Things I want to blog about but am currently too tired

- Why current electoral boundaries are a disservice to the highrise-dwelling residents of Yonge & Eg.

- Joe Fiorito's latest column on the Nunavut seal hunt

- A post that should be interestingly theoretical and philosophical but I can't get to stop sounding whiny.

- An oversight in the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act that is forcing long-term tenants into a lower quality of life.

- The translation problems of violence

- Why parents need to model benefit of the doubt

- Things the Toronto cycling lobby should do

Make a request, and I'll blog that one first.

Another theory on why urban people seem rude to exurban people

Conventional wisdom/gross generalizations etc. have it that exurban people tend to think that urban people are rude because we don't pay any particular attention to random other people whose paths we cross, whereas in smaller communities it's more common to say hi to and maybe even chat with people.

I've blogged before about how I think this might be due to our higher density. I cross paths with 100 people on the way to the subway - I can't say hi to all of them, I'd be walking down the street waving and nodding like the Queen! But it also occurs to me that part of the difference might be due to driving/walking/transit patterns.

If you live in a rural area and you need to go to the grocery store, you get in your car and drive there. While in transit, you are in a car, and anyone you cross paths with is in a car. Generally we are not obligated to greet cars. People tend to greet individuals they know and I have heard of people in small towns who wave at every car, but I seriously doubt anyone's feelings would be hurt if they're driving along and the stranger driving in the opposite direction fails to wave at them. You're more socially switched off while en route, and tend to switch back on when you reach your destination. Once there, you switch back on and start talking to people again.

If you live in a city and you need to go to the grocery store, you walk. While in transit, you are on foot, and anyone you cross paths with is on foot. But even though we're crossing paths with real people, we still seem to have mutually agreed to switch off in transit because if we don't we'll never get any downtime.

Add to this the high density, and we're probably encountering but not engaging more people in a day than a rural person might encounter face to face in a day (depending on the size and nature of their workplace - it stands if you compare grocery run to grocery run, but to compare day to day there are too many variables). So then when exurban people come here, they get ignored by more people than they might even see in one day back home. That might make a person feel dissed.

How ghettoization works

I was chatting with my hairdresser and mentioned in the natural flow of conversation that I'm childfree. She told me that most of her clients are childfree. That's very bizarre. I chose her because she has a somewhat unconventional approach that is compatible with my own somewhat unconventional needs, and I ended up as part of a clientele with generally similar family planning goals.

Then I realized that a lot of things in my life have worked out that way. I chose something based on specific factors, and ended up surrounded by people who are similar to me in completely unrelated areas.

For example, I chose translation because it's the first career path that I've ever been absolutely certain I could do. (All the others I would have had to blindly trust that my education and training would get me there.) I took what opportunities were available to me, and ended up on a team full of children of immigrants, ranging from first-and-a-half to second-and-a-half generation. (This is notable because none of us are translating in our heritage languages.)

I chose my neighbourhood because it's located at a subway stop, it has all the basic amenities (grocery store, drug store, LCBO, banks, library, doctor, dentist) all within walking distance, and it's safe and comfortable. Turns out it also has a good selection of demographically-suitable women's clothing and shoe stores, and a decent range of restaurants and bars that I wouldn't feel out of place patronizing. When I first moved here, my big political issue was working towards the legalization of same-sex marriage (this was April 2003, and I had no idea how close we actually were); turned out my MP supported it wholeheartedly.

I keep making decisions based on the relevant factors, and finding myself surrounded by people who are similar or like-minded in other areas of life as well. I'm not quite sure what to think of this. On one hand, it's convenient. On the other, it might be making me narrow-minded. But then, it's not like I'm going to go out of my way to live somewhere that meets my needs less well or find a less suitable job (or get my hair done by someone I don't trust) just so I can be around people who aren't similar to me.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but it's kind of interesting.

Half-formed analogy

This one's not perfectly formed yet, but I think it might be productive so I'm posting it.

Yesterday I was kind of drained from all the xmas, plus my muscles were achy and I didn't have much of an appetite. So I spent the day alone with no interpersonal contact whatsoever, ate ridiculously little food, and went to bed way early to sleep myself better.

No one would ever dispute that it was entirely my right to spend the day that way.

However, I'm sure everyone would agree that I in no way have the right to make other people spend the day without human contact, eat no more than half a meal during the entire day, and go to bed way earlier than they usually do. It would also be exceeding my authority if I were to pressure other people into implying that they were going to spend the day this way, or set up situations where their presence or not-rocking-the-boat would imply that they were planning to spend the day this way and they'd have to make a Big Hairy Deal to ensure that people don't interpret their actions that way.

Some people say that atheists are trying to stop xians from enjoying xmas, but that's not what we're doing. We just don't want to do xmas ourselves, and don't appreciate our actions or quiet cooperation being considered part of xmas.

You don't care that I spent my day like I did, but you probably wouldn't want to spend your day the same way. You'd probably also be a little irked if every time in the two months before boxing day, if you walk past the store without buying food, people assume that this means you plan to not eat very much on boxing day.

Worrying

This is a concept I've been carrying around for years but haven't been able to articulate. It isn't fully articulated here either, but a bunch of words just came to me so I'm putting them down before I lose them.

Some people like/appreciate it when others worry about them. I don't. I can't speak to why people would appreciate being worried about, but the reason I don't like it is when someone worries about you, they're putting the burden of their emotions on you. Now you have to comfort them or reassure them or otherwise manage their emotions, not just for the immediate worries but for whenever you happen to engage in a similarly worry-inducing activity in the future.

So when I don't want someone worrying about me, it's because I don't want to manage their emotions. And when I don't worry about someone, I'm sparing them the burden of my emotions.

Conspiracy theory anyone?

What if the real objective of the Westboro Baptist Church is to get hate speech legislation introduced in the US?

I've always been rather apathetic about the whole hate speech vs. free speech issue. I can see where both sides are coming from, but the status quo doesn't bother me and there are many other things I'm more interested in reading and thinking and talking about.

But when they threatened to protest Tim McLean's funeral, I instantly became an ardent supporter of our hate speech laws. Nothing I might ever conceivably have to say under any imaginable circumstances is nearly as important as getting them to STFU.

What if their intention was to produce this very sentiment in a large segment of the population? What if they brought their act to Canada so people could see how much easier it is to get them to STFU in a country with hate speech laws? What if their ostensible thesis is OMG TEH GAY despite its irrelevance to the things they are picketing so that the public will support including homophobia under the definition of hate speech?

If you want to get people out of cars, target well-dressed women

The key to getting people out of cars and into transit or on foot or onto bicycle lies in making the alternate modes of transportation easy and comfortable and workable for a person wearing a skirt and heels and carrying nothing but a handbag.

On a busy, mixed-use urban street, where all the storefronts open up right onto the sidewalk and most people walk from place to place within the neighbourhood, you wouldn't look twice at a woman in skirt and heels walking down the street. She's unremarkable and going about everyday life with no problems whatsoever. However in one of those "power centres" where you have a bunch of big box stores each surrounded by their own giant parking lot and no sidewalks to speak of, if you saw a woman in a skirt and heels walking in between stores you'd think she's planned poorly or is doing something foolish or something, perhaps briefly wondering if she's having car trouble or needs some help.

This is the make or break for getting people out of their cars. There are dozens of different factors involved, but essentially it comes down to whether a person would do the desired activity or mode of transportation in a skirt and heels, carrying nothing but a handbag. If they will, it will get people out of their cars. If they feel the need to carry a backpack or put on their New Balance or wear a wicking shirt, it isn't going to get people out of their cars. If they look strange and out of place in a skirt and heels, it isn't going to get people out of their cars.

In Amsterdam, it's perfectly normal to see women riding bicycles in whatever it is they happen to be wearing, a purse on their shoulder and their shopping in the bicycle basket. In Toronto, you'd be laughed off the street (and fined for not wearing a helmet). The key to getting more people in Toronto to bike lies in the difference that makes Torontonians wear special clothes to bike while people in Amsterdam wear whatever they happen to be wearing.

Margaret Wente once wrote a column where she took the TTC to work for a week. One thing she mentioned was that she had to wear sensible shoes and carry a backpack to do this. I found this incredibly bizarre, because I take the TTC to work every day and have no problems with wearing heels and carrying just my purse. But the key to getting more 416ers out of their cars and onto the TTC lies in the difference that makes Margaret Wente wear sensible shoes and carry a backpack while I don't hesitate to wear heels and carry just my purse.

There was a trend a few years back where everyone should try to walk over 10,000 steps (equal to about five miles) every day as a general public health thing. There was all kinds of advice (walk to the next bus stop! park at the far end of the parking lot! go for a nice lovely 30 minute walk after dinner!) I was recently given a pedometer, so I wore it a couple of days, and found that I consistently exceeded 10,000 just from normal life. Now I'm not huge on walking as a philosophy or principle. If you asked me if I want to go for a walk, my answer would be "Of course not!" but apparently I do five miles a day without even noticing (and I don't even have a dog!). So the key to getting people to walk more for health purposes lies in the difference between me walking five miles without noticing and other people having to make a specific effort and alter their lives to get their 10,000 steps in.

Conversely, the plastic bag ban people keep lobbying for could also end up being one of these make or break factors. The fact that stores provide bags every time your shop there makes it possible for you to do your shopping as one of many stops as you go about life carrying nothing but your purse. Grab your purse, leave the office, walk into the supermarket, do your shopping, walk home carrying your shopping with your purse over your shoulder. Effortless. But if you had to bring bags with you every time you shop, either carrying them around all day when you plan to shop after work or stopping in at home to pick up the bags then going back out to the store, you'd be more likely to take the car.

There are a lot of factors at play here, not all of which planners and policy-makers can address. One is the weather. I doubt people would bike as much in Amsterdam (regardless of what they're wearing) if their winters were like ours, or if their summers were as humid as our for that matter.

Related to weather, there's also the psychological aspect of being indoors. I'm sure the reason I managed to walk five miles without noticing is because a lot of it was indoors (around the office, around the mall). If you were at the West Edmonton Mall, I'm sure you'd walk to the other side rather than leaving the mall, getting into your car, and driving to the other side (unless you have real problems walking). But (the internet tells me) the West Edmonton Mall is 48 blocks. You wouldn't walk 48 blocks outdoors in the city, you'd go "OMG, 48 blocks! Too far!" and drive or take the bus or subway. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who has walked all the way from the Eaton Centre to Union Station completely by accident from getting lost in the PATH, even though if someone said "It's only three subway stations, let's walk," I'd totally reply with "THREE WHOLE SUBWAY STATIONS! I'm not walking that far!"

There's also the critical mass issue. If you're the only person walking down the street, you feel out of place and vulnerable no matter what you're wearing. (Because a bad guy can grab and abduct a pedestrian, but that's hard to do to someone in a car.) But if the street is crowded, your walking is unexceptional. There's also the convenience issue. If the parking lots are hard to get to, people are less likely to drive. But if you have to walk across an parking lot with no provisions for pedestrians just to get to the store, you're more likely to drive. There are all kinds of factors.

But the crux of the matter is this: when planning a way to get people out of their cars, think to yourself "Will people do this while wearing a skirt and heels and carrying nothing but a purse? Will they look out of place? Will they be uncomfortable or vulnerable? Would it be impractical?" Then solve whatever problems come up, eliminate any real or psychological barriers to doing the activity in question in skirt, heels, and a handbag, and you will be successful at getting people out of their cars.

Patriarchy leads to bad sex

From Antonia Zerbisias:

Meanwhile, south of the border, the more progressive pundits blame the misogyny inherent in so many societies in Asia and the Middle East, where, according to the United Nations, some 5,000 women every year are executed by their fathers, brothers or other male relatives, supposedly to preserve the family's good name.

If it were funny, it would be ironic.

I mean, how do you restore your reputation if you go around strangling your daughters and sisters?

It's confounding how this works.

Conceivably, men in these societies are guilty of all kinds of crimes against their religion and their states, whether we're talking gambling or drinking, burglary or murder, and yet their families don't seem to feel the need to stab them or stone them to death.

Unless they're gay, of course.

So it seems like their real problem is with people sticking penises in their family members. At its most Freudian root, there are people with penises who think that having a penis stuck in you is the worst of all possible disses.

Now there are lots of places people who know stuff about psychology and sociology and gender theory could go with this idea, but I have no training in these areas and I'm currently doped up on cold medication, so I'm going to take the easy path:

Sex must really suck for people with this attitude.

Just think about it first hand for a second. Quietly and to yourself, think about the sex act that gives you the most direct physical pleasure. Now imagine if you thought this was inherently demeaning to your partner. Not just in a little-games-people-play-behind-closed-doors sort of way, but in a big serious permanent way that affects their entire worth as a person forever and ever.

That takes huge amounts of fun out of sex! Yeah, you still get the physical sensation of friction applied to the genitals, and it's not incompatible with certain kinks, but that's about it really. To take just one example, you know the feeling when your partner does some absolutely brilliant and ingenious feat of intelligence and creativity, and you just have to jump them? These people would never have that feeling! Must be a sad life, for all you get out of sex to be friction against the genitals.

What if submetering is actually worse for the environment?

Conventional wisdom is that submetering in multi-unit residential buildings is better for the environment, because residents have an incentive to save energy when they have to pay their own utilities. The problem, of course, is that there are many factors residents (especially tenants) don't have control over. You can't upgrade your insulation, if you're renting you can't get more efficient appliances, you have no control over the nature of the HVAC system. I even know someone who had to pay utilities even though she didn't have a thermostat in her apartment. It got too hot in the winter so she had to open a window because she couldn't turn down the heat, but she still had to pay for all that extra heat. So I've always thought that apartments should have to pass an energy audit before they can be submetered.

But just now I was reading an article about green upgrades that they can make to whole buildings. This makes me wonder if maybe it would be better for the environment to require the landlord to pay utilities instead of the individual tenants. If the landlord has to pay the utilities, they're more motivated to upgrade major things like insulation and plumbing and HVAC - things that individual residents could never do themselves. They might also be motivated to install more cool European things that let you save energy without any effort whatsoever. I don't have numbers, but just by logic and gut instinct it seems like a lot more energy could be saved by landlord initiatives than by any measures tenants could take in their own little units.

Half-formed theory: the majority doesn't identify with the factor that makes them the majority

People in many parts of Canada identify with their regions (Westerners, Quebecois, Maritimers), but I don't think Ontario does. I've lived in Ontario all my life, and to me it's nothing more than an administrative category. I identify as Canadian, I identify as Torontonian, I might identify with my neighbourhood or with the place where I grew up if that scale of identity were relevant to the situation, but I have no sense whatsoever of being Ontarian. I've asked around, and I haven't found any Ontarians who actively identify as Ontarian. It's used in politics sometimes, but that's about it.

Similarly, I am white, but I don't identify with it. I identify as Canadian, I might identify with one or more of my heritage cultures if it's relevant, but my skin colour means nothing more to me than a factor to be addressed in my fashion and cosmetics choices.

So I'm thinking maybe the majority doesn't actively identify with whatever the thing is that they're the majority in. They don't feel it. It's unmarked, to apply linguistic terminology. I'm not quite sure where to go with this next.

While I was writing this, I was also trying to figure out if I actively identify with being female or not. I can't quite tell. I experience female on two levels. The first level is that it's simply a physical reality that sometimes has to be accomodated. I need birth control pills, I need a bra, I have to be wary of strange men in some contexts. But this isn't something I feel or identify with, it's about equal to how I have long skinny feet so I need shoes in a large size with straps in the right place. The second level is that I like to present as female. I just feel...more myself, i.e the best part of myself, more confident and competent, if I look girly. This is very bizarre because I've never heard this sentiment expressed by cisgendered women, I've only ever heard it from MTF transgendered people. So I don't know if with this sentiment I'm articulating the usually unspoken and unidentified sense of actively identifying with and feeling one's majority status, or if I have some kind of unidentified gender issues or what.

How can you tell an unregistered polygamous marriage from simple cheating?

The Star has an article about a family that was broken up when the wife ran off and eloped with another man even though they were still married. The Star makes this out to be a problem with Canada's polygamy laws, but I think really this is just a case of cheating. It's sad, of course. Emotionally devastating, in fact, and broke up a family. But if they didn't attempt to legally register a marriage, it isn't polygamy under the law. It's on the exact same legal footing as cheating. And, like it or not, cheating isn't illegal.

But the laws themselves do have their problems.

According to the Criminal Code, those who enter into a polygamous marriage, polygamous conjugal union, or officiate at a polygamous union can be charged with a criminal offence and face up to five years in prison. Even if the marriage is not registered, it is still considered a crime according to the law.

How would the law enforce that? By definition, a marriage that is not legally registered has no legal weight, so in the eyes of the law this is exactly the same as simply cheating on your spouse.

Here's what the Criminal Code says: (copy-pasted from The Star, not from the Criminal Code itself because I'm lazy)

(1) Everyone who:

(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into
(i) any form of polygamy, or
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Look at the part I've bolded. Doesn't that make a shared polyamorous household illegal? Like if you want to live in a great big poly orgy house, where everyone has sex with everyone else with everyone's knowledge and consent, that would be illegal under that paragraph, no? That doesn't seem right. If you want to move into a sharehouse and have sex with everyone there, that's not the law's business. It's the law's business if it decides not to grant all of you the full rights and privileges of marriage, but it can't stop you from all fucking each other.

But if you keep all your polygamous spouses in separate houses like Bill Hendrickson does, then you're fine, because a conjugal union other than legally-binding marriage has to be in the same household. There's no way legally to have a common-law spouse who lives in a different household, so if your polygamous spouse lives in at a different address and you haven't attempted a legally-binding marriage, there's nothing the law can do.

I think the problem is that what marriage laws are capable of doing is governing who can and can't get the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage, but they aren't capable of stopping people from sleeping together or building households together.

So, unless the law is going to make cheating illegal (somehow I don't think the general public would stand for that), I'm thinking maybe the solution is to legalize fully consensual, non-coerced polygamy. The people being profiled in these articles seem to take marriage seriously because they are acting like they're married to their new partners rather than just running off and cheating. So make it so that everyone has to actively marry everyone else, like say wedding vows to everyone else. So if the Big Love family did this, Bill and Barbara would say wedding vows to each other, then Bill and Nikki would say vows to each other, then Barbara and Nikki would say vows to each other, then Bill and Margene, then Barbara and Margene, then Nikki and Margene. And they'd all sign the marriage certificate, and if any one person did not consent to any new union, that union could not happen. This practice would address the situation in the article and the situation they wrote about last week where this lady's husband married a second wife without informing her. They could throw in some kind of anti-coercion clause to address those cults and make sure everyone involved is fully informed and consensual. Polygamists clearly feel that they don't need to get a legally registered marriage because they feel polygamy is part of their religion and the law doesn't respect their religion. So if the law just calls their bluff and legalizes polygamy with the perfectly reasonable conditions of full knowledge and consent by everyone involved, then they will have to abide by these conditions since they do seem to value marriage.

I'm congenitally monogamous so I'm not about to actively lobby for this, but I fully expect it to become legal at some point within my lifetime. And I fully expect the last and loudest protesters to be employers and insurance companies who have to provide benefits to people's spouses.

Young offenders

I noticed in passing in the newspaper that Omar Khadr is 21 years old. He was 15 when he went into Guantanamo, and now he's 21 and still there. He must be fucked up. There is no way a person could be in that kind of prison for that portion of their life and come out a functional adult. If he had spent those years in a healthy environment, he might have come out a non-fucked-up adult by virtue of exposure to what a healthy environment is liked. Even if he had spent those years with his family, he might have come out non-fucked-up - I'm sure personally know several cases where people from extremist families came out as moderates as part of their normal adolescent rebellion. Of course, he might have still turned out fucked up anyway, but you can see how the possibility of non-fucked-up would have been there. But by having spent those years in Guantanamo, there's no chance of him not being fucked up.

Then I turned the page and saw that they might start treating young offenders the same as adult offenders. This worries me. I'm worried that if the justice system is forced to treat young offenders the same as adults, then there won't be any room to fix people who can become un-fucked-up by growing up. I'm not saying that all young offenders are innocents who don't know what they're doing - I've been on the receiving end of enough adolescent cruelty to know that! And I'm not saying that they don't understand that stealing things or hurting people is bad, I'm quite certain they do. But you know in that awful stage of early adolescence where the hormones are flying and you just can't grok that this is temporary and that the world is bigger and kinder than the middle school cafeteria, and you're sort of hostile and defensive and ready to pounce because of that? And then as you get older you see that the world is bigger and there are other ways to live and in the real world everyone isn't judging you for the shade of blue of your jeans, and you sort of mellow out and are more able to calmly go about life and let things just roll off your back? I can see how in some cases the adolescent hostility might lead to criminality, and the mellowing out as you see the bigger world might eliminate it. And it would be a shame to eliminate this possibility in applicable cases by forcing the offenders to be sentenced to imprisonment pursuant to adult standards.

I know in some cases society needs to be protected from the offender, but in cases where they would become a better person just by being exposed to a bigger, less nitpicky world than the school cafeteria, prison (even in a juvenile institution) isn't going to un-fuck them up. I don't want to see those who can be un-fucked-up lose that chance just because of political will to further punish the permanently fucked-up ones.

Half-formed idea: sterilization on demand to ease the burden on the health care system

The vast majority of the times I've gone to the doctor in my adult life have been to keep up my birth control pills. The vast majority of the prescriptions I've had filled in my adult life have been for birth control pills. The vast majority of claims I've submitted to my insurance have been for birth control pills. If I could have gotten sterilized on demand when I first became sexually active, my entire burden on the health care system in my adult life would probably be about 25% of what it has been so far. (More like 10% if it weren't for Gardasil, which is pricy and required four appointments).

We know that 10 million Canadians use prescription contraception. What would the burden on the health care system be like if all those who never wanted to have children (ever or again) got sterilized?

The first page of Google results rather vaguely suggests that just under 20% of the population is childfree. Given that some childfree people are already sterilized, and given that some childed people might want to be sterilized but not be able to (perhaps because they're young, perhaps because they only have one child, etc.) let's work with the assumption that 10% of the people using birth control would like to be sterilized. So that's 1 million people who would like to be sterilized. So let's sterilize them. Snip, snip. Now what happens to the health care system?

I use up one standard annual appointment slot a year for my birth control needs. If we assume that everyone has simple birth control needs and only needs one appointment a year (a very low estimate, since some methods require 4 appointments a year and some people have to try a number of different methods before they find the right one) that would open up one million appointments across the country. The first page of google results gives numbers between 2.4 million and 5 million for Canadians that don't have a family doctor. But in any case, one million free appointment slots would make a significant dent!

Other factors that I have been unable to quantify:

- How many free doctor appointment slots = room in the doctor's practice for a new patient?

- Sometimes unwanted pregnancy occurs, even with birth control. Getting an abortion surely takes up more medical resources than simply maintaining contraception, and carrying the baby to term anyway would take up even more, plus produce a whole nother human being who is also going to need medical resources.

- A lot of people, if they don't need to go to the doctor for their birth control every year, aren't going to get a pap smear every year. Come on, we all know it's true. How would this affect overall public health? And how would it be affected by the introduction of Gardasil, once enough of the population has been innoculated to wipe out the major strains of HPV?

- Would the reduction in the number of people taking hormonal contraception (which can increase blood pressure) have any appreciable impact on the instances of heart disease in the general population?

- With the baby boomers, the issue of contraception has recently become/is about to become moot for a huge chunk of the population. Would that make the impact of sterilization on demand negilgible? What would the impact have been if it were available as the baby boomers were starting to become sexually active? (And as an aside, is the fact that this huge chunk of the population no longer requires contraception going to have an impact on the sexual health of the overall population? I once heard the boomers described as the generation that had the drinking age (in the US) lowered to 18 so they could drink when they were in college, then had it raised to 21 so their kids couldn't. Are they going to do the same thing with birth control now that they no longer need it? Although it might be too late for that now anyway - I'm the child of boomers who started their family relatively late, and I'm far too old for my parents to be interfering in my contraception.)

Let's stop thinking of the pay gap as a gender issue

In the news again recently was how the average woman gets paid less than the average man

The problem with positioning this as a gender issue is that it erects a giant Somebody Else's Problem Field around the issue. It makes it sound like employers are deliberately paying women less because they are women, then you realize that you don't know of anywhere where that's happening. Somebody else's problem! You read the story, then sneak a look at the paystub of your opposite-sex colleague with the most comparable job description and experience and see that you're earning more or less the same. Somebody else's problem! If you're male, it automatically labels to the story as Other. Somebody else's problem! If you're unionized or otherwise have everyone's pay governed by the same unbendable rules. Somebody else's problem! If you're an employer, you think "But I pay my male and female employees the same!" Somebody else's problem!

The headlines make it sound like women are getting paid less because they're women, but that's not what it is.

“As the report shows, the jobs women hold in Canada today mean they get paid less,” the labour congress said in a release. “These jobs also mean fewer women are able to access benefits through the federal government's Employment Insurance program.

The jobs women hold. It's not the fact that the employees are women, it's the nature of the jobs. So let's look at the recommendations:

The report makes several recommendations:

• Change employment standards so that full-time hours and part-time hours get paid the same when the same work is done.

• Raise the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.

• Improve public pension plans so women, who live longer, aren't penalized for taking time away from the workforce to care for children.

• Improve access to quality and affordable child care; the report says two-thirds of women with children under the age of six are working outside the home.

If we take gender out of these, we have some pretty good issues.

Part-time workers get paid a less for the same work than full-time workers! So if you come to realize you could get by on 60% of your salary, you couldn't get paid 60% for working three days a week! Injustice!

The minimum wage is far too low! Imagine making only $8 an hour! In today's rental market? With today's gas prices? Injustice!

Pensions penalize you for taking time away from work, even if you make it up later! So if you decide to take leave without pay to make your movie or care for your elderly parents or do your graduate degree or take care of your children or travel the world, it will fuck up your pension and your entire retirement forever! Injustice!

There isn't enough affordable child care, and that makes life difficult for parents! Injustice!

These are all issues that could conceivably affect a lot of people. A wide range of people can identify with these scenarios. They feel like it's their own problem, not somebody else's problem, and you tend to care more about things that affect you than things that are somebody else's problem.

For example, you might have noticed that when I was making issues out of the four recommendations, I was a bit vague on the child care one. That's because I'm childfree and child care doesn't affect me. It's Somebody Else's Problem, so I haven't been able to sum up the focus to learn about the issue well enough that I can articulate it in my own words; and if I can't articulate an issue in my own words, I'm certainly not going to be in a position to lobby for change. And that's exactly what's happening to all these important labour issues because they keep getting slapped together under the headline "Women are paid less than men!" and thereby promptly hidden behind a Somebody Else's Problem field.

Half-formed idea: a fetus is a positive physical attribute

So I've been thinking about this Bill C-484 thing. I see what they're trying to do, so I've been trying to think of another way to define the fetus that would satisfy the perfectly understandable desire to see people who hurt unborn babies punished, without creating legislative definitions. Yeah, because I'm SO qualified to think of tenuous legal language like that.

Anyway, the idea I'm currently mulling over is that a fetus should be thought of as a positive physical attribute.

We all have a few positive physical attributes. For example, I have a beautiful smile, spectacular breasts, and long silky hair. (And a surfeit of humility). Now most people in the world think these are positive things. There are one or two family members who I suspect aren't too thrilled with the breasts but are too polite to say anything, and my grandmother has said outright that she thinks the length of my hair is disgraceful (ironically, this rather closely mirrors what the reaction would be if I were pregnant), but the vast majority of people see these things a positive, or at least can understand why I like them.

However, I have every right to destroy them if I want. I could pull out all my teeth, get a preventive masectomy, and shave my head. And that is absolutely without question my right, and in no world would it be illegal for me to do any of those things. Futhermore, it is absolutly without question legal for my dentist, doctor, and hairdresser respectively to do those things for me at my request. Some people may question getting these things done electively, some individual practitioners may refuse to help me, but once I can find someone to do it there is no question that they were behaving legally.

But if some other person pulled out my teeth, cut off my breasts, and shaved my head without my consent, that would be bizarre and weird and creepy and clearly illegal.

And if someone attacked me, and as a side-effect of their attack I lost my teeth, breasts, and hair, that would surely make their crime come across as worse. Again, I don't the exact legal terms, but it would be a big part of the victim impact. Any decent prosecuting attorney would show the jury a picture of me posing like a movie star to show off my figure to its best advantage, a veela smile on my face and the ends of my hair grazing my hips, then have them compare it with the bald, toothless, flat-chested woman on the witness stand. And that would surely make the crime look worse than if I had come out looking exactly the same.

Now you're thinking "You shallow bitch, a baby is FAR more important than your hair!" Which is perfectly true, and which is why these things would be evaluated in a matter of degrees rather than as a true or false question. If my attacker had simply shaved my head or pulled out my hair, that wouldn't be judged as nearly as bad as if he had knocked out my teeth. You wouldn't assume that the attacker would be punished the same for pulling out my hair as for knocking out my teeth, nor would he be punished the same for killing my unborn child. Same concept, different degree.

I think the assholes have a new technique for trying to get laid

I was reading the comments for the Globe & Mail article I linked to below, and some guy started going on quite adamently about how he hoped his daughters would be virgins when they got married because he really didn't want them sleeping with several different men.

Suddenly, I had this mighty need to go out and have sex with like three or four people all in a row.

Not because I was horny - quite the contrary! I was repulsed. I was so utterly disgusted by the idea of a father thinking about his daughters in those terms I can't even articulate how disgusted I was. The last time I cringed that much was when I was watching The Aristocrats and Bob Saget was telling the joke and he got to the point where an eyeball popped out of its socket (and understand that eyeballs are one of the things I'm most squeamish about - and when I get squeamish I'm the most squeamish person I know!). But the idea of a father thinking of his daughter that way repulsed me so much I felt this huge urge to go whore around so that my father could not possibly think of me that way.

Now I have no idea whether the person who wrote that comment is my father. I have no idea whether my father actually thinks along those lines (I suspect he might, but I don't discuss this sort of thing with him for fear of giving him the idea that his thoughts on the matter are welcome). And I'm not even a virgin! And I can't even think of three people that I'd actually want to have sex with right this minute! And yet there I was, my instinctive gut reaction telling me to add more notches to my bedpost in exactly the same way it makes me cross my legs and arms when someone gets creepy, mentally scrolling through a list of everyone who has ever flirted with me to see if I could find someone I could stand to let touch me for half an hour or so, all before I even realized what I was doing.

But I just realized that this is all a clever scheme on the part of the asshole. He isn't actually posting because he cares about whether his daughters (if he actually has daughters) have sex. He posting because he wants to get laid himself. So he puts out there an idea that will make every woman who reads it want to have suboptimal quantity-over-quality casual sex. Very clever, that.

Fictional universes

When I'm reading science fiction or fantasy or historical fiction, the one thing I really enjoy is just immersing myself in the peaceful everyday life of the fictional/historical universe. I love the whimsy of everyday life at Hogwarts. I love the bucolic peace of the Shire. I love the very beginning of Gone With The Wind, before the Civil War starts. Unfortunately, these genres tend to demand that once the calm happy everyday existence in the universe is established, it is completley boulversé. The protagonist has to leave everyday life to go off on some grand adventure (which will take up most of the plot), and then introducing the reader to the universe is set aside in favour of the larger plot.

Some books are able to work around this. Judith Merkle Riley's Vision of Light has the protagonist in her optimal place narrating the events that got her there, so I got to enjoy the happy everyday life throughout the upheavel of the rest of the book. The Mists of Avalon doesn't have a single happy place, but rather a series of places are travelled through and there's no single grand quest, so, again, I get to enjoy everyday life throughout. But most often, the genre demands that we only get a fleeting, tantalizing glimpse of happy everyday life, before the protagonist runs off on a quest.

A genre that would be more conducive to showing us happy everyday life would be lighter, more domestic novels, like Little Women or Jane Austen. However, they don't really show the universe, because they were written in what was then the present, so the authors didn't focus on creating the universe with historical details because all those details were obvious at the time. So I guess a way to create the kind of historical fiction that makes me happy would be to rework these old novels in the form of historical novels, written for an audience who is unfamiliar with the details of the era. So then we could enjoy the universe, and we'd also get a plot that doesn't involve completely turning the universe upsidown. I guess that's why I tend to prefer movies of these older books. They have to create the universe rather than taking it as a given, so I get to immerse myself in the world even though that wasn't the author's original intent.

Half-formed idea

Let's all work to associate the word "pathetic" with rapists, sexual harassers, etc. Whenever it comes up in conversation, find some opportunity to label them as pathetic, using cultural expectations of masculinity to convey our message to its greatest advantage. Pathetic in the most stereotypically unmanly way. Pathetic like living in your parents' basement. Pathetic like a 40-year-old virgin. Pathetic like a teenage boy who's so overexcitable he cums his pants the first time he manages to touch a girl's breast. We will channel the worst of our middle-school bullies to sneed and spit out the word pathetic with complete loathing and contempt. They're all pathetic little boys who are raping/harassing/whatever because they aren't man enough for a consensual relationship of equals. How pathetic!