Showing posts with label analogies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label analogies. Show all posts

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Hard work

Conventional wisdom is that hard work is a virtue.  If you work hard, you will achieve success.


I think we need to question the notion that work needs to be hard to be adequate.


Some people, when they read that, will have the visceral reaction of "Oh, you just don't want to work!"

But that's not the argument I'm making here today.

For the purposes of today's blog post, I'm not questioning the "work" part, I'm just questioning the "hard" part.

(I know there are other people questioning the "work" part and I'm not going to get in their way, that's just not my topic here today.)


When I think of everything I've ever done well, I've never worked hard at any of it. I simply...did it. I carried out the necessary actions, did the thing, and it was done and done well.

So, you might be thinking, what would happen if I did work hard at it?

And the answer is that it would be impossible to work hard at it, because I finished it before the work got hard.


Analogy: you can't sprint one step. You simply take the step, and you've completed it before you can even get up to a sprinting level of effort. (Unless, of course, you can't take any steps.  But then you can't sprint one step either.)


There are also quite a few things in life that I've worked hard at.  And, despite my hard work, I never reached the point of doing them well. I basically knocked myself out to achieve mediocrity.


Before we even look at it from our own perspective as workers, if we look at it just from the perspective of having a functional economy and society, people knocking themselves out to achieve mediocrity is the last thing we want!

If you're in the market for a product or service, you want that product to be made or that service to be provided by someone who knows what they're doing.  The more important it is and the harder it is to do, the more you want someone who's certain they can do it well.  
 
You want a beautician who makes people way uglier than you look way hotter than you've ever aspired to, no one who isn't sure if they can make eyebrows like yours look good but they'll try their best. You want a renovator who thinks the work you have in mind is so easy they don't see why you don't do it yourself, not one who's unsure whether it's possible but is willing to give it the good old college try. You want a surgeon who could do your surgery in their sleep, not one who for whom it's a reach goal.
 
Essentially, if someone is working hard, it's a sign that something is wrong - insufficient training, too-tight timelines, not the right person for the job, etc.
 
Maybe, instead of valuing hard work, we as a society should be working on eliminating it.

Friday, April 09, 2021

The big stuck boat as an analogy for political disagreements in relationships

In reference to whether it's possible to have relationships with people with different politics, someone much smarter than me (and I wish I remembered who so I could give them credit) once said "You can disagree about what the solutions are, but you have to agree about what the problems are."

Sarah Gailey's excellent article "I Like That The Boat Is Stuck" provides a perfect analogy for this.
There's no debate over whether or not the big boat is stuck: it is a big boat, and it is stuck, and we are all aware of those facts, even those of us who are currently located in outer space.

Furthermore, most of us share the opinion that it's disagreeable, logistically, for the boat to be stuck. The boat being stuck is inconvenient. It's a big disruption! Nobody can say it isn't a big disruption. None of my distant relatives will get into arguments on The Face Website about whether or not the stuck boat is making a nuisance for lots of people. I like that.

We all agree that it's stuck, and we all agree that this is a bad thing. We might disagree about how best to get it unstuck. We might disagree about the amount of sacrifice that is reasonable to get it unstuck.  We might disagree about whether the other ships waiting to use the canal should keep waiting patiently or should detour around Africa. We might disagree about how to prevent similar problems in the future.
 
And we can have a civilized disagreement about that. We can, in fact, agree to disagree and go about our lives. If any of us are actually involved in unstuckening the ship, we can use the approach that we think is best, or pitch the approach that we think is best to our bosses. We can use multiple approaches in parallel. Ultimately, we're all on the same side.
 
But imagine that there's someone out there arguing that the ship isn't stuck. Or that the ship should be stuck. Or that more ships should be stuck. Imagine that, instead of discussing whether we should bring more diggers to dig the ship out or more tugboats to tug the ship out, they're bringing in diggers and tugboats working to get the ship even more firmly stuck.

That person is harder to get along with, aren't they?

Now imagine if, instead of a ship on the other side of the world, the problem is something more immediate, something that threatens your survival or safety or bodily integrity, or that of people you care about.

To use the example that's at the forefront of everyone's mind, you're trying to keep people safe from the virus, and but there's someone insisting the virus doesn't exist and advocating for activities that will spread the virus. 

They're just . . . in the way, aren't they?

If they're someone you already care about, you might feel it's worth keeping them in your life despite the fact that they're in the way. Or you might not. But if they're a new person, there's really no point in bringing them into your life if all they're going to do is get your boat more stuck.

Monday, June 01, 2020

Analogy for app-only

An unfortunate trend that has emerged in the past decade or so is "app-only" - i.e. requiring a purpose-built app on a mobile device to do something (for example, make an online purchase) that is totally technically feasible over the web - and, often, was frequently done over the web before smartphones came along!

My shower gave me an analogy for why this is a problem:


Many devices started out being able to be used indoors only (or, at least, within a cord length of indoors).

Telephones needed to be plugged into the jack to have a phone connection.

Televisions needed to be plugged into the wall for electricity, and, once cable TV became a thing, into the cable drop for cable.

Computers needed to be plugged into the wall for electricity and, once the internet became a thing, into the phone jack and, later, the cable jack, for internet.

Then devices became smaller, batteries improved, wifi became common, data plans became common, and now we can do all these things outdoors on a laptop or tablet or phone.


But imagine if we could only do them outdoors.  Your laptop or phone or tablet won't work indoors. You have to step onto the balcony or into the backyard.

That would be inconvenient, wouldn't it?

Yes, it's convenient to be able to use it outdoors, but you don't want to have to use it outdoors. You don't want to have to step away from what you're doing, grab a coat or an umbrella, put on your shoes, and step outside just to make a call or read a text or watch TV. You still want to retain the option of using it indoors just like you always have.


Similarly, it's convenient to be able to do things on a mobile device, but once you have to use a mobile device, it becomes less convenient. If you're at a computer, you have to stop what you're doing and switch to another device. If your computer is set up to be ergonomic, you have to switch to a less ergonomic device.  You have to make sure another device has battery and connectivity. You have to use a smaller screen.


Adding options increases convenience, but removing options decreases convenience. An app is not convenient if it eliminates the option of doing the task with a computer, just like a device you can use outdoors is not convenient if you can't also use it indoors.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Analogy for spicy food

Imagine you're at an amazing concert - the music is beautiful, the lyrics are deep, the artistry is incredible...except someone pointed a microphone at a speaker, causing loud high-pitched feedback.

The feedback is so loud and high-pitched that it causes you physical pain.  It's louder than the music, it's hurting and hurting and getting worse the longer you hear it, and no one is doing anything to fix it for the duration of the entire concert.


That's what it's like to eat spicy food when you have a low tolerance for spiciness.

It hurts (the roof of your mouth, your tongue, your esophagus), and the pain gets worse the more you eat. On top of that, it completely overwhelms and buries the other flavours of the rest of the food, so you can't even perceive the interaction of the other flavours and textures. You may as well be eating spicy chalk.

People who enjoy spicy food seem to feel that the spiciness interacts interestingly with the other flavours.

But, for those of us with a low tolerance, that's like saying that the microphone feedback harmonizes delightfully with the rest of the music. We can't even tell, because it hurts and we can't even hear the delightful harmonies beneath.


Sometimes, people who enjoy spicy food point out that all spices are different, and, if you think a particular cuisine is too spicy for you, it's likely just one spice or style of preparation that's causing that effect, and you should try a variety of dishes and narrow down what exactly is bothering you.

That's like if you go to a concert at a particular venue and there's a lot of painful feedback. But when you say you don't want to go to that venue any more, people say "It's just that one set-up. You should go to more concerts there to see if they have other set-ups that don't cause the feedback." But why would you subject yourself to more pain to pinpoint the precise source of the pain when you could just go to one of the many other concert venues in the city, or listen to your own music at home?

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Analogy for why preserving unwanted fertility isn't caring for the patient's health

This post is a restatement of a previous analogy that needed further refinement.  I just realized that it wasn't the analogy itself that needed refinement, but rather the title. So I'm restating the analogy under a more accurate title.

Imagine you have a big, ugly mole.  You hate it and wish it wasn't there.

However, you live in a society that thinks beauty marks are attractive.

You've made inquiries about the possibility of getting your big ugly mole removed, but you get a lot of push-back (and some doctors outright refuse to do it) because there are a lot of people in your society who put a lot of time and effort and resources and emotional drama into getting plastic surgeons to give them beauty marks.

On top of all this, your mole has all the characteristics of a cancerous mole.  Unfortunately, your society doesn't have the ability to detect cancer before it starts metastasizing so you have no way of proving or disproving that your big ugly mole is cancerous, but it does have all the characteristics.


Now, within this context, suppose you have to get surgery in the general vicinity of you big ugly mole.  You ask the doctors if they can remove the mole while they're doing surgery in that area, but they refuse.  You try to emphasize to them that you don't like the mole and don't want the mole, but they are not swayed.  You beg them to, at the very least, not prioritize saving the mole - to give you the most effective surgery without regard for whether the mole is lost, but they still take specific measures to save it despite your protests. And, perhaps, their efforts to save the mole result in a suboptimal approach to the surgery as a whole.

And when you complain about this, people tell you "He's just looking out for your health!"

Saturday, November 04, 2017

Refining the analogy for why unwanted fertility isn't part of health

I was previously trying to write an analogy about why unwanted fertility isn't part of health.  My shower gave me an idea, which still isn't as perfect as I'd like but I'm blogging for the record.

Imagine you have a big, ugly mole.  You hate it and wish it wasn't there.

However, you live in a society that thinks beauty marks are attractive.

You've made inquiries about the possibility of getting your big ugly mole removed, but you get a lot of push-back (and some doctors outright refuse to do it) because there are a lot of people in your society who put a lot of time and effort and resources and emotional drama into getting plastic surgeons to give them beauty marks.

On top of all this, your mole has all the characteristics of a cancerous mole.  Unfortunately, your society doesn't have the ability to detect cancer before it starts metastasizing so you have no way of proving or disproving that your big ugly mole is cancerous, but it does have all the characteristics.


Now, within this context, suppose you have to get surgery in the general vicinity of you big ugly mole.  You ask the doctors if they can remove the mole while they're doing surgery in that area, but they refuse.  You try to emphasize to them that you don't like the mole and don't want the mole, but they are not swayed.  You beg them to, at the very least, not prioritize saving the mole - to give you the most effective surgery without regard for whether the mole is lost, but they still take specific measures to save it despite your protests. And, perhaps, their efforts to save the mole result in a suboptimal approach to the surgery as a whole.

And when you complain about this, people tell you "He's just looking out for your health!"

Monday, June 05, 2017

Childfree for Dummies: Part VI (plus: help write the analogy!)

Sometimes medical professionals insist on taking measure to protect the patient's fertility even when the patient is childfree and doesn't want to be fertile.  And sometimes, if you complain about this, people will counter with "But he's just looking out for your health."

But unwanted fertility is not part of health.

Fertility is a thing my body does that I don't want it to do, much like acid reflux or gaining weight or sweating profusely.  It has no benefit for me and adds nothing to my quality of life. On top of that, unlike acid reflux or gaining weight or sweating profusely, fertility could have the most severe negative consequences possible - both for myself and for innocent others.

Therefore, fertility is not an aspect of my health, but rather a chronic condition to be managed.  And managing it is the top priority of my life. The vast majority of the medical care I receive is in service of managing this chronic condition. If it were not possible to receive the medical care that permits me to manage this condition, I would take drastic measures - up to and including breaking the law, risking my personal health and safety, and relocating to another part of the world - to keep it under control.

So when medical professionals disregard the fact that a patient is childfree and give them treatment that preserves their fertility in cases there are also options that may reduce or even eliminate fertility, they're basically refusing to cure the chronic condition that overshadows every aspect of the patient's life.

***

I'm trying to think of an analogy for this concept, but it's not working out as well as I'd like. Here's what I've got so far.

Analogy: imagine you're a pre-op transman, and you're diagnosed with breast cancer. One possible treatment is mastectomy. This would not only eliminate the cancer and either vastly reduce (or even completely eliminate) the likelihood of its returning, and vastly reduce (or even completely eliminate) the amount of follow-up care you'd need, it would also remove the breasts that you don't even want (and, depending on their size, may cause you day-to-day discomfort).

But the doctor refuses to give you a mastectomy, and in fact says they will make every effort to save your breasts.  Because most women want to keep their breasts. When you point out the unfairness and very near cruelty of the doctor making you keep your unwanted breasts when removing them would be an effective treatment to everything that ails you, people counter with "But he's only looking out for your health!"


Of course, the problem with this analogy is it's likely ineffective to the people who need it. People who aren't able to imagine what it would be like to not want to have children ever are also likely to have difficulty imagining what it would be like to be transgender. (Unless there are transfolk who can't imagine being childfree, which would be an interesting combination of characteristics.)

Can you think of another comparable analogy that would explain the concept more effectively for the target audience?

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Another analogy for being incapable of faith

Some clever internet person once said atheism is a religion like not playing golf is a sport.

As I've blogged about before, I'm an atheist because I'm congenitally incapable of religious faith. Today my shower tweaked this analogy to apply to the kind of atheism that results from congenitally incapable of faith.

Think about Olympic weight-lifting, where they have those ridiculously huge weights and lift them over their heads while making an enormous amount of noise.

Imagine you can't lift those weights. Even if you take them apart, you can't lift the individual components.  Furthermore, you were raised to think that being able to lift the weights was morally imperative, so you spent several years diligently engaged in a regime that, to the best of the knowledge available, would maximize your chances of being able to lift the weights.  But you never developed the ability to lift the weights.

So, atheism is a religion like not being able to lift the weights is a sport.

And faking religion despite being an atheist would be like claiming to be a weight-lifter, talking loudly about your training regime, making sure you're seen at the gym, but still not being able to lift the weights.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Analogy for explaining the joke

I previously blogged about how humour is like sex.

Building on that:

Some people, when they attempt to tell a joke and it doesn't get a laugh, start explaining the alleged joke. As though it's not possible that the alleged joke wasn't funny, and the only possible explanation is that the audience didn't understand it.

That's like trying out a move you read about on the internet and then, when it doesn't work, earnestly explaining to your partner how the internet told you that's where the g-spot is supposed to be.

No matter how solid your theory is, the fact of the matter is it didn't hit the spot. And explaining it isn't going to induce the desired pleasure.

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Analogy for "can't you take a joke?"

Some people say cruel things to others and if called out on it say "Can't you take a joke?"

Some people think "a good sense of humour" means "laughs at every one of my attempts to make a joke, no matter how pathetic", and accuse those who don't laugh at their unfunny attempts at humour of having a bad sense of humour.

Today my shower gave me an (unfortunately phallocentric) analogy for both these phenomena:

It's like kicking your partner in the balls while you're having sex, and then accusing them of being impotent or bad at sex when this doesn't give them an orgasm.

Being good at sex, like being good at humour, requires anticipating and meeting the other person's needs. If what you're doing doesn't get the results you're going for - and, especially, if what you're doing causes unwanted pain - you're the one who's doing it wrong, not them.

And even if there have been some people in human history who laughed at your unfunny attempts at humour, the fact still remains that if the attempt at humour doesn't work for this particular audience, you're the one who's doing it wrong.  Just like how, even though under Rule 34 there is probably someone somewhere in the depths of the internet who gets off on being kicked in the balls, the fact remains that if you kick your partner in the balls and they double over in pain instead of having an orgasm, you're the one who's doing it wrong.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Stress and resilience: an inconclusive braindump

As you've probably noticed, these past couple of months I've been finding myself disproportionately stressed about things that don't actually constitute real problems, like having to choose condo finishes and computer problems and a shortage of fanfiction.

This is a clear demonstration of the fact that I'm too easily stressed and not resilient enough to live in the real world.  But what do I do about this?  Braindump on my blog, of course!

***


By chance, I was recently required to take a (useless and unnecessary) training session on "change management".  It included a component on resilience, which I was looking forward to, but unfortunately it turned out to be useless.

According to the training, one of the things you're supposed to do to make yourself more resilient is self-care.  But the problem is that in my experience, resilience only becomes necessary in situations where your usual self-care is unavailable. I need to be resilient in the face of the loss of my fanfic happy place, and my fanfic happy place is a key part of my self-care. I need to be resilient during 2 weeks without  my computer, and my computer is a key part of my self-care.  I need to be resilient when dealing with condo drama that, if not properly addressed, will result in suboptimal housing, and optimal housing is a key part of my self-care.  If these things that threaten my self-care didn't exist, I wouldn't need to be resilient.

Another thing you're supposed to do to make yourself more resilient is live your values. We were told to list the traits we hate in others, then identify the opposite of those traits.  Those opposites are our values.  This exercise led me to identify my values as socialism and Wheaton's Law, which sounds about right.  But the problem is that I don't see how being socialist and not being a dick would equip me to deal with the unprecedented (to me) challenge of choosing condo finishes or the stress of eventually moving, or even the lesser stresses of a fanfic drought or two weeks without a computer - to say nothing of real problems that will likely happen to me someday, like unemployment or bereavement. My values aren't even relevant to the situations that require resilience. It's like advising someone going through a divorce to adopt a vegetarian diet - it just has nothing to do with the situation at hand.

I don't know if my emotions work differently than other people's or if the training was just spouting platitudes, but the ideas they presented weren't even on the same plane as resilience. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with that.

***

One issue that has become apparent to me in recent months is that my destressers are very externally dependent, which isn't very resilient.  Fanfic works beautifully, but I'm dependent on people writing new fanfic. Other fandom also works beautifully, but I'm also dependent on new creations from my fandoms - there's a diminishing return on the destressing benefits rereading/rewatching. Gaming works fantastically, but I'm dependent upon having a gaming-capable computer.  A good night's sleep and a long hot shower help, but that's dependent on quality living conditions.  Food and alcohol work, but that's dependent on my usual resources being available, and also comes with physical limitations. (As much as I'd enjoy it, I can't be tipsy and cramming cheese in my mouth every minute of every day.)  There is nothing that destresses me that isn't dependent on other people and/or circumstances.

***

Anti-materialistic people often say that the problem is seeking happiness in the things that money can buy, and that instead you should get happiness from your interpersonal relationships.  But interpersonal relationships are also entirely dependent on other people. They can abandon you of their own free will. They may be unable or unwilling to give you what you need.  They may not be available when you need them.  Interpersonal relationships can, of course, be rewarding, add to your happiness and improve your resilience, but they are just as dependent on people and/or circumstances as materialistic destressers.

***

At this point, people usually suggest exercise and/or nature.  But those don't destress me. Exercise makes me angry; nature is best case neutral, worst case a panic attack trigger, while taking me away from the things that actually do destress me, most of which occur in my home. 

***

Which is the problem with finding a new destresser.  Obviously, if I wanted to proactively seek something to replace my missing fanfiction, the way to do it would be to make a concerted effort to try out random things until something gets the desired results. But the problem with doing that is it would take time away from the tried and true, so it has to be approached carefully and measuredly.

Analogy: Cheese isn't available to put on my salad, but salad is still good. But if I just went around throwing other things on my salad willy-nilly in a desperate attempt to find a replacement for cheese, I could ruin a lot of salads. When I've had a difficult, stressful day and I'm desperately craving a yummy salad, it would probably be a bad idea to experiment and risk not getting my craving filled - and, in fact, risk becoming even crankier because something that I thought would fill my craving didn't.  And, of course, the flaw in this analogy is that it's easy to eat around a non-yummy ingredient in a salad, whereas the impact of stressers and failed destressers on stress levels and energy flow can't be quite so easily circumvented.

***

Historically, my destressers have always come to me organically, through my reading and other media consumption.  And my reading already follows a system that provides a good balance between known enjoyments and discovering new things, so I don't know if it can be further forced to provide me with the very specific form of new things I need to replace my lost fanfiction.

All of which is to say I don't have any answers, and I'd probably completely shatter if any real problems came along.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

What if suicide prevention were removed from the mandate of mental health care?

When Robin Williams committed suicide, many people responded with the "Genie, you're free" scene from Aladdin. This response received a lot of criticism, some of which argued that suicide isn't freedom.

It occurred to me that the problem with this statement is it's clearly unknowable.  The author has no way of knowing with the amount of certainty they claim that you don't find freedom or peace after death.

And, because of this, their anti-suicide message has no credibility in the eyes of those considering suicide.  They're quite clearly just saying stuff to perpetuate the message of Suicide Is Bad.  So a person considering suicide isn't going to listen to them, because they're obviously just going to unquestioningly say Suicide Is Bad regardless of the truth of the matter.  (And if suicide is in fact Bad, you'd think they could come up with something substantiated to support that position.)

Then it occurred to me that this might be the symptom of a broader problem in mental health care and emergency response.

If I were suicidal, I would never even consider seeking medical attention, because I feel like they'd just want to stop me from committing suicide.  They'd restrain me in a mental ward somewhere and declare the job done, or monitor me for the rest of my life and never leave me a moment's peace.  Sounds like hell!

But what if health care as a whole recognized a person's right to end their life? Your body, your choice!  They don't prevent, persuade, coerce or manipulate you into not committing suicide.  It's considered a perfectly valid choice.

However, since it is also a drastic - and irreversible - choice, they strongly urge you to try less drastic approaches first.  Take a pill, talk to a doctor - the mental health equivalent of rebooting your computer and maybe reinstalling the OS rather than going straight to throwing it out the window. If it hurts, the doctor will give you something to try to stop it from hurting.  If you're feeling nothing, the doctor will give you something to try to make you feel again.  If your fish are dead, the doctor will try to resuscitate them.  If it doesn't work, you're no worse off than you were before and you can always kill yourself later!

Some people will argue "But when I was suicidal, I didn't actually want to kill myself.  I wanted to stop wanting to kill myself."  That's fine, a person could still go to the doctor and say "I have suicidal feelings and I don't like them! Can you help me make them stop?" But if the patient feels their suicidal feelings are valid, the doctor won't force them to do anything about it.

Analogy: if you've never gotten pregnant and you want to have children, you can go to the doctor and request assistance with conceiving.  But if you've never been pregnant and you're okay with that, they don't force fertility treatment on you.

And some people will argue "When I wanted to kill myself, it was just the depression talking. Once I received help, I came to realize that I didn't want to kill myself."  If that's the case, this approach will still achieve the same results.  The hurting/sadness/feeling nothing/dead fish will be treated, the patient will come to the realization they didn't actually want to kill themselves, and life would proceed as usual.

But if you want something right this moment and someone tells you "I'm going to take you to a doctor who will make you not want the thing you want," that would feel like they're going to brainwash you.  And if the doctor's mandate is to do everything in their power to prevent you from achieving what you want, you'd probably actively avoid them, perhaps even going as far as to deceive people about your condition and situation so they don't brainwash/restrain/monitor you in a way that would make it impossible to achieve your goal.

Building on the fertility treatment analogy above: suppose you tell a loved one that you want to have children, and they respond by taking you to a doctor who will make you not want children.  Or, based on the information you have absorbed from media/culture/society, you believe that a doctor would respond by taking all measures to prevent you from having children, up to and including forcibly sterilizing you. 

Or the inverse: suppose you don't want to have children, and a loved one responds by taking you to a doctor who will make you want to have children. And the information you have received throughout your life leads you to believe that the doctor would go as far as forcibly impregnating you.

Would this make you feel safe seeking medical treatment?  Or would it make you want to avoid it at all costs?

***

Removing the suicide prevention mandate might also help reduce the criminalization of mental health patients. 

There was recently a series in the Toronto Star about how people are failing police checks they need for employment because they are known to police (even though they were never found guilty and in some cases never arrested or charged).  And some of them are known to police because police attended a mental health call.  The police were called because the person was considered a threat to themselves, and in the messed up system of disclosure for background checks there's no differentiation between being a threat to oneself and a threat to others.

If health care professionals were not mandated to prevent suicide, there'd be no such thing as involving the police because someone is a threat to themselves.  Killing yourself would be considered your own decision to make, even if it's ill-advised, so there'd be no reason to forcibly stop you.

Analogy: if someone wants risky ill-advised elective surgery and they're proactively trying to get this surgery, this isn't considered a reason for police intervention.  Even if getting the surgery would harm them, that's between them and their doctors. 

Since there's no police involvement, people won't have police records dogging them just because they were once suicidal, so they'd have the full range of employment and travel options still available to them. Surely this would make for a better recovery than being shut out of jobs where they can do good just because they were once suicidal!

Yes, this aspect could also be addressed by police only disclosing appropriate and pertinent information in background checks, but I feel like the medical profession could be more easily persuaded to make helpful decisions than the police.

Friday, August 01, 2014

High waists and tucked-in shirts

This year I've seen quite a few young women, especially teenagers,wearing high-waisted pants with loose shirts tucked in.  This surprised me because the first fashion I ever became aware of was a move away from high waists and from tucking in shirts.  When I was a child I wore waistbands at my waist because they're called waistbands and tucked my shirt into my pants because I thought that's what people do, but as early as Grade 4 people would make fun of people for doing that, saying it made you look like an old man with hiked-up pants.

I was wondering what people wearing this look think they look like (for instance, I think my untucked shirt and lower waist elongates my torso), and I recently had an opportunity to ask when the topic came up in an online community.  To my utter shock, Kids Today seem to think it's a 90s retro look!

In my experience as a teenager in the 90s, while high waists and tucked in shirts did exist, they weren't a deliberate look that people wore for fashion purposes.  They were something that people wore because they weren't super fashionable or that's what they were used to or that's what they had in their closet or the dress code required tucking your shirt in.  Before shirts got narrow, we'd tuck just the very very hem of our baggy 80s-style t-shirts into our waistband and pull as much of it out as possible in an attempt to emulate the look of an untucked shirt.  (The only reason why we didn't just untuck completely was either because baggy 80s-style t-shirts sometimes completely concealed the fact that you're wearing shorts, making it look like you're walking around in just a t-shirt, or because the shirt simply didn't drape well and made you look disproportionately fat.  But since the 90s narrowing of shirts, a reasonable proportion of shirts - even looser styles - have draped well enough that they don't need tucking.)  And even before hiphuggers arrived in the mid-90s, we'd wear our jeans (tailored for the waist) as low as physically possible.  A waistband that rose above your belly button was considered a major faux pas!

Basically, if someone was wearing high-waisted jeans with a tucked-in shirt, they either failed at their fashion attempt or weren't trying at all.  It certainly wasn't an on-trend fashion statement!

Analogy: I'm walking around in the year 2014 in boot-cut jeans because I don't feel good in skinny jeans.  But that doesn't mean that boot-cut jeans are representative of 2014 fashion.  They're a deliberate opt-out of the current trend, a throwback to my high-school days that I retain because I feel that it's more flattering to my figure, and I'd never expect a teenager finding their way into fashion for the first time to wear them.  So if 20 years from now someone wore boot cut jeans in an attempt to be early-2010s retro, they'd be doin' in wrong.

This makes me wonder if any of my various attempts to be retro have so egregiously misfired.

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Analogy for assuming I'm going to get sick

I operate under the assumption that I'm going to have every medical problem - everything my ancestors have died of or even been diagnosed with, everything my genetics or behaviour makes it more likely for me to develop, basically everything I have an even slightly greater than average likelihood of contracting.  I assume I'm going to get Alzheimer's, I assume I'm going to get cancer, I assume I'm going to get Barrett's esophagus, I assume I'm going to break a hip and become helpless.

There are people who think this approach is needlessly pessimistic, and who say things like "Why don't you just adopt a healthier lifestyle so you don't end up with these health problems?"

Today my shower gave me an analogy to explain why:

Suppose you want to enter a university program, but you don't have enough money to pay the tuition.

The university offers a scholarship to the very top student in the whole university every year, and this scholarship offers enough money to pay for the whole program.  But only one such scholarship is offered, and it's only available to the one student with the very top marks in the whole university.

So is it a good strategy to decide "Okay, problem solved.  I'll just get the best marks in the whole university and pay my tuition with that scholarship"?  Or would it perhaps be a better idea to assume you won't win the big scholarship, and instead work out a way to assemble the funding from other, smaller, more winnable scholarships with multiple recipients, combined with perhaps a part-time job and some student loans?

To win the one single big scholarship, you have to address and overcome a wide variety of ever-changing factors.  You not only have to be at the top of all your classes, you also have to be aware of what kind of marks other students are getting in other classes and figure out ways to top them.  You  need to keep in mind how various courses are graded, and choose courses (and maybe even a major) that make it more possible to get higher marks. (For example, it's easier to get extremely high marks in a math class than in a literature class, because answers to math problems can be unquestionably and objectively correct, whereas a literary analysis essay is more subjective and far less likely to be interpreted as perfect and therefore worth of a 100%.) You also have to be able to read your profs to determine how to extract the highest marks from them, (for example, I've had profs who give higher marks to essays that prove conventional theses, and I've had profs who give higher marks to essays that take a risk and prove an unconventional thesis, or have a good go at disproving a conventional thesis), and you have to do this early enough in the course so as not to have a sacrificial first assignment.  To say nothing of the stress you'd have to put yourself under and the pleasures of life you'd have to give up to study enough to earn top marks in all things at all times!

This is rather difficult, isn't it?  In addition to doing your absolute best in everything at all times, you have to be constantly and at every moment on top of an ever-changing lineup of factors, many of which are completely beyond your control.  And if you drop the ball even for a second, there goes the scholarship you were depending on for funding.  It's a lot easier, less stressful and more feasible to operate under the assumption that you're not going to get the big scholarship and instead work out a way to get more predictable funding.  If you get the scholarship, bonus!  All your problems are solved!  But if you don't get it, you're prepared for the eventuality.

Similarly, I find the list of things you're supposed to do to prevent Alzheimer's, cancer etc. is large, complex, overwhelming, and ever-evolving.  There is contradictory information out there, some of which is actively trying to discredit each other.  It encompasses every facet of life, some of it involves factors that are beyond our control, and much more of it involves factors that it is possible to control but very difficult to do. There are aspects of it that we don't know yet, and there are aspects of it that may be thought to be helpful but later be discovered to be harmful.

So instead of making myself a slave to all that, I just assume I'm going to get all these diseases and plan accordingly.  If I don't get them and end up dying peacefully in my sleep, bonus!  But if I do get them, then I'm prepared for the eventuality.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Analogy for why you won't regret not doing things you don't enjoy

Between my introversion and the fact that I've been extremely fortunate to land exactly where I want to in life, I'm content.  My life is very simple, contains exactly what I want, and makes me perfectly happy.  Because of this, I don't feel the need to seek ambition or adventure.

 Sometimes I encounter people who think I should be seeking ambition or adventure anyway (especially in regards to travelling), because they think I'll later regret not doing it.  Even though I know full well that it would make me unhappy to do so, they seem to think I will look back and regret not doing the thing that will make me unhappy. Which I find absolutely bizarre!

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose, at some point in your adult life, you find that you're not able to get as much sex as you'd like.

That doesn't mean that you should have gotten in the car with the strange men who were driving by shouting obscene suggestions at you when you were 12 years old.

Even if some of those obscene suggestions ended up being activities you grew into with future partners - and even if, as an adult, you grow to miss them when circumstances aren't aligning to allow you to indulge in them - they weren't right for you back then.  Not at that age, not with those strange men.

And, looking back at it as an adult - even as an undersexed adult - you don't look back and regret not getting in that car with those strange men.  You recognize that it would have made you unhappy at the time, and that the unhappiness would stick with you as a bad memory, not as something your adult self will end up being glad you did.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Secularism: ur doin it wrong

At first I wasn't going to blog about Quebec's Charte des valeurs. I've already written many times about how assholic it is to force people to expose more of their bodies than they're comfortable with and was weary of having to cover the same ground again, and most of the media coverage of this story has already taken that approach so I was weary of having to repeat myself and didn't think I had anything to add.

But in the shower, it occurred to me that it's interesting to look at it from from the other side: instead of looking at what's banned, let's look at what's allowed.

Here's an English-language version of the visual aid that's been circulating.



Look at the "banned" items in the bottom row.  Apart from the giant cross in the left-most picture, all these items have a practical and/or theological function.  They all have the practical function of covering a part of the body that the wearer wants to be covered (with the possible exception of the yarmulke - I'm not clear on whether covering that part of the head is necessary, or whether it's the yarmulke itself that's necessary.) They all also have the theological function of being something the wearer needs to do to avoid going to hell, or whatever the equivalent in their religion is.  (I have heard that the hijab per se is not necessary, just that covering the head is necessary.  And I have heard that the hijab per se is necessary.  So let's split the difference and say that some people believe it is theologically necessary.)

Now look at the "allowed" items.  They're all small pieces of jewellery that display the wearer's religious affiliation.  They have no theological function, and they have no practical function other than displaying the wearer's religious affiliation.  They aren't a part of the actual practise of the wearer's religion, they aren't going to help send the wearer to heaven or prevent them from going to hell (or whatever the equivalent in their religion is).  They are simply a gratuitous display.

If Quebec wants to create an image of secularism, the place to start is by eliminating gratuitous displays of religion that serve no purpose.  Banning the functional while permitting the gratuitous eliminates all credibility.

Analogy: Suppose I have a car, and suppose you have a baby. We have an awesome, supportive friendship full of mutual assistance, which includes me lending you my car on those occasions when you need a car.  But then one day I tell you "You aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in my car.  As you know, I am a Voluntary Human Extinctionist, and displaying the carseat would come across as promoting breeding."  But, before you can even open your mouth to protest, I add, "But it's okay if you want to put your Baby On Board sticker on the car, because that's just small."


Update: I was so caught up in imagining how awful it would be to be forced to expose more of my body than I'm comfortable with in order to keep my job that I failed to notice two very important things pointed out in this article:

The Charte wouldn't (my emphasis):

1. Remove religious symbols and elements considered "emblematic of Quebec's cultural heritage." That includes: the crucifixes in the Quebec legislature and atop Mount Royal in Montreal, the thousands of religiously based geographic names (e.g. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!) and the names of schools and hospitals.
[...]

4. Ban opening prayers at municipal council meetings, which was recommended by the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Commission report into cultural accommodation. The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in May that such prayers do not necessarily violate Quebec's current human rights legislation.
Yeah. So they're forbidding people to wear as much clothing as they'd like to in government buildings because it might be interpreted as a religious symbol, but they're allowing actual religious symbols actually on display in government buildings.  They're forbidding individuals who happen to work for the government in one capacity to practise their own religion with their own body, but still permitting situations in which individuals who work for the government in another capacity are forced or coerced or pressured to participate in the collective practise of a religion to which they may or may not subscribe in order to do their jobs.


So let's revisit the analogy.  I own a car that I lend out to my friends in a spirit of mutual assistance, but I forbid people to put their children's carseats in my car because "displaying" the carseats would counter my stated Voluntary Human Extinctionist principles.  However, I permit the "Baby On Board" sticker on the basis that it's small.

But now, with this new information, it comes to light that I have a gaudy, brightly-coloured children's playground in my front yard.  Because, like, it's always been there.

Also, since I lend out my car to my friends so often, I'm gathering together a circle of friends to give me their input on the next car I purchase.  However, if you want to be part of this circle, you have to donate gametes to help me in my attempt to conceive a child of my own.

But you still aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in the car.  Because that would promote breeding.


Not so very good for the credibility, is it?

Mme. Marois suggests that the Charte will unite Quebecers.  I believe it will, against her.  You don't win over the secularists by allowing gratuitous displays of religion in the name of secularism.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Analogy for why social media is not a replacement for RSS

One of the things I found most bizarre in all the discussion surrounding the cancellation of Google Reader is that some people (including, apparently, some who work at Google) seem to think that social media is a suitable replacement for a feed reader.  As though we're perfectly content with reading whatever our internet friends choose to share and have no need whatsoever to curate our own reading list.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

I've just caught up on the Inspector Gamache series, and am waiting with bated breath for the next book to come out in August.

So suppose, on the release date in August, I walk into a bookstore and ask "Do you have the latest Inspector Gamache book?"

The bookstore worker answers, "Here are some books I read and enjoyed recently!"

That doesn't solve my problem, does it?  I want to know what happened with Inspector Beauvoir.  I want to know how (or whether) Peter and Clara's marriage is holding up. I want to find out who leaked the video.

The books the bookstore worker read and enjoyed recently won't address these needs.  They may well be good books, I may well enjoy them, they may well end up being new favourites that I end up following diligently.  But, even if I read and enjoy them all, I will still want to read the next Inspector Gamache.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Analogy for why you don't need to give up your stuffed animals

I previously blogged about how when I was a kid I thought I'd need to give up my very favourite stuffed toy just because none of the adults around me used stuffed toys, but once I grew up I realized that you don't ever need to give them up, even if you don't need to use them any more.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

As we grow up and grow older, we need our parents'  help less and less.  When we're well into adult life, sometimes months or even years go by when we don't need their help at all.

But we don't respond to this development by murdering them, or by casting them off on an ice floe to die.  We respond by leaving them mostly to their own devices while we handle our own problems without interrupting their well-deserved retirement. But (as long as they're still alive) we still retain the option of going to them if we need their help.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Flawed analogies for street harassment

There are some people in the world who think catcalling and street harassment aren't actual problems.  For the purpose of brevity, I'll call them harassment minimizers (HMs).

Sometimes, when the HMs are male and straight, they'll make some comment like "I don't know what you're complaining about, I'd be thrilled if whenever I walked down the street, groups of women would shout how hot I am and how much they want to have sex with me."

However, this is a flawed analogy.

What do we know about the harassers?  We know two things:

1.  They're harassing people.
2.   They're male (because they've only ever been male in my experience, and this conversation only ever happens with male HMs talking about male harassers).

We know nothing else about them because all the harassment is in the way of us knowing about their hopes and dreams and aspirations and deepest innermost souls.

If I were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, I'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're male is benign; the fact that they're harassers is a dealbreaker.

If a straight male HM were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, he'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're harassers is benign (since, being a harassment minimizer, he doesn't see harassment as a problem); the fact that they're male is a dealbreaker (since the HM is a straight male).

So the HM's analogy where he'd be happy to have women shouting at him in the street is flawed, because he's taking the one factor that's a dealbreaker for him and changing it to something that isn't a dealbreaker for him.

For the analogy to be sound, he needs to retain one dealbreaker factor and one benign factor.  Therefore, the more apt analogy would be to keep the characters and behaviours the same.  So a straight male HM trying to analogize himself into the shoes of someone being harassed by male harassers should also envision himself being harassed by male harassers.

To change the gender to female would be like if I said "I don't know why it bothers you to have strange men on the street loudly speculating on your sexual proclivities and rudely propositioning you, I'd be thrilled to have kind, gentle, charming, gallant men expressing their esteem for me in ways that I feel are wholly appropriate and not at all uncomfortable."

Saturday, December 08, 2012

Monogamy as sexual orientation

I was rather surprised and disconcerted to see Dan Savage, in both last week's column and the week before's (last letter both times), insist that polygamous and monogamous aren't sexual orientations.  This was bizarre to me, because I've been coming to realize over the course of my life that my sexual orientation is most accurately described as "monogamous".

In this week's column, he has some testimonials from people who identify as orientationally poly, but there's nothing firsthand from people who identify as orientationally monogamous.  So I thought I'd share what I can currently articulate about how it works for me.

- "Why do you describe it as an orientation rather than a practice?" Sexual orientation is the primary factor in defining who you are capable of being sexually attracted to.  If you're heterosexual, for example, the fact that someone is of the opposite sex is the primary factor in determining whether you can be sexually attracted to them.  People talk about "meeting men" or "meeting women" - the gender is so intrinsic to defining who we're capable of being attracted to that people use it as a shorthand for "people I am capable of being attracted to."  For me, the primary factor is whether I love them.  That's the one factor that absolutely must be present to switch on sexual attraction.  Yes, this means that I'm not sexually attracted to people before I love them.  I've never once in my life looked at a random passer-by and thought "I'd hit that!"  I have to have a reason to fall in love with them first.  I can be sexually attracted to someone for whom I have unrequited love as long as there's no requited love going on in my life, but it can only be that one person.

- "But can't you be in love with more than one person?"  No.  I don't have room.  Analogy: I have two breasts, each of which has one nipple.  Therefore, I could nurse a maximum of two babies simultaneously.  There is no possible way to do more, because there simply aren't more nipples.  There's no expansion pack, there's no extension cord, it's a hard and fast limit.  Similarly, I only have one slot in my brain for being in love with a person.  There simply isn't any more room and no way to expand it. Yes, I've heard that some people can, and I'm not going to be so presumptuous as to question their self-knowledge.  But the fact remains that I can't.

- "It's illogical."  I totally agree.  I always assumed that a monogamous relationship was just for fairy tales and old-fashioned people to whom it didn't occur to do otherwise.  How presumptuous would it be for me to think anyone could possibly find me sufficient!  But then, one day, my boyfriend raised the idea that we could be monogamous.  I was shocked that such a thing would be suggested in real life, but I noticed that since we'd gotten together I hadn't had even the slightest glimmer of interest in anyone else, so I agreed.  And HOLY SHIT WAS IT SEXY!!!  It was so sexy that everything I'd previously thought was sexy was relegated to "unremarkable".  It was the emotional equivalent of discovering the clitoris. It' s so sexy that the (physical or psychological) involvement of someone with whom I'm not in a monogamous committed relationship in any sort of sexual experience cannot possibly contribute to the sexiness of the situation - even if the situation is one where I would otherwise be alone.  The best possible outcome is neutral; the worst, and most likely, outcome is total turn-off.  Much like, I'd imagine, Dan Savage would feel if I turned up in his bed.  Analogy: the clitoris is illogical.  It would be far more logical if everyone's primary source of orgasms were vaginal stimulation, because that would facilitate procreation and provide primary stimulation to both partners in an opposite-sex coupling simultaneously.  However, this does not negate the fact that the clitoris exists and is the primary source of orgasms for many people.

- "So how do you transition from one relationship to another?"  As I've mentioned in other blog posts, my feelings - all feelings, not just romantic - don't go away.  They pile up like the stuff in the "miscellaneous" pile on your desk - the ones at the bottom might be hidden from view by the ones added more recently, but they still exist, perfectly whole and in their original state.  What this means for romantic feelings is that new feelings must be so strong that they completely envelop and overwhelm the old feelings.  The old feelings don't go away, they just become insignificant in the face of the exponential superiority of the new feelings. I can't go from one relationship to another equal relationship; I can only transition to a significantly better relationship.  (This also applies for platonic relationships, BTW.  I've blogged before about how my Grade 8 friends abandoned me before high school started.  My feelings for those people are still exactly the same as they were when they were still being friends with me, it's just the friends I've made since are so much more awesome that the feeling I was defining as "friendship" in Grade 8 no longer counts as such.  My current close friends found me when we were in our mid/late teens, and I haven't felt the need to seek out new friends since.)

- "What about fantasy?" When my love is requited, I don't fantasize about anyone else.  I can't explain why, it just doesn't happen.  When my love is not requited, I'm like Marshall in How I Met Your Mother.  Marshall, as you may recall, can only fantasize about someone other than his wife Lily if he constructs a scenario where Lily has died but, on her deathbed, gave him her blessing to be with whomever is the subject of the fantasy.  Similarly, the premise of my fantasy has to be that my previous love thinks it's for the best that I'm with the subject of the fantasy. When my 13-year-old self transitioned from crushing on Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher to crushing on Dean Cain as Clark Kent, she constructed a scenario where Wesley had to go off and join the Traveller, and therefore introduced her to the most powerful man on earth to ensure she'd have a worthy partner.  (Did I mention this was fantasy?)  It sounds complex when I write it up like this, but all fantasy actually involves a lot of premise.  You're constructing a scenario where the subject of your fantasy likes you and enjoys spending time with you and doesn't smell and is into all the same sex acts as you and can do that thing with their tongue and isn't creeped out by the fact that you have a poster of them over your bed, all on top of the fact that the two of you were in the same place at the same time and managed to talk and they found you interesting enough that they didn't just pass you over for the next fangirl.

- "But is poly something anyone can do or something some people are? I come down on the "do" side" - Dan Savage, Nov. 28. You could do it without being it, and you could (with much more incentive and self-discipline) be it without doing it.  I could, I suppose, have more than one lover, as in I could physically carry out the motions.  But I don't want to, and am in fact repulsed by the idea.  Just like I'm sure Dan Savage could engage in a rousing session of cunnilingus (and, being a sex advice columnist, would probably even know a trick or two), but I suspect he'd rather be in bed alone with a book.  Polyamory is something anyone can do just like having sex with a woman is something anyone can do.  That doesn't mean it isn't an orientation factor.

- "But I'm monogamous as a result of a deliberate choice to be so - it has nothing to do with my sexual orientation!"  I have no doubt that's true.  Many people make a conscious decision to be monogamous.  However, it is still my orientation.  Analogy: It is perfectly possible for someone who is bisexual to make a conscious decision to only have relationships with members of the opposite sex, perhaps for procreation, religious, or convenience purposes.  However, this does not negate the fact that many people are heterosexual by orientation and are actually turned off by the idea of sex with a member of the same sex.