Books read in October 2021

New:

1. Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen

2. Shadows in Death by J.D. Robb 

Reread:

 1. Eternity in Death

What if we measured beauty standards in labour required to be unremarkable or credible?

When we talk about beauty standards - and, especially, when we talk about beauty standards for women (so much of the beauty standard discourse to which I've been exposed is so binary that I can't entirely get away from that in this post) - the discourse tends to get hijacked by people's personal opinions about beauty.

"But I think curvy women are hot!" "But men have to work hard to have a six-pack too!" "But beauty is frivolous anyway and you should just have good self-esteem!"

I think it would be far more useful if, instead of talking about beauty in and of itself, we talked about it in terms of labour. How much time/money/effort do people of various demographics need to spend to meet standards?

I also think it would be useful if, instead of talking about beauty standards, we talked about, for lack of a better word, "non-ugly" standards. How much labour is required to not be perceived negatively, to pass unremarked?

 

Example: 

 

Suppose you're watching the men's soccer world cup on TV, and you can see a player's leg hair.

Now, suppose you're watching the women's soccer world cup on TV, and you can see a player's leg hair.

Your immediate internal response to the men's scenario is probably "And...?" or "Only one?" Whereas, in the women's scenario, people would notice. They may well be too polite to comment, but if, in a safe and non-judgemental space, you asked friend who'd been watching the same game "Did you notice that one player had visible leg hair?" they almost certainly would have. Some people would speak positively of it ("Good for her, flouting social norms!") but it would be noticed.

In this context, the men's soccer players have to do no work whatsoever for their leg hair situation to be unremarkable, whereas the women's soccer players would have to remove any leg hair visible to the camera for their leg hair situation to be unremarkable.

I think this is a much more useful approach to this discourse.

 

It would also be useful to look at how much labour is required to be perceived as credible.

How much labour do people of various demographics need to do for their job interviewer to think they look professional? How much labour do people need to do to be taken seriously by the doctor/mortgage officer/prospective landlord? How much labour is involved in politicians of various demographics being perceived as camera-ready for their interview?

 

Being perceived as beautiful may be frivolous, but most people need to get business done at some point in their lives, and need to come across as credible to do so. For some people, that requires labour, and any demographic patterns to the amount of labour involved raise a genuine equity issue.

Money and connections

1. Conventional wisdom is that, even when abortion is illegal, rich people can always get abortions.

 

I have no doubt that money facilitates things, but it seems like this conventional wisdom disregards the fact that illegality is a barrier - not just because of the actual law, but because not everyone has the knowledge or connections to circumvent the law. 

 

As an analogy, I'm sure I can afford illegal drugs. However, I have no clue where to buy them. I have no clue how reliable the internet might be on this question. (Would I google my way to a honeypot or a scam or poisoned supply?)

I can think of no more than three people I know who might possibly have a lead on where to buy illegal drugs (and possibly zero of them actually do). I've heard that sneakers on wires might mean there's a drug dealer around, but I have no idea how to determine who they are. And if I found a drug dealer and walked up to them attempting to buy drugs, I have no idea what the script would sound like. I'm sure they'd think I'm a cop.

Now, abortion is much more important than illegal drugs, and involves much more desperation. So if it were an abortion I was after and legal means weren't available, I'd try every internet honeypot. I'd ask every promising person. I'd make it my full-time job to find the connection I need.

But that may or may not work, and it wouldn't be money that helps me find the connection. (In fact, money might even get in the way - the causes and effects of my money also make me come across as someone who'd call the cops.

And it's not just finding the connection that's a problem. If you live with controlling family members or otherwise don't have individual and private freedom of moment or freedom of communication, the people around you could be a barrier. Imagine the minor child of a reigning monarch wants to get an abortion - they'd need to have either their family or their security detail onside with, at a minimum, a private medical appointment, and (if their family isn't onside) would have to make sure the doctor and the security detail wouldn't report back to their family. 

On top of all this, think back to the olden days before the internet. How would you find an abortion then?

In Downton Abbey, Lady Edith found an abortionist from an ad in the back of a women's magazine. But what if you didn't read that particular magazine, or look at the ads on the basis that they (like many classified ads) wouldn't be relevant?

I've read (on the internet!) that, in the olden days, abortion products and services were advertised obliquely, with language about restoring menstrual regularity or something similar. But what if you didn't know the code? If abortion suddenly became illegal, my 40-year-old self would certainly have the savvy to obliquely inquire about things I should avoid so I don't inadvertently lose the pregnancy, but my 20-year-old self would never have thought of this.

In short, while money would, of course, smooth the way to an abortion - and lack of money could easily be a barrier to an abortion - it is still quite possible that, in a context where abortion is illegal, a rich person would be unable to get an abortion because they lack the ability to navigate the relevant segment of the underworld.

2. Conventional wisdom is that posh universities are for networking

 

There have been some stories in the news recently where parents have apparently donated or bribed their kids' way into big-name universities. My immediate response was "What do they expect to happen once they get admitted to the universities without being qualified?" to which people have replied that the intention is for them to network rather than to be academically successful.

Which makes me wonder how networking works among rich/fancy people.

If you aren't actually qualified to be admitted to your fancy university, and you start trying to network to people who are qualified, it seems to me that they'd see that you're unqualified. So any attempts at network, i.e. at making them aware of your existence, would only backfire - they'd become increasingly aware of your incompetence.

But, since conventional wisdom is that unqualified fancy university admission provides networking opportunities, does that mean that networking among rich/fancy people is simply a matter of being aware of each other's existence?

But, at the same time, some of the people at the rich/fancy universities must be qualified to be there. Are they not gaining the attention of the networking targets? Or are the networking targets in the market for so many networkees that the only prerequisite is "I am aware of your existence"?

Or maybe these people are particularly charming? And therefore mere proximity will be enough to build them connections? But, even then, it surprises me that bribing them into fancy universities would be the optimal approach. It seems to me that, surely, it would be more efficient to cut out the middleman and bribe them into some prestigious entry-level job or some sinecure, so they're already in a useful role rather than being dependent on their charms to get them there. And, if they are in fact so charming, surely they could do more with those charms in an established position rather than as an unqualified student in a university full of qualified students?

Thoughts on Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery

This post is a full spoiler zone for Star Trek: Discovery, although I'm not talking very much about specific plot points.

I just finished Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. I generally enjoyed it, as I do most Star Trek, but there were a couple of aspects that didn't fully work for me.

1. 930 years into the future

Star Trek: Discovery ended season 2 by jumping 930 years into the future, and season 3 covers their adventures there. 

However, I had trouble suspending disbelief that the crew of the Discovery could function in a way that's even remotely useful 930 years in the future, even taking into account that their ship has a spore drive in a universe where warp travel is severely limited.

Think about 930 years. 930 years ago was 1090. Think about the world in 1090. (I'm most immediately familiar with the history of England from that era, so most of my references here are English.) William the Conqueror had died just a few years earlier. The Domesday book had just been completed. Old English was still spoken - the Norman influence in England hadn't yet been around long enough for even Middle English to have evolved. In other words, the English language was completely devoid of French or Latin influences - such as the words "language" and "completely" and "devoid" and "French" and "Latin" and "influences"!

The internet tells me clocks hadn't yet been invented 930 years ago. Imagine a person who had never co-existed with clocks! It wouldn't just be a question of how to use a clock to tell time, but all the ways society is affected by the degree of time-telling precision they afford. The train leaves at 9:13. Your speech should be between 2 and 3 minutes long. Edit this video down to 30 seconds. It would be unfathomable!

Not to mention that their technology is sufficiently compatible. The charger for my eight-year-old ipod is no longer manufactured. There's a whole side market of CRT televisions because game consoles from my childhood won't work properly with modern TVs. The external hard drives I use for my computer backups occasionally just stop working. And I'm supposed to believe that they could just . . . update Discovery's computer database after nearly a thousand years??

There are fandom rumours that the creative team originally wanted to set Star Trek: Discovery in the distant future and were forced to set it 10 years pre-TOS for marketing reasons, so IRL this is likely the creative team shifting towards doing what they actually want to do now that they have the capital to do so. But I'm finding it hard to suspend disbelief, and that's a negative.

2. Adira and Gray and representation

Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery included a milestone for the franchise: Star Trek's first transgender and non-binary characters!

However, I think the decision to make both Adira and Gray Trill was a strategic error. (Pedants will point out that Adira is human, but what's relevant here is that they are hosting a Trill symbiont.)

One audience who could have benefited particularly from Adira and Gray are people who are ignorant about or even completely unaware of transgender and/or non-binary - especially those who are or may one day become parents of trans or non-binary children. 

People who, like me, are old enough to be parents of trans or non-binary children didn't learn much about transgender or non-binary growing up. We only know what has reached us through general cultural in adulthood. This means that some parents of trans and non-binary kids aren't going to have heard of transgender and/or non-binary. Trans and non-binary Star Trek characters can help with this - a kid who has to say "Mom, I'm non-binary" can add the useful cultural reference of "Like Adira on Star Trek."

With Adira especially, I'm concerned that people who are unfamiliar with non-binary might think Adira's perception of themself as non-binary is the result of hosting a Trill symbiont (and therefore having memories and personality traits of all the symbiont's previous hosts), rather than being an actual real-life gender identity that occurs in actual real-life people.

I myself am familiar with they/them pronouns, knew from media coverage that Adira's pronouns are they/them, and knew from media coverage that after Adira was initially misgendered as "she", they'd be coming out as "they". But, even going in with this knowledge, when I heard Adira say "They, not she", my first thought was that they were about to say credit was due to their symbiont, or their symbiont's previous hosts.

I'm further concerned that some non-binary kid might see this, identify with Adira, explain it to their parents as "Like Adira on Star Trek!" and have their parents respond with "That's not a real thing, that's just Star Trek aliens!" Ignorant parents might even think their kid is delusional, like they would if their kid insisted they're a Vulcan.

I think having Adira and Gray being a couple exacerbates this. Not the romantic aspect specifically, but rather that they are positioned as a unit that includes the two of them and does not include anyone else. I'm thinking that framing might be othering towards trans and non-binary people, rather than positioning them as a regular everyday part of the population as a whole. 

I think a better strategic decision would have been to have our first trans character and our first non-binary character both be human, and be unaffiliated with each other. (For example, if one was Aurellio and the other was Aditya Sahil.) Also, include trans and non-binary actors as part of your diverse casting for minor roles, alien and human alike. So we have our key trans and non-binary characters, and also, like, a trans ensign in Vulcan ears operating the transporter and a non-binary Bajoran seated at the conference table.

Again, I am neither trans nor non-binary myself, so I could be delighted to hear that my concerns here are unfounded. But, until I hear that, I continue to be concerned that the decision to make Adira and Gray both Trills and a couple is detrimental to the good that our first trans and non-binary characters might do.

Bra back pain braindump

 Physically helpful things:

 

- Do something right away. Last time, I tried to power through it. Bad idea. Take the bra off. Stretch. Take a muscle relaxant. Order half a dozen bras on the internet. Do something.

- Stretching my back vertically helps. Obliques, lats, whatever the muscles from my shoulders to my hips are.

- Rolling on a pilates ball helps. Last time rolling on a pilates ball on the floor was too intense but rolling a pilates ball between my back and the wall helped. This time the wall isn't effective, but the floor gloriously grinds up pockets of pain and tightness like a mortar and pestle. Just don't roll the pilates ball directly under your spine - the spine doesn't like that! Roll it just to the left of the spine, then just to the right of the spine.

- Extra sleep helps, by which I mean sleeping until I wake up naturally and then rolling over and seeing if I have more sleep in me. Conversely, insufficient sleep is disproportionately negative. This is super inconvenient.

- Leaning back in my chair helps. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the behaviour of my back muscles or the load-bearing distribution of my bra or just the fact that having my whole back pressed against the backrest eliminates my awareness of the bra elastic. 

- Make the bra straps a bit looser than makes sense. When a tight band has triggered pain, tight straps can trigger additional pain.

 

Psychologically helpful things:

 

- The worst thing is the fear of never being comfortable in a bra at all ever again in the decades of life expectancy I have left. (If you're just tuning in, I'm also not comfortable without a bra.) So it helps psychologically to find opportunities to be comfortable in a) a bra, and b) the particular bra I'm trying to break in. Sometimes this means wearing the bra I'm trying to break in while stretching or while applying a heating pad, so my muscles are physically relaxed in the presence of the triggering band. Sometimes this means wearing my old bra with the dead elastic while sitting perfectly comfortably at my desk working.

- Once I'm confident the bra I'm breaking in isn't actively inducing pain, wearing it out of the house for limited amounts of time helps. When I'm out of the house, the world provides plenty of distractions, so I'm not focusing primarily on my elastics. This also provides cumulative empirical evidence that I can go half an hour or an hour without my back freaking out from the bra. 

Unhelpful things:

- This is one of those problems that leads to a bunch of recommendations for things that I've already tried or that are irrelevant to me. Yes, I do know most women are wearing the wrong bra size! Yes, I have had professional fitting - they can tell me what fits my body but have no expertise in pain issues! Yes, I have tried a bra extender - it just moves the pain to a more sensitive part of my ribs! Yes, I have tried a sports bra - it's worse! Yes, I have tried yoga - I've been doing it for 20 fucking years, and have stretched out every muscle in my back four times already today! I would cheerfully let google stalk me if it meant the algorithm could screen out everything I've already tried!

- The worst part is the dread. This instance of bra pain and my last instance of bra pain came on completely unexpectedly. So, even after I resolve the problem, I never know when it will happen again. I wake up every morning pain-free, but I have no idea what will happen when I get out of bed, when I put on a bra - or make the decision to sit around the apartment without a bra. Even though I spent 6 straight hours perfectly comfortable in a proper bra yesterday and, as I type this, have been perfectly comfortable in a proper bra for 7 hours, I can't imagine what will happen if I go to that wedding next year or go into the office for a full day or take a train out of the city to visit someone. In a world where things can go wrong, I can't imagine them going right, and that taints the anticipation of the next time, post-pandemic, when I get to spend time with loved ones or hold a baby or see Eddie Izzard. (Eddie darling, I love you madly, but just because the rules permit live shows doesn't mean they're advisable!)

- And the thing is, I'm one of the lucky ones. I work from home! I can change my bra four times a day or sit around naked or stop to stretch as much as I want! I have the disposable income to spend on new bras and ointments and back massagers! There are people with similar or worse problems whose lives and livelihoods don't allow them this flexibility - possibly including the warehouse and delivery workers bringing me the pile of new bras I ordered to try on, or the bra fitters and massage therapists I might go to if I decide my bra difficulty outweighs my mask difficulty (which I still haven't become desensitized to), all the health care workers taking care of people who have much worse problems, our unhoused neighbours who don't have any space or privacy or leeway to make the hundreds of tiny adjustments that get me through the day . . . why is this even allowed to happen???

If your bra elastic is too tight, stretch it over the back of a chair

I'm having my bra-induced pain issues again. The resulting product reviews, philosophical ponderings and emotional braindumps are forthcoming.

 

But, for the moment, a practical tip:

 

If the band elastic of a new bra is too tight, stretch the bra band over the back of a chair. 

 

Line up the sides of the chair with the sides of the bra, slip the (closed) bra over the back of the chair like you're pulling a shirt over a person's head, and leave it there until you wear it next.

After just one round of stretching, a bra that induced pain after 10 minute became wearable for an hour. After a couple more rounds of stretching, I could get 4 hours out of it - which is long enough for 90% of times I might need to leave the house in non-pandemic conditions and 100% of times I might need to leave the house during pandemic conditions. I've even been able to get 8 hours without inducing new pain into my back, although the situation was not completely devoid of discomfort. (In other words, any unpleasantness disappeared as soon as I undid the bra, rather than sticking around for days afterwards.)

Stretching the bra does, well, stretch it out, as though accelerating the natural wear and tear that would happen over the course of months. But - especially when you're looking at a three-digit price tag - a stretched-out garment that functions is vastly superior to a like-new garment that induces pain.