The Old School Lunch

[Rant time]

When I worked in social services, an old co-worker of mine who used to work in a treatment facility for teens said that one of the most disturbing parts of the job was having young girls try and “mount” him whenever he, as a figure of authority in the facility, would try and mediate conflicts or just try and talk to them. “[Some of them] were so screwed up mentally that they responded to just me being a guy and trying to talk to them as that they needed to have sex with me.” I didn’t ask, but I think it was safe to assume that he, you know, didn’t actually rape them (as it would’ve been rape given the ages of the girls he was working with) because he knew that he had a job to do and when someone isn’t in a right state of mind, you do your job, you act professionally and you resolve the situation.

So let’s say you’re a bunch of male police officers behind a desk one night and a woman who is very drunk is waiting for a ride/taxi. She starts talking to you and coming up to your desk and crawling around, putting up her leg on the table and saying god knows what. I don’t care what she says or how she’s acting (unless she said something to the effect of “i’m going to kill you all”) you ask her to sit down and maybe you get her some coffee. You’re a police officer. Half of your job entails dealing with drunk people of some sort. If you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands and if you want to be real nice, you drive the woman home yourself in your squad car. What you don’t do, is what these assholes did:

What’s especially infuriating is when the reporter asks, “Was she in any way a victim” and the police rep says “she participated…so…” Which is a “no.” Which is a nice way of saying “She started it, she deserved it, she’s the tease.”

Really? She wasn’t groped? They didn’t lift up her skirt? They didn’t’ act like police officers should’ve acted? They didn’t take pictures of her and send it to all of their friends? Who knows where those pictures are on the internet? They didn’t just sit there and let the whole thing play out for however long it did instead of getting her some coffee and driving her home?

There are only a few places in this world where 100% we are supposed to feel completely safe. And there are only a few people with whom we are 100% supposed to feel safe with and trust. The police fall into that category and a police station also fall into that category as well. I can hear the asshole YouTube and Digg critics now, “Dude…I so would’ve tapped that!” suggesting of course that the police are somehow virtuous for not gang-raping her right there in her intoxicated state. It reminds me of how ridiculous it is when we applaud men for NOT being batterers or NOT being rapists. Is that how bad things have gotten? We’ve come to the point of thanking the police for only “coppin a feel” a little bit and snapping a few pics when it could’ve gotten a whole lot worse should she have stumbled somewhere else? I don’t buy it.

I’ve always liked Steve Nash and this just adds to reasons to root for him:

“Nash invests in women’s soccer league” - “I’m really excited to play a role in bringing professional soccer to North America,” Nash said. “As a father of twin girls, I’m especially pleased to help young women around the world realize their dreams of being a pro soccer player can indeed come true.”

And also because it gets really, really old reading about athletes investing in restaurants and nightclubs over and over.

I think there will be a tendency for a lot of folks who read this in the US to be all “well, that’s that backwards country of Mexico with all those latin machismo lover, of course there’s sexual harassment…but not in my country!” Which is bullshit because of the actual street/bus whatever you want to call it harassment/groping that does happen to women by men.

On the former blog, one of my earliest and most popular posts for some reason was something I wrote about Natasha Bedingfield and specifically, a song that she had talking about how she’s single and she doesn’t have a problem with it in this cosmo/teen-vogue boyfriend=self-worth society. I know to some folks it’s cheesy/doesn’t matter as she’s a pop singer and she’s hugely successful but I’ve always liked her stuff and her new album (Pocketful of Sunshine) which was released in the US today is great as well. Say what you will but after working and talking to hundreds of young girls and boys, I know that (and I know i’m not making some startling discovery here) self-esteem is a huge issue for young girls in particular.* If our modern media systems tell young girls that basically, as Jean Kilbourne says, women shouldn’t have pores (among other disturbing things), then you can damn well bet that “the pretty girls” shouldn’t have freckles either. I know it’s a metaphor, which is why it works so well, but compared to a lot of the other crap out there, i’m glad that there’s at least someone who has consistently (and I mean consistently) been a positive female role model in music while sticking a giant middle finger to the men’s magazines that want her to pose for their covers.**

*I’ve written about this before but i’ll briefly say it here. The parents that I talk to when they tell us why they want their daughters enrolled in the program they always specifically say self-esteem. They almost never say this for boys. Do boys have problems with self-esteem? Of course they do, but it says something when it’s to the point where mothers and parents will be so specific as to say so and use thatword.

**According to her wiki, she refuses to do men’s magazines shoots. Go NB!

[One of the trailers shown before Cloverfield]

If this is supposed to be our generation’s “The Karate Kid” then we are in trouble.

I don’t like the growing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts. But on one hand, I guess that popularity takes away from the audience of WWE and TNA wrestling which is good. But WWE and TNA were/are bad because they of course emphasize the tough guise model while crafting misogynistic, homophobic and racist storylines. MMA meanwhile cuts the crap and just goes straight into fighting which is actually real. And that should worry people. Part of the large cultural worry with wrestling was kids doing backyard wrestling and killing themselves, not the overarching cultural message sent to boys and girls. When the stakes are higher and MMA is real and kids are now wanting to train to do all of these things in real life, then yes the worry about backyard MMA won’t so unfounded anymore. But it’s not as if there aren’t any media implications. There just doesn’t seem to be as much because MMA is still growing. And as it grows and advertisers and investors start to catch on, it’ll be interesting to watch if it continues to go down the boxing macho trash talk big title fight route or if the new media Don Kings of today turn MMA into some mutant form of the WWE where they realize that they can draw bigger crowds and make more money by turning it into a soap opera. In either case, I think unfortunately MMA is here to stay. Barring several athletes dying straight in the ring, I don’t see this going the way of some sports fad and for that we’re worse off.

I joined Pownce.

They’re going to blow up huge when they go public in a few weeks. I have a few invites left if you want to join in on the fun before then.

Wooster Athletes - Making A Difference.

I knew Rush Hour 3 was going to have the usual stereotypical Asian folks do this, Black folks do that jokes (”You can’t be Black, there’s a height requirement!”) but I didn’t know it was going to have an awful scene where the Chris Tucker “Carter” character goes on to berate and say how he would’ve beat a woman if she really was a man.

Spoiler Alert.

Basically, Carter is making out with this attractive woman with medium length hair (the reason for me including this detail will become relevant later) and they’re about to have sex. A fight breaks out and their party is interrupted. Later, it is revealed that a special clue is tattooed onto the head of the woman and she takes off her wig (which of course reveals that she’s nearly bald). Carter freaks out at the sight of her not having practically any hair and starts ranting about how he “kissed a frenchman.” He goes on in hysterics about he is “Brokeback Carter” even though the woman clearly says that indeed she is a woman. Carter isn’t so sure about this and asks Li (Chan) to “check the equipment” and says that if they do find male genitalia, there they’re going to “beat his ass.”

So what does this tell the young kids watching this? The young girls? Boys? That the “right” sort of gender identity looks like this? That, if you’re a girl, you better not try to shave your head or else you’ll be mistaken for being a boy and if you do ask out that boy in your math class, you might deservedly get your ass beat? That, if you’re a boy, it’s OK to police around gender conformity because girls and women have to look like this in order for you to see them as women? That it’s OK to use physical violence or the threat of physical violence to police people around?

[Last name Lee, btw. I don’t think I ever write that anywhere.]

Wow, what a difference a year or so makes. On more of a whim, I committed “facebookicide” more than a year or so ago and until tonight I haven’t been back on. I sunk into the trashy splendor that is MySpace (if you call periodically visiting and rarely updating “sinking into”) and just left the FB for lots of reasons. My brother’s been on it like a fiend so partially out of holiday boredom I tried to reactivate my deleted account, hoping that some of my stuff (friend lists, basic info) would still be on there. Well, that doesn’t work so well when your school email was deleted upon graduation and your whole facebook identity hinges on you having a legitimate school email address. So now it’s starting from scratch. Which isn’t so bad I guess. So if you’re like the rest of 99.9% of the world and are on facebook, hit me up!

[For once, people thinking that i’m still in high school comes in handy]

Wow. A guy just rang the doorbell and asked if my parents were home. When I said they weren’t and proceeded to close the door, he replied (with the saddest of tones), “Oh, OK, we’re just trying to do a fundraiser, that’s all.” It’s Christmas Eve and you’re trying to doing this for a fundraiser my big fat eye.