I support hate speech laws, and I'm the only person I know who does. Unfortunately, I've never been able to articulate usefully why exactly I do support hate speech laws. However, the more I think and learn about it, and the more I'm exposed to the efforts of everyone I know to convince me otherwise, the more I become convinced that hate speech laws are a good idea. But I still can't articulate why. So I'm going to braindump around the concept and see what I can come up with. You can try to debate me if you want, but you're totally going to win right now because my thoughts aren't words yet.
1. There's a parenting technique whereby siblings are to be left to sort out their interpersonal problems among themselves I've blogged about my experience with it here. The problem for me is that what I wanted was to be left alone. It didn't hurt anyone, it didn't demand anything of anyone. But what my sister wanted was apparently to bother me, to stop me from having privacy, to make sure that I didn't get what I wanted. The same thing with my bullies. Leave me alone, either work civilly with me or ignore me in class, let me read my book. But what they wanted apparently was to bother me. What I wanted had no impact on anyone else; what they wanted was specifically to bother me. But this technique of letting kids sort out their own interpersonal problems treated them both as equally valid. It didn't give any credit to the fact that I wasn't hurting anyone, I wasn't bothering anyone. Because they did want to hurt and bother, they were good at it; because I didn't want to hurt and bother, I was bad at it. Therefore, they always won, and the net result was that someone was hurt and bothered. Which is, objectively, a negative outcome, whereas if I had been left alone the outcome would have been neutral or perhaps even positive.
My child-self didn't have these negative skills of hurt and bothering, but she did have the positive skills of amusing herself quietly without hurting or bothering. In a society, these are excellent, helpful, even productive skills to have, and if our child society had been mediated by adults, my child-self would have been left alone to be productive and our little corner of society would have been better for it. But when kids are left to their unmediated anarchy, these positive skills are worthless and the negative outcomes prevail, to the detriment of all but the lowest common denominator.
There needs to be…something, some way of mediating discourse to prevent the people with the best bullying skills from winning just because they have the best bullying skills. There needs to be some way of giving more credit or weight to positions that are productive as opposed to positions that are harmful. There needs to be some way of creating a public environment in which people can't bully their way to credibility. Without this, we may as well be back on the playground.
2. Go read Death or Cake and them come back here (this is an archive.org page and the formatting is messed, so you have to scroll down about halfway before the content starts). In this particular article they're talking about US political parties, but let's take it as broader interpretation: the contingent calling for Cake is being opposed by a contingent calling for Death. This reminded me of something I wrote during the last municipal strike. It uses up a lot of time and energy and bandwidth and column space and airtime to have to constantly counter shouts of "Death! Death!" It's draining, and it's preventing us from being productive. Maybe Cake isn't the optimal solution, but all the energy we're putting into countering calls for Death is preventing us from being able to to build a better cake, or maybe a pie instead.
We need…something, some way of taking Death off the table, so we can examine Cake objectively. How do we make it work for vegans and diabetics? I have a great recipe for gluten-free cookies! What if there was a nice salad? We can't do this when we're frantically trying to negotiate down to a maiming.
3. A while back, I read this article by a US columnist on Canadian hate speech laws, and I got the impression that he isn't seeing something that's apparent to me. I'm still not able to fully articulate my reaction (although I can point to the exact part of my brain where it occurs), but I think at least part of it is that the concept of hate speech is far more closely circumscribed than this columnist - or, I think, people who are opposed to hate speech in general - realize. You can't just point at someone saying something you don't like and scream "Hate speech!" and get them in trouble. And any idea with some actual non-hate substance to it can totally be expressed in a way that doesn't constitute hate speech.
I don't have on hand any real examples of hate speech with substance beneath, so I'll try to explain this using the Death or Cake example. Suppose that, rather than simply shouting "Death! Death!", the Death contingent was saying "You know, we have a bit of an overpopulation problem here…" We could work with that. We could start talking about improving access to family planning or introducing voluntary euthanasia options. It would not only save a whole lot of time and energy and yelling, but also keep anyone from being maimed in the name of "reasonable" compromise.
That is part (not all) of the nuance of what constitutes hate speech. "Death! Death! Death to Those People!" is hate speech. "We have an overpopulation problem. " is not. That's part of why the more I think about it, the more I support the existence of hate speech laws. It's a little step in the general direction of giving a bit more weight to productive positions. It's a little step towards taking Death off the table so we can focus on the real issue of controlling overpopulation while keeping the existing population from starving. It stops people from being able to go around doing harm just because they're bigger and louder like the bullies. And maybe if my bullies had been forced to say what it was they wanted from me, why exactly they wouldn't just leave me alone and what exactly they hoped to accomplish, maybe we could have had a situation where everyone was happier and no one was bothered.
4. When I say that any idea with non-hate substance can be expressed in a way that doesn't constitute hate speech, some of you are probably thinking "But not everyone is as good with words as you are! How can you say - and this in a blog post full of 'I can't quite articulate' - that people should get in trouble just because they can't express the precise connotation they need?" But that's how the rest of the world works. If I want to compliment a subordinate on her outfit, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that cannot be interpreted as sexual harassment. If I joke to the woman waiting in front of me in line that we should shoplift our purchases and then it turns out she's a police officer, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that makes it clear I'm not actually planning to shoplift. If I want to tease you about something, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that isn't cruel. So why should the people making the most hateful statements in our collective discourse get a bye?
5. Hate speech laws are to free speech as libel/slander laws are to freedom of the press.
6. As I've written about before somewhere, I do well in a society, but wouldn't do well in anarchy or a survivalist situation. I've found something I'm good at, and someone pays me money to do that, and then I can trade that money for things I need. In exchange for contributing what I can and keeping out of everyone else's way the rest of the time, I have enough food and shelter that keeps the bugs away and time and space to learn and think and grow. And a lot of the reason why this works is because of laws. Because we have laws, my employer pays me what's due to me, my landlord doesn't kick me out or raise my rent every month, the grocery store sells me food at the posted price and the food isn't poisonous, etc. This allows people like me who aren't good at fighting for their very survival to participate and even thrive, and it also allows our society as a whole to ascend Maslow's pyramid. I think hate speech laws do the same thing for discourse. It takes death off the table so we can work on building a better cake while also solving the overpopulation problem, all without anyone getting maimed along the way.
That's all the words I have at the moment, and it feels like somewhere around 20-30% of what's in my brain. More later.
Showing posts with label braindumps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label braindumps. Show all posts
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Powerlessness and yelling and rudeness and job security and Toronto politics: messiest braindump ever
Last August, I read this Miss Conduct post about how rudeness comes from a lack of power.
My first thought was "This is HUGE! I must blog about it!" And I've had writer's block ever since. I know what I want to say but I can't make it into a blog post, so I'm just brute force braindumping. Each of these points should be developed into a couple hundred words, but I'll just spew now and maybe clean it up later. There's something in here, and I'm not going to get at it unless I braindump.
1. My first thought was about childhood. When you're a kid - or at least when I was a kid and based on my experience with other kids - you yell more. That's because you're powerless. You're completely at the mercy of the grownups and their rules. I've blogged about this many times before. As I became a proper grownup and especially because I started living alone, I found myself yelling much less. It's not that I became more polite, it's that I became better able to be polite. I had the [insert word that's halfway between "empowerment" and "agency"] to be polite, because I had the option of walking away.
2. This became even more pronounced when I got my first proper grownup Good Job. It was easier to be polite, and it was easier not to yell, because I was suddenly in a position that is, by general social standards, respectable. On one hand the world treated me with more respect, and on the other hand I had the security and the confidence, and, frankly, the trump card of paying my own way. More "power" (insofar as this can be considered power - it's more privilege but emotionally it fits the originally analogy) meant fewer people were aggravating me, fewer stresses were aggravating me, and it was way hella easier to be polite and not yell.
3. My second thought was about working in fast food when I was a teen. The restaurant was located in a poshish suburb, where people had big houses and fancy cars. And they yelled. Looking at it with adult retrospect, I can't see where they were coming from. Why would you yell at a fast food cashier? So you have to wait two minutes for fries, or you have to pull around away from the pay window, or someone accidentally drops your change. Why is that even on your radar? As an adult with a proper grownup job - albeit one that's nowhere near posh enough to buy big houses and cars - I can't even imagine caring. So why didn't money/power/privilege buy them the calm that it bought me?
4. At this point, I realized that I'd drifted away from rudeness vs. power and into yelling and anger vs. privilege and respect. But I know in my gut it's the same thing or closely related. So that's why this blog post got paralyzed way back in August.
5. And then Rob Ford got elected mayor of Toronto.
6. Rob Ford yells. People who are inclined to vote for Rob Ford think he's down-to-earth. In my corner of adulthood, down-to-earth people don't yell - that's what makes them down-to-earth. What are these people's lives like that their definition of down-to-earth includes yelling?
7. Rob Ford's target audience is skewed towards houses and cars, which, in Toronto, are hella expensive. They must, necessarily, have several times more money than I ever will. But they're angry. Why are they angry?
8. The non-selfish aspect of my personal politics is focused on Good Jobs. (The selfish aspect doesn't contradict this, it's just focused on very specific things that affect me personally.) I know, from my personal experience and those of my family and friends and everyone I know who's ever had a Good Job, that a Good Job is transformative. And, in my own experience, it's what makes the angry go away. And this might even be multi-generational. If I have a Good Job, and I'm not angry, then my kid not only has a secure environment to grow up in, but doesn't have to face generalized anger at the dinner table every evening, thus making them feel even more secure and less prone to anger themselves.
9. But the Rob Ford people, the people who are angry, are working against this politically. Why? Do they not know that Good Jobs make the angry go away? Do they already have Good Jobs (since they have all houses and cars and expensive things like that) that didn't make the angry go away? Do they not have Good Jobs but have somehow managed to acquire houses and cars that they now have to pay for and they're scared? But, if so, why are they trying to get rid of what few Good Jobs exist?
10. Then I read an article in the Globe and Mail on stress as a serious social-medical problem, and was struck by this quote:
That's what a Good Job does - resilience. It creates opportunities for a Plan B. If my glasses break, I can drop everything and get them fixed without running out of money or losing my job. If I get cancer, all I have to worry about is nausea and hair loss - I'm not going to lose my home or my job. It's less scary, less stressful, and ultimately means that there's less yelling in your life. And, politically, I want that for everyone. I've had a glimpse of it, and I want to share it. But my city seems to be run by people who are angry and yelly and stressed and scared, and yet want the opposite of this situation that creates resilience. I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense.
11. I realize I have no right, authority, or credibility to go swooping in and saying "You voted wrong! I know better than you!" But what I'm saying here is my truth as I have lived and experienced it, as I have observed in those around me and those I admire from afar. Rudeness and anger and fear and yelling decrease as empowerment and agency and respect and social credibility and resilience increase, and all these things increase with good employment conditions.
12. Growing up, I'd probably yell at someone every other day. Now, I can't even think of the last time I yelled at anyone. I like this, and I want everyone else to have it too. But the people who look to me like they need it the most don't want anyone to have it.
I don't know what to do with this.
My first thought was "This is HUGE! I must blog about it!" And I've had writer's block ever since. I know what I want to say but I can't make it into a blog post, so I'm just brute force braindumping. Each of these points should be developed into a couple hundred words, but I'll just spew now and maybe clean it up later. There's something in here, and I'm not going to get at it unless I braindump.
1. My first thought was about childhood. When you're a kid - or at least when I was a kid and based on my experience with other kids - you yell more. That's because you're powerless. You're completely at the mercy of the grownups and their rules. I've blogged about this many times before. As I became a proper grownup and especially because I started living alone, I found myself yelling much less. It's not that I became more polite, it's that I became better able to be polite. I had the [insert word that's halfway between "empowerment" and "agency"] to be polite, because I had the option of walking away.
2. This became even more pronounced when I got my first proper grownup Good Job. It was easier to be polite, and it was easier not to yell, because I was suddenly in a position that is, by general social standards, respectable. On one hand the world treated me with more respect, and on the other hand I had the security and the confidence, and, frankly, the trump card of paying my own way. More "power" (insofar as this can be considered power - it's more privilege but emotionally it fits the originally analogy) meant fewer people were aggravating me, fewer stresses were aggravating me, and it was way hella easier to be polite and not yell.
3. My second thought was about working in fast food when I was a teen. The restaurant was located in a poshish suburb, where people had big houses and fancy cars. And they yelled. Looking at it with adult retrospect, I can't see where they were coming from. Why would you yell at a fast food cashier? So you have to wait two minutes for fries, or you have to pull around away from the pay window, or someone accidentally drops your change. Why is that even on your radar? As an adult with a proper grownup job - albeit one that's nowhere near posh enough to buy big houses and cars - I can't even imagine caring. So why didn't money/power/privilege buy them the calm that it bought me?
4. At this point, I realized that I'd drifted away from rudeness vs. power and into yelling and anger vs. privilege and respect. But I know in my gut it's the same thing or closely related. So that's why this blog post got paralyzed way back in August.
5. And then Rob Ford got elected mayor of Toronto.
6. Rob Ford yells. People who are inclined to vote for Rob Ford think he's down-to-earth. In my corner of adulthood, down-to-earth people don't yell - that's what makes them down-to-earth. What are these people's lives like that their definition of down-to-earth includes yelling?
7. Rob Ford's target audience is skewed towards houses and cars, which, in Toronto, are hella expensive. They must, necessarily, have several times more money than I ever will. But they're angry. Why are they angry?
8. The non-selfish aspect of my personal politics is focused on Good Jobs. (The selfish aspect doesn't contradict this, it's just focused on very specific things that affect me personally.) I know, from my personal experience and those of my family and friends and everyone I know who's ever had a Good Job, that a Good Job is transformative. And, in my own experience, it's what makes the angry go away. And this might even be multi-generational. If I have a Good Job, and I'm not angry, then my kid not only has a secure environment to grow up in, but doesn't have to face generalized anger at the dinner table every evening, thus making them feel even more secure and less prone to anger themselves.
9. But the Rob Ford people, the people who are angry, are working against this politically. Why? Do they not know that Good Jobs make the angry go away? Do they already have Good Jobs (since they have all houses and cars and expensive things like that) that didn't make the angry go away? Do they not have Good Jobs but have somehow managed to acquire houses and cars that they now have to pay for and they're scared? But, if so, why are they trying to get rid of what few Good Jobs exist?
10. Then I read an article in the Globe and Mail on stress as a serious social-medical problem, and was struck by this quote:
Combatting these feelings is not easy and begins with resilience. Just knowing you have a Plan B for any problem can often reduce the brain’s physical response to stress.
That's what a Good Job does - resilience. It creates opportunities for a Plan B. If my glasses break, I can drop everything and get them fixed without running out of money or losing my job. If I get cancer, all I have to worry about is nausea and hair loss - I'm not going to lose my home or my job. It's less scary, less stressful, and ultimately means that there's less yelling in your life. And, politically, I want that for everyone. I've had a glimpse of it, and I want to share it. But my city seems to be run by people who are angry and yelly and stressed and scared, and yet want the opposite of this situation that creates resilience. I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense.
11. I realize I have no right, authority, or credibility to go swooping in and saying "You voted wrong! I know better than you!" But what I'm saying here is my truth as I have lived and experienced it, as I have observed in those around me and those I admire from afar. Rudeness and anger and fear and yelling decrease as empowerment and agency and respect and social credibility and resilience increase, and all these things increase with good employment conditions.
12. Growing up, I'd probably yell at someone every other day. Now, I can't even think of the last time I yelled at anyone. I like this, and I want everyone else to have it too. But the people who look to me like they need it the most don't want anyone to have it.
I don't know what to do with this.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
G20 braindump
This is not complete, comprehensive, organized, or well-structured. I might add more later or I might repurpose material into better-organized posts. Right now I just need to clear out my head. (I had a good, structured blog post that took all my panic and fear and emotions and expressed it in a way that's informative to others for whom this is all non-immediate, but it took a long time to write and I got too sleepy before I could finish it. So I made an outline of the rest and went to bed. But Blogger ate my outline! I almost feel like this is a conspiracy.)
1. I've been thinking a lot about laws and society lately, even before this all started. I think I like laws. If people are following laws because they're the law (rather than just so as to not be a dick), then laws make life easy. I don't have to fight for my life when I walk down the street. My employer pays me the amount due on the proper date. Stores sell me their products at the posted price. This is good. It makes life easy. And then, instead of having to ceaselessly stand up for myself in every area of life, I can put my energies into learning and thinking and translating and creating, which makes life more pleasant and I think allows me to make a greater contribution to society as a whole. So that got me thinking about why I follow laws and, more than that, why I'm Being Good. Being Good is doing what's right, what's expected of you. Here I'm using it as shorthand to mean that I got a job, go to work, try to be nice to people, try not to mess stuff up, etc. I thought about this long and hard - I've never had to articulate it before! - and I came to the conclusion that it's because I like to be comfortable. I like places where there's nothing crawling out of the walls. I like hot showers and air conditioning and comfy chairs and everything I ever want to eat or drink at my fingertips.
After reading about what happened at Queen and Spadina and then about the detention conditions, I'm utterly terrified because the law, which has always served to make me comfortable as long as I'm Being Good, is now being use to grab people who were Being Good and make them uncomfortable.
So what's my motivation to continue obeying the law? But the thing is, I'm a shy, quiet, stay-at-home kind of person. I'm not likely to break the law too badly just because most of what I want to do is already legal. But what's other people's - people who are more interested in doing things that are illegal - motivation to continue obeying the law?
2. Currently, there exists empirical evidence that the police want to grab me when I'm walking down the street, detain me for hours with no protection from the elements, deprive me of water and give me only food that will make me thirstier, lock me in a crowded room with vomit on the floor, prevent me from being able to use the bathroom for hours and hours and then make me go where people are watching and there is no toilet paper, restrain my arms and then beat me (as though they couldn't already beat me up unrestrained), and sexually harass and sexually assault me. On the other hand, there is empirical evidence that the black bloc people want to vandalize property and taunt people whom they perceive to be part of the problem. The worst thing I could imagine them doing is beating me up if they perceive me to be part of the problem (and I haven't heard any anecdotes of them actually beating someone up), and I'd much rather be beaten up and then at least get to go home than be detained for 36 hours (which might still involve being beaten up).
3. People say I have nothing to worry about if I'm not doing anything wrong. But being denied use of a bathroom for hours and hours, being boxed in on the street and unable to leave, being locked up and denied water - that's something to worry about. To me, that's practically torture. (Yes, there are many worse ways to torture, but that doesn't negate its tortuousness.) People say the police are only trying to protect me, but this is all a threat from which I need protection. In fact, it might be a greater threat than any other I face. If some random bad guy tries to attack me or abduct me in the street, it is possible for other people to jump in and stop him. If some random bad guy tries to attack me in my home, it will likely at least be over in less than an hour. I've also heard people say there's no need to worry because it's just a one-off thing because of the G20. WTF? None of the don't worry people saw this coming beforehand. I didn't hear anyone say "Now, they might grab you off the street on the way to work and lock you up for 36 hours because of the G20, but that's just because of this G20 thing and it isn't going to be happening again." So what other future circumstances aren't they seeing? (Not to say it would be acceptable even if it were just a one-time thing, but if that were true it would at least reduce future worrying.)
4. Analogy:
Are you in love with me? You should be, you know! You should love me! I'm lovable! Sure, I'm not perfect, but who is? I'm just a decent human being doing my best. You'd better love me, because if not you're going to be alone forever or stuck with some idiot!
That's not going to make you love me, now is it? Even if everything I've said there is true, it's not enough to make you love me. I'd need to provide evidence of my loveability, over a long period of time and ideally through some adversity.
Now imagine if there were a bunch of people out there, saying that they're my former lovers, all with stories of how unlovable I am. Some of these people are public figures with a reputation to maintain, for whom there would be no benefit in repeating this information if it weren't true. Their stories are all consistent, pointing to clear patterns of behaviour (as opposed to being one-off flukes), and some of them are backed up with photographic and video evidence.
In that case, I'd have to work even harder to make you love me. I'd have to show, over an even longer period of time and with greater reliability, that it's safe to love me. I'd also probably have to articulate to you what has changed that will prevent this unlovable behaviour from recurring in the future. If I said "Oh, I was doing that because I once had a lover who treated me poorly," that wouldn't be enough to mitigate your concerns. I would need to give you clear specifics of what has changed that this incident in the past will no longer be a problem in the future, and also show positive behaviour over the long-term, including through the kinds of adversity that triggered my previous unlovable behaviour. The more you hear, the more you can't just love me.
This is why I can't just trust the police, no matter how much people tell me I should trust them.
5. I do wonder how much the intimidating sight of massive hoards of police in riot gear led to the escalation.
Analogy:
Imagine you're walking down the street. About 100 metres in front of you, there are half a dozen large, intimidating men, dressed thuggishly. (Whatever you, personally, consider thuggish.)
- Imagine they're sitting on a patio, eating and drinking.
- Imagine they're standing outside a building, smoking and shouting things at passers-by
- Imagine they're standing outside a building, smoking and talking among themselves.
- Imagine one of them has a puppy, and the rest of them are all petting and admiring it.
- Imagine they're all standing in a row, arms folded, blocking your path.
- Imagine they're huddled around a car that has its hood up.
- Imagine they're sitting around drinking beers somewhere where you're not suppose to be drinking, with empty bottles scattered around them.
Your reaction would be somewhat different in these different scenarios, wouldn't it? If one of them called out to you, you'd react differently. Might this not have escalated if, at first sight, the police presence was more like what we're accustomed to seeing?
6. And what are we to make of the fact that the reason given for not stopping the black bloc people from wrecking the city was that they were trying to protect the fence? (The Globe & Mail says the fence was 6 km long, and I've heard numbers ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 for the number of police officers. What were they doing, standing shoulder to shoulder around the fence? Why bother with a fence then?) So they're letting the city get wrecked to protect a precious few elite? Just how many people were behind the fence anyway? Wouldn't it be awesome if some world leader showed the noblesse oblige to say to their security people "Do what you need to do to protect me, but only if it doesn't inconvenience the citizens I represent."?
7. They said they did the massive sweep at Queen & Spadina because they thought some of the people in the intersection were black bloc people dressed in civvies. But how am I supposed to know the back stories of the people in the intersection with me? In a typical crowded intersection on a beautiful day there are like 100 people. What, specifically, do they expect me to do so I can go about life (including crowded intersections) normally without getting caught up in a police sweep?
8. They said one of the reasons they were after these particular people is because they did not dissociate themselves from the black bloc. The thing is, neither did I. Why not? Because what the black bloc did was so fucking dumb-ass that I figured my condemnation of their asshattery would be taken as a given! I've never dissociated myself from Hitler or Than Shwe or Paul Bernardo or Kanye West when he was interrupting Taylor Swift or those dickheads who sit with their legs spread on the subway either, for the same reason (although I'll take the opportunity to do so now). So whom do they want us to dissociate from? Which circumstances require an explicitly state dissociation and which are obvious? How, precisely, do we dissociate from someone to the satisfaction of the police? We need clear instructions on this!
9. Some people have said that the reason the police arrested everyone at Queen & Spadina is because they said not to go past a certain line, and a few people did. (According to the explanation I was given, the people in the video who were sitting on the ground with their backs to the police had crossed the invisible line, but I can't vouch for that personally.) I've also heard people complaining that legitimate protesters did nothing to stop the black bloc people (although we have video evidence that some people did). But how could I possibly stop a stranger from doing something stupid? I'm not big or strong enough to tackle a person, nor persuasive enough to convince them from crossing an invisible line. People don't generally listen to me. That was a method our teachers used in middle school. Sometimes they'd punish the whole class because we didn't stop the person from doing something wrong. Why didn't they understand that if I could get my peers to do what I wanted, I'd make them stop bullying me? Not being influential is...well, I might not go so far as to say it's punishment in and of itself, but it's certainly an inconvenience in every area of life as compared with being able to get people to do what you tell them. And now I have to worry about the police punishing me for being uninfluential in the general vicinity of an idiot.
10. If the police want to get ordinary citizens onside, they could do a world of good with humane detention conditions. One of my favourite guilty pleasures is the In Death series, which are police procedurals (although I'm finding them difficult to read now, bastards!) From these books, I've learned that sometimes the police need to investigate people to eliminate them, sometimes they need to ask questions of people who were present at the time or might have seen or heard something, sometimes they need to go through certain procedures for the record, etc. And because of this, before last weekend, if I found myself questioned by police officers, I would just assume they're doing their job. If I'd had to wait around several hours but I'd been indoors, not handcuffed because I'm no threat, reasonable access to washroom facilities and drinking water, I would totally be right up there with the people who are saying that they're just doing their jobs trying to protect us and we have to accept a certain amount of inconvenience. What makes me fear the police is the prospect of being kept outside in the elements unprotected (because if you're just running down to the corner store and the rain isn't forecast to start for several hours, you don't bring gear for three hours in the rain), not able to go to the washroom, detained for 36 hours, insufficient water, the only food available makes you thirstier, threatened with sexual harassment, overcrowded room, no room to lie down for 36 hours, vomit on the floor, etc. If they'd just gone through the motions of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, they wouldn't be facing any complaints now.
11. Something needs to be done. We need to have assurances that we aren't going to be rounded up when we're just innocently walking down the street. (Or even if we're walking down the street doing something stupid and/or obnoxious, but perfectly legal and ultimately harmless.) We need assurances that we won't be forced to pee our pants or go without water or be sexually assaulted just because we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need assurances that we can trust our police. There are elements out there that are still threats to us and from which the police are supposed to protect us. You often hear that crimes aren't solved because witnesses don't come forward to the police. How can any of this work if we can't trust our police? This is detrimental to society as a whole!My now-octogenerian grandmother fled with her family from behind the iron curtain and sacrificed greatly her entire life so her descendents wouldn't have to go through this! If they can't provide us with assurances, they should at least provide my grandmother, and all those like her, with a refund!
12. I mentally wrote that last paragraph before I learned that police chief Bill Blair lied about the fence law. So even if they give us these assurances, how can we trust them? What are we supposed to do in a world where the police outright lie to us, publicly and on record, about what the laws are? How is our society going to function?
13. Do the police even want us to trust them? Or do they just want us to fear them? If it's the latter, couldn't they at least have a word with all the people who keep scolding me for not trusting the police?
Edited to add: Since 2007, I'd been wanting Eddie Izzard to come to Toronto, and asking him to do so at every opportune moment. Last month he did just that, and there was much rejoicing. But now I'm even more glad that he's already come to see us, because as it stands right this minute I could not in good conscience ask him to come here. He probably would because he's brave, and from a purely selfish fannish perspective I do want him to, but I cannot look someone I so like and admire in the metaphorical eye and say "You should come here. It's a good idea."
1. I've been thinking a lot about laws and society lately, even before this all started. I think I like laws. If people are following laws because they're the law (rather than just so as to not be a dick), then laws make life easy. I don't have to fight for my life when I walk down the street. My employer pays me the amount due on the proper date. Stores sell me their products at the posted price. This is good. It makes life easy. And then, instead of having to ceaselessly stand up for myself in every area of life, I can put my energies into learning and thinking and translating and creating, which makes life more pleasant and I think allows me to make a greater contribution to society as a whole. So that got me thinking about why I follow laws and, more than that, why I'm Being Good. Being Good is doing what's right, what's expected of you. Here I'm using it as shorthand to mean that I got a job, go to work, try to be nice to people, try not to mess stuff up, etc. I thought about this long and hard - I've never had to articulate it before! - and I came to the conclusion that it's because I like to be comfortable. I like places where there's nothing crawling out of the walls. I like hot showers and air conditioning and comfy chairs and everything I ever want to eat or drink at my fingertips.
After reading about what happened at Queen and Spadina and then about the detention conditions, I'm utterly terrified because the law, which has always served to make me comfortable as long as I'm Being Good, is now being use to grab people who were Being Good and make them uncomfortable.
So what's my motivation to continue obeying the law? But the thing is, I'm a shy, quiet, stay-at-home kind of person. I'm not likely to break the law too badly just because most of what I want to do is already legal. But what's other people's - people who are more interested in doing things that are illegal - motivation to continue obeying the law?
2. Currently, there exists empirical evidence that the police want to grab me when I'm walking down the street, detain me for hours with no protection from the elements, deprive me of water and give me only food that will make me thirstier, lock me in a crowded room with vomit on the floor, prevent me from being able to use the bathroom for hours and hours and then make me go where people are watching and there is no toilet paper, restrain my arms and then beat me (as though they couldn't already beat me up unrestrained), and sexually harass and sexually assault me. On the other hand, there is empirical evidence that the black bloc people want to vandalize property and taunt people whom they perceive to be part of the problem. The worst thing I could imagine them doing is beating me up if they perceive me to be part of the problem (and I haven't heard any anecdotes of them actually beating someone up), and I'd much rather be beaten up and then at least get to go home than be detained for 36 hours (which might still involve being beaten up).
3. People say I have nothing to worry about if I'm not doing anything wrong. But being denied use of a bathroom for hours and hours, being boxed in on the street and unable to leave, being locked up and denied water - that's something to worry about. To me, that's practically torture. (Yes, there are many worse ways to torture, but that doesn't negate its tortuousness.) People say the police are only trying to protect me, but this is all a threat from which I need protection. In fact, it might be a greater threat than any other I face. If some random bad guy tries to attack me or abduct me in the street, it is possible for other people to jump in and stop him. If some random bad guy tries to attack me in my home, it will likely at least be over in less than an hour. I've also heard people say there's no need to worry because it's just a one-off thing because of the G20. WTF? None of the don't worry people saw this coming beforehand. I didn't hear anyone say "Now, they might grab you off the street on the way to work and lock you up for 36 hours because of the G20, but that's just because of this G20 thing and it isn't going to be happening again." So what other future circumstances aren't they seeing? (Not to say it would be acceptable even if it were just a one-time thing, but if that were true it would at least reduce future worrying.)
4. Analogy:
Are you in love with me? You should be, you know! You should love me! I'm lovable! Sure, I'm not perfect, but who is? I'm just a decent human being doing my best. You'd better love me, because if not you're going to be alone forever or stuck with some idiot!
That's not going to make you love me, now is it? Even if everything I've said there is true, it's not enough to make you love me. I'd need to provide evidence of my loveability, over a long period of time and ideally through some adversity.
Now imagine if there were a bunch of people out there, saying that they're my former lovers, all with stories of how unlovable I am. Some of these people are public figures with a reputation to maintain, for whom there would be no benefit in repeating this information if it weren't true. Their stories are all consistent, pointing to clear patterns of behaviour (as opposed to being one-off flukes), and some of them are backed up with photographic and video evidence.
In that case, I'd have to work even harder to make you love me. I'd have to show, over an even longer period of time and with greater reliability, that it's safe to love me. I'd also probably have to articulate to you what has changed that will prevent this unlovable behaviour from recurring in the future. If I said "Oh, I was doing that because I once had a lover who treated me poorly," that wouldn't be enough to mitigate your concerns. I would need to give you clear specifics of what has changed that this incident in the past will no longer be a problem in the future, and also show positive behaviour over the long-term, including through the kinds of adversity that triggered my previous unlovable behaviour. The more you hear, the more you can't just love me.
This is why I can't just trust the police, no matter how much people tell me I should trust them.
5. I do wonder how much the intimidating sight of massive hoards of police in riot gear led to the escalation.
Analogy:
Imagine you're walking down the street. About 100 metres in front of you, there are half a dozen large, intimidating men, dressed thuggishly. (Whatever you, personally, consider thuggish.)
- Imagine they're sitting on a patio, eating and drinking.
- Imagine they're standing outside a building, smoking and shouting things at passers-by
- Imagine they're standing outside a building, smoking and talking among themselves.
- Imagine one of them has a puppy, and the rest of them are all petting and admiring it.
- Imagine they're all standing in a row, arms folded, blocking your path.
- Imagine they're huddled around a car that has its hood up.
- Imagine they're sitting around drinking beers somewhere where you're not suppose to be drinking, with empty bottles scattered around them.
Your reaction would be somewhat different in these different scenarios, wouldn't it? If one of them called out to you, you'd react differently. Might this not have escalated if, at first sight, the police presence was more like what we're accustomed to seeing?
6. And what are we to make of the fact that the reason given for not stopping the black bloc people from wrecking the city was that they were trying to protect the fence? (The Globe & Mail says the fence was 6 km long, and I've heard numbers ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 for the number of police officers. What were they doing, standing shoulder to shoulder around the fence? Why bother with a fence then?) So they're letting the city get wrecked to protect a precious few elite? Just how many people were behind the fence anyway? Wouldn't it be awesome if some world leader showed the noblesse oblige to say to their security people "Do what you need to do to protect me, but only if it doesn't inconvenience the citizens I represent."?
7. They said they did the massive sweep at Queen & Spadina because they thought some of the people in the intersection were black bloc people dressed in civvies. But how am I supposed to know the back stories of the people in the intersection with me? In a typical crowded intersection on a beautiful day there are like 100 people. What, specifically, do they expect me to do so I can go about life (including crowded intersections) normally without getting caught up in a police sweep?
8. They said one of the reasons they were after these particular people is because they did not dissociate themselves from the black bloc. The thing is, neither did I. Why not? Because what the black bloc did was so fucking dumb-ass that I figured my condemnation of their asshattery would be taken as a given! I've never dissociated myself from Hitler or Than Shwe or Paul Bernardo or Kanye West when he was interrupting Taylor Swift or those dickheads who sit with their legs spread on the subway either, for the same reason (although I'll take the opportunity to do so now). So whom do they want us to dissociate from? Which circumstances require an explicitly state dissociation and which are obvious? How, precisely, do we dissociate from someone to the satisfaction of the police? We need clear instructions on this!
9. Some people have said that the reason the police arrested everyone at Queen & Spadina is because they said not to go past a certain line, and a few people did. (According to the explanation I was given, the people in the video who were sitting on the ground with their backs to the police had crossed the invisible line, but I can't vouch for that personally.) I've also heard people complaining that legitimate protesters did nothing to stop the black bloc people (although we have video evidence that some people did). But how could I possibly stop a stranger from doing something stupid? I'm not big or strong enough to tackle a person, nor persuasive enough to convince them from crossing an invisible line. People don't generally listen to me. That was a method our teachers used in middle school. Sometimes they'd punish the whole class because we didn't stop the person from doing something wrong. Why didn't they understand that if I could get my peers to do what I wanted, I'd make them stop bullying me? Not being influential is...well, I might not go so far as to say it's punishment in and of itself, but it's certainly an inconvenience in every area of life as compared with being able to get people to do what you tell them. And now I have to worry about the police punishing me for being uninfluential in the general vicinity of an idiot.
10. If the police want to get ordinary citizens onside, they could do a world of good with humane detention conditions. One of my favourite guilty pleasures is the In Death series, which are police procedurals (although I'm finding them difficult to read now, bastards!) From these books, I've learned that sometimes the police need to investigate people to eliminate them, sometimes they need to ask questions of people who were present at the time or might have seen or heard something, sometimes they need to go through certain procedures for the record, etc. And because of this, before last weekend, if I found myself questioned by police officers, I would just assume they're doing their job. If I'd had to wait around several hours but I'd been indoors, not handcuffed because I'm no threat, reasonable access to washroom facilities and drinking water, I would totally be right up there with the people who are saying that they're just doing their jobs trying to protect us and we have to accept a certain amount of inconvenience. What makes me fear the police is the prospect of being kept outside in the elements unprotected (because if you're just running down to the corner store and the rain isn't forecast to start for several hours, you don't bring gear for three hours in the rain), not able to go to the washroom, detained for 36 hours, insufficient water, the only food available makes you thirstier, threatened with sexual harassment, overcrowded room, no room to lie down for 36 hours, vomit on the floor, etc. If they'd just gone through the motions of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, they wouldn't be facing any complaints now.
11. Something needs to be done. We need to have assurances that we aren't going to be rounded up when we're just innocently walking down the street. (Or even if we're walking down the street doing something stupid and/or obnoxious, but perfectly legal and ultimately harmless.) We need assurances that we won't be forced to pee our pants or go without water or be sexually assaulted just because we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need assurances that we can trust our police. There are elements out there that are still threats to us and from which the police are supposed to protect us. You often hear that crimes aren't solved because witnesses don't come forward to the police. How can any of this work if we can't trust our police? This is detrimental to society as a whole!My now-octogenerian grandmother fled with her family from behind the iron curtain and sacrificed greatly her entire life so her descendents wouldn't have to go through this! If they can't provide us with assurances, they should at least provide my grandmother, and all those like her, with a refund!
12. I mentally wrote that last paragraph before I learned that police chief Bill Blair lied about the fence law. So even if they give us these assurances, how can we trust them? What are we supposed to do in a world where the police outright lie to us, publicly and on record, about what the laws are? How is our society going to function?
13. Do the police even want us to trust them? Or do they just want us to fear them? If it's the latter, couldn't they at least have a word with all the people who keep scolding me for not trusting the police?
Edited to add: Since 2007, I'd been wanting Eddie Izzard to come to Toronto, and asking him to do so at every opportune moment. Last month he did just that, and there was much rejoicing. But now I'm even more glad that he's already come to see us, because as it stands right this minute I could not in good conscience ask him to come here. He probably would because he's brave, and from a purely selfish fannish perspective I do want him to, but I cannot look someone I so like and admire in the metaphorical eye and say "You should come here. It's a good idea."
Monday, May 31, 2010
Eddie braindump
I just got back from seeing Eddie Izzard again!! This isn't at all cohesive, but I want to write stuff down before I forget. I know at one point in the show I was doubled over with laughter struggling to breathe at some throwaway line, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was any more!!!! Plus at least two brand new blog posts were inspired by this show, and I can't remember them either.*
- The experience was far less intense for me because it wasn't the first time. Last time I was agog and in awe of the simple fact that he's real. This time that wasn't there. Similarly, some of the lines I didn't laugh out loud and viscerally at because I knew they were coming. I'm wondering if a significant portion of the audience had also been there at previous shows, because we didn't standing O his entrance this time. Which is unfortunate - I wanted to do it on principle - but maybe we weren't collectively feeling the sheer awe that he is real and right there because we had already been through that just a few weeks ago. Maybe this is a bad idea though, maybe we should have forced ourselves to react like it's new, because we certainly don't want Eddie to think he has to wait another seven years before he comes back so he'll get a proper welcome.
- The show is less scripted than I expected. The set pieces were there, loosely plotted, and the key beats were there, but everything in between was just Eddie being Eddie. I'd thought that more of it was scripted in a way to make it sound unscripted, but it seems it's mostly just Eddie. Which is fantastic, because that's what I'm here for - to spend time inside Eddie's brain.
- Eddie was wearing jeans that were so tight that they showed off his post-marathon leg muscles nearly as well as fishnets. Not jeggings, actual jeans. Regardless of how you feel about that as a fashion statement, you have to admire it as a design achievement! In addition to the expected collection of inappropriate thoughts, I want to have a girl talky conversation with Eddie about these jeans. Precisely how comfortable or uncomfortable are they? (They had some stretch to them, but looked like they had the potential to be uncomfortable.) How many did he have to try on to find that exact look? Were they altered? How often does he wash them? Can he sit in them? Does he really need that belt?
- With Eddie wearing makeup and heels this time (along with the same boy-mode costume, but this time with the astoundingly tight jeans), I noticed that his hairdo is masculine. I had never before in my life consciously realized that short hair styles can be gendered! I've always just parsed them as Other and irrelevant and moved on.
- I just noticed this time around that the giant squid is writing a TripAdvisor review with INK! Yeah, because you can totally send handwritten reviews to websites. (Why yes, that is the most egregious of all plot holes in that bit.)
- The seats in Massey Hall are SO uncomfortable! They make me want to sit with my legs rather wide apart, but I can't do that because the seats are close together and the strange older man beside me is rather large and wearing shorts, and I'm just not going to open my legs while wearing a shortish skirt and rub my bare leg against a strange man's bare leg. Most comfortable would have been to sit knee-crossed-over-ankle, but there simply wasn't room to do that (even if I was willing to be improper and invade personal space), so when I got home I had to spend some time in triangle poses. If it's this bad for me, imagine how bad it would be for people with stiff joints, or especially tall people! Dear Massey Hall, please fix this!
- I don't care what anyone says, there are few sights more beautiful than Eddie making himself laugh
- At one point, Eddie dares God to prove his existence by showing himself, and then offers him various bribes to do so (cash, smoothies, etc.) Today he also offered him 12 virgins, then 23 virgins, then 72 people with experience. My thought: are there 23 (or even 12) virgins in this room, like at all?
- I noticed today that whenever Eddie did his write-on-his-hand oops-not-funny thing, it was always in cases where I wasn't laughing, but I wasn't not laughing because it wasn't funny. I wasn't laughing because I was waiting with rapt anticipation and bated breath to hear what he'd say next. I wish there was some way to communicate "Yes, and...?" to the person on stage.
- (In retrospect, putting my purse between my knees might have helped with the uncomfortable seats.)
- The black-market merch guys were still out there (different guys, same set-up) so I guess that means they did make enough money last time. Either that, or they had a bunch of extra merch left over from the last run and this was their best chance to move some of it.
- At one point, Eddie was on a tangent about how the word sheep doesn't pluralize, and a bunch of all different people in the audience shouted out "MOOSE!" And I was thinking that too, I just didn't shout it out because it didn't seem the moment. But it was just so interesting that so many people were thinking exactly the same thing at that point. There are other words that don't pluralize, but we all thought of the same one, to the extent that probably 7 people felt the need to shout it out (and this at a point in the show where he wasn't asking us to shout things at him).
- The interesting thing about sitting close to the stage (Second row centre!!! Best seats I've ever had for anything in my life!) is how the audience feels different to me as an audience member. The audience as I was experiencing it was me and Poodle, the very enthusiastic group of die-hards in front of us, and the older couple next to me who kept repeating funny lines to each other. The reaction of the audience as a whole was travelling to Eddie in waves over our heads, not touching us at all.
- Overall, the show as a whole was looser and more relaxed than the previous one. I think a significant portion of the audience had seen it before, but even without the surprise it was still entirely entertaining. I would very happily do this once a month at the same price point for a very long time.
"I'm very good at pure logic. I have to be - I'm a transvestite!" - E. Izzard.
*Oh, I just remembered: the line was supposed to be "everyone take a frog and put it on your head" (plot point in Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt) but Eddie either accidentally or deliberately-repeating-a-previous-mistake-that-had-humour-value said "everyone take a frog and put it on one of your heads" or something like that, then took rather a circuitous route back in a way that alluded to Inspector Tiger. I'm obviously not communicating the humour here, but for some reason it just killed me.
- The experience was far less intense for me because it wasn't the first time. Last time I was agog and in awe of the simple fact that he's real. This time that wasn't there. Similarly, some of the lines I didn't laugh out loud and viscerally at because I knew they were coming. I'm wondering if a significant portion of the audience had also been there at previous shows, because we didn't standing O his entrance this time. Which is unfortunate - I wanted to do it on principle - but maybe we weren't collectively feeling the sheer awe that he is real and right there because we had already been through that just a few weeks ago. Maybe this is a bad idea though, maybe we should have forced ourselves to react like it's new, because we certainly don't want Eddie to think he has to wait another seven years before he comes back so he'll get a proper welcome.
- The show is less scripted than I expected. The set pieces were there, loosely plotted, and the key beats were there, but everything in between was just Eddie being Eddie. I'd thought that more of it was scripted in a way to make it sound unscripted, but it seems it's mostly just Eddie. Which is fantastic, because that's what I'm here for - to spend time inside Eddie's brain.
- Eddie was wearing jeans that were so tight that they showed off his post-marathon leg muscles nearly as well as fishnets. Not jeggings, actual jeans. Regardless of how you feel about that as a fashion statement, you have to admire it as a design achievement! In addition to the expected collection of inappropriate thoughts, I want to have a girl talky conversation with Eddie about these jeans. Precisely how comfortable or uncomfortable are they? (They had some stretch to them, but looked like they had the potential to be uncomfortable.) How many did he have to try on to find that exact look? Were they altered? How often does he wash them? Can he sit in them? Does he really need that belt?
- With Eddie wearing makeup and heels this time (along with the same boy-mode costume, but this time with the astoundingly tight jeans), I noticed that his hairdo is masculine. I had never before in my life consciously realized that short hair styles can be gendered! I've always just parsed them as Other and irrelevant and moved on.
- I just noticed this time around that the giant squid is writing a TripAdvisor review with INK! Yeah, because you can totally send handwritten reviews to websites. (Why yes, that is the most egregious of all plot holes in that bit.)
- The seats in Massey Hall are SO uncomfortable! They make me want to sit with my legs rather wide apart, but I can't do that because the seats are close together and the strange older man beside me is rather large and wearing shorts, and I'm just not going to open my legs while wearing a shortish skirt and rub my bare leg against a strange man's bare leg. Most comfortable would have been to sit knee-crossed-over-ankle, but there simply wasn't room to do that (even if I was willing to be improper and invade personal space), so when I got home I had to spend some time in triangle poses. If it's this bad for me, imagine how bad it would be for people with stiff joints, or especially tall people! Dear Massey Hall, please fix this!
- I don't care what anyone says, there are few sights more beautiful than Eddie making himself laugh
- At one point, Eddie dares God to prove his existence by showing himself, and then offers him various bribes to do so (cash, smoothies, etc.) Today he also offered him 12 virgins, then 23 virgins, then 72 people with experience. My thought: are there 23 (or even 12) virgins in this room, like at all?
- I noticed today that whenever Eddie did his write-on-his-hand oops-not-funny thing, it was always in cases where I wasn't laughing, but I wasn't not laughing because it wasn't funny. I wasn't laughing because I was waiting with rapt anticipation and bated breath to hear what he'd say next. I wish there was some way to communicate "Yes, and...?" to the person on stage.
- (In retrospect, putting my purse between my knees might have helped with the uncomfortable seats.)
- The black-market merch guys were still out there (different guys, same set-up) so I guess that means they did make enough money last time. Either that, or they had a bunch of extra merch left over from the last run and this was their best chance to move some of it.
- At one point, Eddie was on a tangent about how the word sheep doesn't pluralize, and a bunch of all different people in the audience shouted out "MOOSE!" And I was thinking that too, I just didn't shout it out because it didn't seem the moment. But it was just so interesting that so many people were thinking exactly the same thing at that point. There are other words that don't pluralize, but we all thought of the same one, to the extent that probably 7 people felt the need to shout it out (and this at a point in the show where he wasn't asking us to shout things at him).
- The interesting thing about sitting close to the stage (Second row centre!!! Best seats I've ever had for anything in my life!) is how the audience feels different to me as an audience member. The audience as I was experiencing it was me and Poodle, the very enthusiastic group of die-hards in front of us, and the older couple next to me who kept repeating funny lines to each other. The reaction of the audience as a whole was travelling to Eddie in waves over our heads, not touching us at all.
- Overall, the show as a whole was looser and more relaxed than the previous one. I think a significant portion of the audience had seen it before, but even without the surprise it was still entirely entertaining. I would very happily do this once a month at the same price point for a very long time.
"I'm very good at pure logic. I have to be - I'm a transvestite!" - E. Izzard.
*Oh, I just remembered: the line was supposed to be "everyone take a frog and put it on your head" (plot point in Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt) but Eddie either accidentally or deliberately-repeating-a-previous-mistake-that-had-humour-value said "everyone take a frog and put it on one of your heads" or something like that, then took rather a circuitous route back in a way that alluded to Inspector Tiger. I'm obviously not communicating the humour here, but for some reason it just killed me.
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