it in the home, in the work world, or in society at large, that fits him or her the best, rather than try to see it as a dichotomy.

Sorry, I had just had a class in which I was called a racist and a supporter of the patriarchy, all for asking a simple question, which was "why can't we have an article like this without finding it bad or weak simply because if focuses solely on white English settlers in South Carolina, and doesn't include Black or Native populations? Does everything on colonial America have to have Blacks and Natives included to be valid?"

I have some issues with the class...it's supposed to be on 17th and 18th century America, and so far, we've done NOTHING with the Puritans, the Quakers, to Germans, the English, or any other European nationality except bash them as the imperialist b******s who ruined a perfectly good country. Of course, the irony in that is that if they hadn't, all but one of us in the class would not be in the US talking about it....and the one non-white person in the class is Black, so she wouldn't be here, either, since slavery in the US never would have happened, etc. It was a long and frustrating 3 hours. Not everything is gendered, not everything has to be bad. Colonialization wasn't some wonderful thing, no. But the fact is, it happened, and we need to get over that and move on.

Can't say much about your class, except to express incredulity.
I have difficulty seeing the settling of America as an event that had an alternative. Europe was on a different plane of civilisation from aboriginal America, and its states were competing in an expansionist race. North America was the most backward part of an untapped continent. Colonisation was inevitable, and what is now the USA bears almost no trace of what it might have been if undisturbed (apologies to Native Americans, Inuits in Alaska, Hawaii - but you know what I mean).
Or at least that's how it looks from here.

Matriarchy/patriarchy is more interesting. Do you really think men co-operate to keep women down? It's more like men compete with each other in a contest that women aren't allowed to join.

Women in charge do well in my experience. They think more, and rely less on energy and doggedness to win through. They are often better motivators, and they're almost always harder working, than men.

There is huge variation in attitudes to women across Europe, probably greater variation than characterises any of the other -isms. In parts of Scandinavia, you meet women working in steelplant, or directing traffic, and think nothing of it. Some parts of southern Europe are as bad and repressive as the Far East.

Britain is a bit odd in this respect. We are always being told that we have some kind of collective nanny fetish that makes us admire, for example, Margaret Thatcher, in some kind of repressed, guilt-ridden way. I personally think this is b****cks (perhaps not the most apt expletive in this context?), but it's true that British deference to assertive women appears greater than in many other places. A lot of our senior generation grew up in households run by mother, with fathers away fighting in Europe; maybe that has something to do with it.

My mother worked for a while after she was married, but stopped and never went back as soon as a family was started. Dad never showed much sign of work-weariness while he was doing it, though he ultimately took early retirement without a second thought. Good luck to them both; in some ways I envy them. I got a good degree, the kind that would open any door when it was shiny and new. For quite a few years, I revelled in a job that showed me the world, but now that I want to stay home I feel undervalued and stalled in mid-career.

The Weddell (maybe I should stop calling my lovely wife that in this convo at least? Nawww...) earns more than I do except when I'm working away and getting special allowances ('hustling' as she calls it). Her career-prospects are more promising than mine and her ambition to go further is probably greater. We employed nannies for 12 years until a couple of years ago; we still take one on temporarily during school-holidays.

To be truthful, I don't think there's much to choose between us a potential home-minder while the other works. Except when it comes to ironing, which is definitely her job...* ducks *

Big news in the UK is Blair explicitly declaring that the IRA must disband or face the failure of the Peace Process and the end for a generation of nationalist dreams. Another good speech, though too early to gauge its effect..

So, another taboo. What's your take on Ireland?

I've never really understood why, other than the whole religion thing, Ireland was so repressed, while Scotland was left pretty much alone. While I think that British presence there has done some good things (being the pro-choice woman that I am), I don't see the point of blowing people up over political control. Revolution from within always works better, I've found.

Should Northern Ireland gain its independence from the Crown, I think they'll be mightily disappointed. Much of the rest of Ireland isn't Catholic, and has moved on, as the saying goes. Sein Feinn (spelling?) will not be as large of a player in a united Ireland, and I think most of the rest of Ireland would see their previous actions in a bad light.

But the truth is, I don't know a lot about the Irish question. On this side of the pond, most folk don't get it, and I'm about the only one I know that understands any of it at all.

And you?

To understand Ireland, you probably have to live there. Quite a few good friends are Irish though, of all colours and none, and I try hard to understand it through all their different views.

The historic Ireland they taught us about at school was surely pretty dire - famines, no proper economy, punitive taxation and rent by British landowners - but it's hard to believe that Ireland was singled out for any special repressive treatment. It probably wasn't much fun being a British Crown territory anywhere in the 17th and 18th C's.

Ireland got interesting politically in ~ the 1840s, with O'Connell, then on through the Fenians and up to Parnell in ~ 1870s and 80s. They were so close to Home Rule then, and with hindsight it would have been a lot simpler if Gladstone had won through. By the time of the Easter Rising etc there was a deep mistrust between Britain and the Irish Republicans, fuelled by violence perpetrated by both sides.

The modern Ireland that many Brits despair of (and which was till a couple of years ago a truly frightening place to visit, at least in Belfast and Derry + the border counties) doesn't connect easily in the mind to that historic stuff. It's like two implacably racist communities forced to live side by side. The intolerance is intense and depressing. To be truthful, the way that Nationalists shun the British is sad, but the way the Loyalists assume we're on their side is what disgusts and appals me at least.

The part I've never fathomed is the basis for British interest in retaining political control of any part of Ireland. On the face of it, the country has always been an economic liability, with an impressionable and ungovernable population. The odiousness of elements of the loyalist community is not a new development either, so the idea that Britain got embroiled to protect them seems unnecessarily noble.

It's cost over ten thousand lives even since the start of the modern Troubles in 1969, done enormous damage to Britain's world-wide reputation and left substantial parts of the North and border country run by racketeers and gangsters. A lot of Brits would gladly see Home Rule, Pilate-fashion.

An (arrogant) British view of it all is that Ireland has much to thank us for. I certainly don't believe I'm in any way a racist, but I try to be honest with myself, and one of my frequent impressions is that foreign nationals who spend time in Britain tend to come out superior to their brethren who stayed home. Ireland is no exception.

All the witty, charming, urbane and talented Irish, therefore, are in the US, or Britain, or indeed anywhere but Ireland. (Same idea applies to all the Jews with humility, Italians with business acumen etc, etc).

OK - well just put that one down to Pinniped's prejudices, yeah...

The American view of Ireland irritates the Brits because so many of them see the conflict (unbelievably) as Britain v Ireland. I once had the surreal experience of watching a stand-up comic in a bar in Indiana. There were about 200 in there, ~197 locals, 2 Brits (me and a colleague) and the comic who was an Ulsterman. A Unionist Ulsterman. Whether he really was a fanatical loyalist or just (rather recklessly) enjoying himself I don't know, but he was giving it "No Surrender!" and "My Grandad marched with Carson", and all these stupid Yanks were cheering him. I thought I was the one who was going to get lynched, for the crime of inappropriate birthplace, but fortunately we'd just helped out with a spate of bombing of Libya, so Britain got a cheer too. Afterwards, I talked to the comic at the bar and he hushed me to keep quiet and just said that it'd all got too hard work trying to explain.

I'll say.

I'm not going to say anything directly about American public funding of the IRA, because I just get heated to no benefit. I do strongly agree with Blair's current premise though, that the IRA retaining a military organisation is now the greatest block to the Peace Process. The Loyalist Paras have guns and bombs because they still think that slaughter is the best way to hold up the ultimately inevitable coming of Home Rule. Their best allies in their cause are the morons in the IRA who can't see that their arms are stopping sympathetic administrations in London as well as Dublin moving further towards a United Ireland. It's Sinn Fein's hour too - if they can (and indeed if they want to) disarm the Paras then their political weight in a future Irish Republic might be greater than you think. The populace might see them as double liberators - from their own criminal underworld as well as from the British Crown.

Anyway, I've got a bout of RL coming up and rather fear I won't be around much for maybe 10 days. Don't forget me, and I'll try manage a couple of quick log-ins when opportunities arise.

But for now
Pin

See you when you get back, Pin. Have a safe trip (if you're traveling...if not, well, you get the idea.)

I´m travelling. A quick log in from Austria, of all places!
Pin

Did you know sir, in all fondness, you suck? I am so jealous of you!

You wouldn't be jealous of where I'm due next...

Please don't tell me you're going to the middle east. I already have friends there, and my husband is due to go there in January, and I am getting worried.

I think the key to the survival of the colonies in New England owes more to the Native Americans there than anything else. We even borrowed the basis of our Constitution from the Iriquois Confederacy. Not to mention that Holiday we Americans are so fond of celebrating to remind us how the Natives should have let us starve. Our subsequent history of massacre is well documented. Puts Saddams assault of the Kurds to shame. We even managed to engage in the earliest documented biological warfare. Fun fact- The BIA supplied reservations in the 19th century with blankets that were used in small pox wards prior to distribution among Native Americans.

As far as Saddam being a threat, please educate yourself about his origins. America put him in power after outing a Socialist government that was trying to nationalize the oil fields. Saddam was U.S. backed from '71-'91. Now he has outlived his usefulness and will be put on the same junk heap as Noriega. Remember Panama? Probably not. No one else does. We Americans spend way to much time involving ourselves with international affairs for two reasons. We need oil, and we need to keep selling the weapons we manufacture. We're the largest dealer on the planet. It's why we won't sign the landmine agreement at the U.N. Hell, our U.N. Ambassador Negriponte was involved in Iran-Contra selling weapons to Iran illegally while we were supporting Saddam in that war. It's just all frightingly amoral.

This post has been removed.

...Wo-ah!...What's been going on here?
Moderation in my Message Centre? Oh, the shame...
(Looks from the molecule like the one above that was a reply to FG back at #20, but this appears to be about Native Americans whereas FG was talking about Puritans. I don't trust that thing much...)

Anyhow - the Seal is in the Building and ready as ever to give an uninformed opinion on any subject.

Hi MR. No, I wasn't in the Middle East, and don't expect to be, glad to say
What's up?

P.

Nothing. The posting was more or less an little rant about Saddam Hussein. Apparently, it was libelous and or defamatory. I've sent an email to the PTB explaining my position.

Won't your wife be a little upset that you called me honey?!

Things are good, if hectic. Graduate school is making me a wee bit nuts, but that's to be expected. Paul Wellstone, the very liberal (I would say progressive) senator from Minnesota died last Friday in a plane crash, former vice-president Walter Mondale is running in his place, and I'm so tired of gender, race and class that I could scream. But I'm finding that other professors think inclusiveness in history is commendable, but impractical, and think that perhaps I have a point.

Also, it's Halloween. I'm a green witch, the child is a black cat, and I think her friend is a ninja, if I'm not mistaken.

How the heck are YOU?!

I'm good, thanks. The Weddell is permanently upset anyway, so that doesn't matter. But I changed the title back for propiety's sake.

Our two couldn't be bothered with Trick-or-Treat. They just sat in front of the TV browsing on the chocolate bars we'd bought in for the inevitable doorstep monsters. The Kids of Today; really...

Last year, I tried to encourage them to do something spectacular. I got hold of a full size construction kit for a human skeleton, made out of something like a hundred pieces of plastic sheet, and started it off for them. The idea was to paint it in glow-in-the-dark paint, and to tow it around floating under helium balloons sprayed black.

It still hangs in the garage, minus arms, occasionally startling delivery men.

We heard about Wellstone. The interviews with Minnesota voters that were broadcast on British TV suggested that people are strongly influenced by foreign policy issues, which seems pretty crazy. Don't you guys ever judge politicians on the economy?

I've spent much of the week with an American (from Pittsburgh), and asked him about Guilt and Political Correctness over Native Americans, etc. The guy had a robust outlook, shall we say. He rounded off a fairly fruity tirade by suggesting that the British Government ought to start preparing for a class action lawsuit over their running of the Slave Trade.

Something he said also triggered an accidental thought in my head, that maybe we all like to dwell on Past Guilt because it means we don't have to think about Present Guilt. There's the history you learn from, and there's the history you hide behind. Ony the former is worth much, really.

I got a bit silly with my Space, p'raps. I'll leave it there a few days, and then maybe change it for something a bit more informative.

Pin

Actually, I rather like it, although the PTB might object to the pejorative use of a diminutive for "cats" (don't feel like getting moderated again). The thing is, if yours gets to stay, then mine needs to be reinstated.

Why do you call her the Weddell? My aunt married a Weddell. I call mine the "sometimes spouse"...as in, when he feels like it, he's a spouse. Not so much other times.

The black cat has gotten out. Not good for a Halloween night.

I think you might be onto something with that whole past/present guilt thing. It's much easier to deplore what we did to the Indians back in the 18th and 19th centuries than deal with the crushing poverty and addiction issues on modern reservations, or worry ourselves over what we did to blacks during the slave trade, rather than face the reality that black men outnumber whites in prison something like 6 to 1, and that they still face massive amounts of racism, including racial profiling by law enforcement. Because history has already happened, it's safe to say what a shame, and then shrug and say, oops! too late now. What's not safe is to try to do something about current affairs.

I'm still trying to get TPB to free my previous post from hostage land, mostly because I think you'd find it amusing. It's rather incediary, to be sure, but factually grounded, I assure you.

Now, the question at hand remains...is the US trying to get a war going with Iraq because it truly believes Iraq to be supporting terrorism, or is it because the stock market is sagging, there is massive corporate scandal, and we still haven't caught bin Laden? I am rather opting for the latter, but I'm still not sure.

I'll try asking the Powers if they'll let me read the vanished posting. You'd think that would carry some weight, it being my Message Centre and all. Dunno; we'll find out.

The Weddell. I don't call her that, only here. Even that kind of grew. Pinniped, way back in his End of the Pier Revue period, used to have a thing about the silvery-grey blob at top-left of screen in Goo. It reminded him of a certain Weddell Seal with whom he was infatuated. Even before that, he seems to have had an Uncle Weddell who terrified him as a child by droning on about the dangers of Killer Whales, canine distemper, choking on plastic bags etc. Gradually, the Weddell became Pinniped's compulsion, loved and hated at the same time, irresistible but eternal trouble and humiliation.

And by an unkind association, when not role-playing, I sometimes refer to my real partner as the Weddell. She wouldn't recognise the term. She probably wouldn't be interested, as she doesn't think much of Hootoo and is generally waiting for me to grow up.

What's she like? Well, she's assertive, sassy (I think I'm using the term correctly) and intelligent. She listens a lot more than she talks. She earns more than I do, and has much better long-term career prospects.

In looks, she's slightly on the hefty side but very attractive. I think so, anyway. Braver friends might say she's more striking than conventionally pretty. Huge dark eyes, improbably widely set; somewhat of an overbite and not much of a chin. Actually rather seal-like, now I think of it, minus the whiskers. She was once a national squad swimmer...Hmmm...

Or alternatively, a cross between Liza Minnelli and Marge Simpson, except she doesn't have blue hair. There; you probably don't get the picture.

US's motivation over Iraq? Surely not. It would be crazy to make the campaign into a national fillip, because it wouldn't be like that if they actually prosecuted it. This war couldn't be won by bombs from 20,000 ft, any more than you could get bin Laden by bombarding mountain ranges. Invading forces would have to get to Saddam head on, the hard way.

I'm conscious that you've got personal involvement and you're worried about it, so I don't want to be over-dramatic, but surely the Administration will have rationalised far higher allied losses than in Bush Senior's campaign and a high probability of an uncertain outcome, ie a bin Laden style "is he dead among these ashes, or did he escape"

Not exactly likely to take people's minds off the economy etc, is it?

The (possibly?) reassuring thing is that the more bravado is talked, the less likely it may be that politicians will actually go through with it. The UK Government style when it comes to the pinch is minimal statements in grave voices. When you hear those (and we haven't yet), you know that it's for real.

So your theory is a lot more convincing to me if they DON'T intend to fight. Maybe the planned message is "Look what we'd have done to Saddam if we'd only had some support from those UN pussies" (dammit, I said it again..!)

I won't say more on this unless you invite it. Too close to home for you, I guess.

Pin

No, it's interesting to hear what the folks on that side of the pond are saying. Here, most thinking folk generally agree that Bush's motives for invading Iraq are flimsy at best, and no one really wants a war until we've got some idea of what is going to happen AFTER the war. Will this become another Bosnia for us, etc. We want to make sure it's done right, and done quickly, and that in following this wild hare of Shrub's we're not going to get burned.

Of course, my thought is if we were really fighting an ideological, help the people war, we would be dealing with North Korea, not the Middle East. But North Korea doesn't have huge oil reserves.

North Korea - yeah, and what interesting parallels. Fifty-year-old unfinished business, rather than Dad's Failed Mission.
But the original Korean War was a horrible conflict. More so even than Iraq, Korea would probably be a politically-impossible theatre for US involvement nowadays. It's the plight of peoples like the North Koreans that drives the dream of a UN with a modicum of testicular development.

But there's a sense, you know, in which I'm rather relieved about Bush/Rumsfeld's apparent recklessness. The worst thing for Europe (if we did but know it over here) would be a US too hamstrung by body-bag imagery and its electoral consequences to EVER get involved in someone else's war. A small-minded hothead is probably better than the (arguably more rational) isolationist alternative - unless, of course, Bush's adventurism ushers in the isolationism when it all goes wrong...

Anyway, there's a (marginally) less violent conflict about to start - your mid-term elections. The British media are mostly reporting it as too close to call, but the few sources daring to make predictions are generally going for the Republicans coming out of it controlling both Houses. From my distant vantage-point (and of course I don't suffer the consequences) at least that outcome would seemingly remove most of Bush's excuses. He would then have to drive through a program, rather than just hide behind blocking in the Senate. Though what a Department of Home Security would really bring, apart from political repression, is a bit hard to see. A nice warm feeling of collective safety? Doubt it. That'll never be, ever again, unfortunately for America. A national police force is what it really means, I guess. We've got one, apparently, though you wouldn't guess except when it comes to the public-sector wage-round.

Be sure to give a first reaction as the results come through!