Thursday 21 February 2019

Baby, it's cold outside

Another post from the past that I just never posted.

Content warning: This post contains Misfits lyrics and calls half the population "pro-rape". I imagine people could be triggered by both of those things, but the odds that someone here will be I guess are pretty low.

Apparently many radio stations in Canada
won't be playing Baby it's Cold Outside this year
.

First of all, let me say that on it's face this is just a sensible decision. What would my answer look like if one of my children asked me, "Why is she asking what's in her drink like that?"
The song is about a man and a woman who are in love. The man is trying to convince the woman she should sleep over and the woman is saying that she shouldn't. Don't worry, I'll get to the drink part in a little bit. It's like Captain Underpants - before I tell you that story I have to tell you this story.
So you know that mommy and daddy sleep in the same bed. To live together and sleep together is something that people normally do after they've been in love for a while. Just like you might have friends you'd be eager to have a sleepover with and others you like to see at school but don't invite over. And when you grow up and move out, you might move in with a friend you've known a long time but probably not with a new friend. So you can think of people in love going through stages: at first they are usually very excited to be around one another, but they don't organize their lives around one another by doing something like buying a house together.
These days people usually do what's right for them in a relationship. But people also get pressured by their families. Like think about the Boo York movie. Cleo's dad and sister really don't like Deuce, right? And Pharoah's family want to choose who he marries. I'm not going to do that to you, but this is something that happens - people get pressured into making choices their family wants about who to love and who to live with.
Back when this song was written there was a lot more pressure to do what people thought you were supposed to do. One of the things people thought you were supposed to do back then was not sleep together until you were married. But people really thought it was the responsibility of girls to make sure that happened. So if the woman in the song did sleep over at the man's house, she would be the one who would be blamed. That wasn't fair, but it's something she would have to deal with even though it wasn't fair.
I'm getting to the drink soon.
So the man and woman both want her to stay there, not to go home. She also doesn't want people to be angry at her or treat her badly, so she's saying no. The man is thinking about what he wants, not how much trouble she'll get in, so he keeps saying she should stay.
Since she really wants to stay, she's trying to think of ways she could explain it to other people. That's why they sing about it being cold outside. She could stay and then just tell everyone, "Oh, I had to stay because it was so cold." But that excuse wouldn't really work.
So finally we get to the drink. We've talked before about how drinking wine can make people feel different. That's because of something in wine called alcohol. That's also in some other drinks like beer and whiskey. When people drink alcohol it can make them find things funnier, it can make them feel sleepy, it can also make them feel more like doing whatever they want to do without thinking about what will happen. I don't know if you remember this, but sometimes when I'm putting you to bed and you are getting really sleepy you kind of get the giggles and there's this sort of happy sleepiness. Drinking a lot of alcohol sometimes makes people feel like that.
So when she says "What's in this drink?" she's sort of saying she thinks there's a lot of alcohol in the drink. I'm not sure there really is. Just like when they say, "It's cold outside" she might be kind of looking for an excuse to stay over. So she might say to someone else, "I had too much to drink and I couldn't get home." Again, back then people were really mean to women who got too involved in relationships before they got married. So women would sometimes blame their decisions on alcohol, even though they were decisions that they really wanted to make. The alcohol would have been taken as a better excuse that the weather - though she might have been judged for drinking too much alcohol as well.
So basically the women lives with people who will judge her for doing what she wants to do, and she is upset because she wants to do it but also doesn't want to. She is trying to think of ways to excuse herself for doing it. She doesn't want to be blamed unfairly. If I were that man I'd say, "I know we'd both like you to stay, but I also know your parents would be mad, so how about I walk you home. I wish this wasn't so hard for both of us."
I know this isn't really what you asked about, but I want you to know that when you grow up and fall in love if you ever feel torn, like you want to and don't want to do something, I'll support you, not get mad at you.

You'll note that my description of what is going on in the song assumes the woman totally wants to get it on. I'm not saying the guy is trying to rape the woman or that he slipped something into her drink. That's because I do take the song in it's historical context and I know it was written by a man for he and his wife to perform at holiday parties. The author of the story that the song tells was telling a story about horny young people in love, not about date rape.

But of course, in the cultural proxy-war over this song, the issue isn't really whether people want to hear this song or not, or even about the details of this song. It's about people identifying being for or against the song as a flashpoint and taking sides. One comment I saw on a CBC article about this song was that the commenter was going to go listen to the song on repeat.

That'll show 'em.

No one cares if you listen to the song in your own home. I like Bullet by the Misfits, a song about JFK's head shattering when the bullet hits, ending with Jackie Onassis having to jerk the singer off to pay the bills. It's pushing the limits of offensive. Their song Last Caress opens up with:
I got something to say
I killed a baby today
In highschool I used to listen to a lot of Ministry. In their song Flashback they sing about tearing off someone's head, shitting down their neck, and
laughing
while they do it. The thing is, I didn't like that song all that much, but I singled it out as one of the songs I listened to when I listened to the
album
it was on. While I didn't like the song all that much, I liked that the song had that violent, shocking imagery. I think, as a teenager, indulging in things that I knew would be judged as wrong by others appealed to me.

By all means, if you actually like Baby it's Cold Outside please listen to it whenever you want. But if grown-ass adults spend their time listening to music that they don't actually like all that much just to upset imaginary villains, then they need to grow the hell up.

Which brings me to what I really don't like about Baby it's Cold Outside. I can take the fact that "what's in this drink" was really a thing a woman might say in the 40s as a way of suggesting that she ought not be held responsible for her desires. What is a lot harder to take is the part of the narrative that is still part of our culture narrative today. Because I don't actually mind having the above, long conversation with my daughter, punctuated by many interruptions and questions, about the pressures people face in relationships. What bothers me a lot more is not having that conversation and instead having the song be incorporated as one more story into my kid's mental banks of how to navigate romantic situations.

I don't accept that this is trivial or that it's better to stay above it. The reason we have the concept of "proxy wars" is because
during the cold war
the USA and the USSR could not engage each other directly for fear of mutual annihilation. If the cost of a true conflict is too damaging or painful, we fight about something else.

We aren't arguing about Baby it's Cold Outside because either those against it or those for it are taking trivial positions over a song. There is a real, substantive and extremely painful conflict that we aren't willing to have. If we take the song in it's proper historical context we still have a conflict between positions:

  1. Men pursuing women for sex and women being the gatekeepers is natural and fine
  2. Men pursuing women for sex and women being the gatekeepers is toxic; it excuses and promotes rape

I'd love it if we lived in a world where the very gendered message of the song would be missed by children, but we really don't live in the world. Honestly the world of six- and seven-year-olds is even more gendered than it was when I was growing up. The song will be interpretted as an example of how men act and how women act, not as an example of how two people happened to act. And while some of the specifics of the story are anachronistic, the basic idea that it is the man's role to pursue and the woman's role to resist is not. That's still baked into our culture.

Of course, as I point out in my explanation of the song, the reality of the men-pursue/women-resist dynamic is that it is a man's role to try to get what he wants, consequences be damned, and it is a woman's role to balance what she wants against consequences. In other words,
it's a man's role to be a child and a woman's role to be a grownup
.

I think it has to be true that the pursue/resist dynamic contributes hugely to our seeming inability to really denounce and punish rape. Men, we think, have to be forgiven for trying to overcome resistance because otherwise no one would ever get laid. Added to that is the idea that men can't be expected to tolerate their own emotions in service of someone else.
Horny men rape, angry men punch
. There's no, "this is uncomfortable, but I guess I just have to sit with it rather than acting impulsively". That's bullshit we need to unlearn, and it wouldn't hurt us to not teach it to a some future generation.

Because that is pro-rape. I know that men who like pursuing women and women who like being pursued don't - with exceedingly rare exception - think rape is okay. But when people talk about "rape culture" that is the sort of thing they are talking about. A culture that accepts predatory sexual behaviour as normal, creating a blurry line between rape and consent where no blurry line needs to exist. That people might occasionally misunderstand each other or make bad decisions is an unavoidable part of human existence. That the norm for sex doesn't involve asking the other person what they want is culture, not nature.

I'm not telling an old man who is sick of "politically correct" culture that he can't listen to his song because someone might be offended. I'm telling him that he can listen to his song if he likes, but that his highschool, his church, his home town, his mother and father, his grandmothers and grandfathers, all raised him to excuse and promote rapists. Odds are good he thinks rapists are some of the worst of the worst people. He believes in a mythical rapist who jumps out of the shadows to attack stray teenage girls with a knife. The idea that he excuses such people is insulting. The idea that his mom excused such people is infuriating.

It's infuriating but it is also true, and the people defending the song are probably overwhelmingly people who thought the Ghomeshi verdict shows that Ghomeshi was unfairly treated by the media. They probably, more often than not, think we don't have good enough reason to think Brett Kavanaugh assaulted anyone. But if they face the fact that their entire lives have existed within a context of rape-promotion, then they will feel like they have to either repudiate their home town, their parents, their culture; or switch from subtly defending rape to outright defending rape. They can't do the former and I can't accept the latter. That's the mutual annihilation scenario we are avoiding by arguing about an annoying Christmas song from 1944.

"Centrists" are always talking about how there needs to be a road back for right-wing extremists. We can't call someone a racist because they need to be led gently away from their bad views/behaviour in a way that doesn't make them defensive.

I hate these faux-intellectual centrist positions. As if radical left wingers and radical right wingers are having a fight over something as trivial as a Christmas song and sensible people would say, "it's just a song." But really, if we want to be sensible, let's just pull all of the sexy Christmas songs. I mean, what if instead of asking about Baby it's Cold Outside I was asked what is going on in Santa Baby.
Well, the singer is trying to let Santa know that she is down to fuck if he's willing to spend some cash.
I'm not even down on the singer of Santa Baby. While people might disparage her with a derogatory term like "gold digger" I think reasons people get into relationships can be complex, and we shouldn't judge people who are seeking a partner for status or wealth; or people who are willing to make even more direct exchanges.

I don't think children need to be shielded from nudity, and I think that kids' questions they have about sex should be answered correctly, even if those answers make the grown-ups uncomfortable. But little kids aren't sexual. Until your body starts sending out the right hormones,
sex just seems weird and off-putting
. I don't think we need to shield children from the existence of sex, but I also think that it's pretty fucking weird to force it on them by putting bawdy humour that we know they won't enjoy in kids movies and christmas carols.

That's rational. Reflexively taking the middle between two sides is not. Actual synthesis of antithetical positions shows wisdom. Blandly putting yourself in the middle show a desire to conform to a technocratic culture where the social customs of rationality denote status, even when rationality itself fled long ago.

The idea that we need to be careful about harshly criticizing the pro-rape crowd is buying into the same bad cultural messages that I complained about in the song. If someone is promoting a position that we now recognize is part of rape culture, and we tell them that, we are showing that we believe they will be in charge of their own feelings about that. If we try to hold their hands to get them away from that position, we are saying, "I know you can't manage your own emotions, I'll manage them for you".

What I described as a "mutual annihilation" above isn't really one. If I eschewed the proxy war over Baby it's Cold Outside and instead targeted someone directly on the toxic male/female, predator/prey dynamic that we are really upset about, I might make it about them instead of about a song. And that might make them angry or hurt. And that might make them defensive. But
for the most part
we outlive our anger and our hurts. No one is going to be annihilated, we're just going to feel bad.

Let's all fee bad! Let's be pained by the way we've treated one another in our lives. Let's think back with regret on our actions and on the times we justified the actions of others. And then, when that sorrow, pain and regret has run out of energy, let's have fun playing video games.
Because it will pass
.

I'd rather not have Baby it's Cold Outside played for me without my consent. If someone thinks that's an absurd politically correct position, I'd gladly welcome them to my home with their kids to listen to Falling Back in Fields of Rape. If someone wants to talk about the real issues underlying the "debate" about the song, I'll be happy to hurt their feelings.

Monday 11 February 2019

Selfishness is as bad as everyone already knew it is

I'm going through some old posts I wrote and never posted and posting them. So look for some posts about articles and events from months back.

A study published in July in Psychological Review identifies what the authors call the Dark Factor of Personality (via Boing Boing). I've previously read about the "dark triad" of personality types which were masochism, machiavellianism and narcissism. This study finds that those, and other personality types that tend to lead to "ethically, morally and socially questionable behaviour" all stem from one common factor: the tendency to maximize one's own utility accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.

If you got into a time machine and traveled back ten thousand years and told the pre-civilization humans you met that you were from the future with a dire warning: "Selfishness is the root of evil!" those humans would let you know that they already knew that. Everyone knows that.

John Nash, an important game theorist reportedly had trouble understanding why people didn't play games the way his theories suggest they should be played. Adam Smith, the progenitor of economics, thought that maximizing personal utility was the root of all human activity. Ayn Rand appeared to think that maximizing personal utility ought to be the root of human activity and that people who disagreed with that are holding you down. Gordon Gekko said "Greed is good."

John Nash had schizophrenia with paranoia. Gordon Gekko is a fictional symbol of unrestrained greed. I'm not sure what
Smith
and
Rand's
excuses are.

But the study doesn't really say that greed is the root of all evil. And I'm not just saying that "greed is the root of all evil" is hyperbolic and the study is careful. I'm going all in on translating the meaning of the study into an inaccurate but digestible bit of wisdom. It's just that greed isn't enough. To get to the root of all evil you need greed and beliefs that serve as justifications.

Often when people try to apply game theory to the economy and get evil-sounding results, they say that greed is just human nature. In the sense that they mean it that is probably false, but let's say it's true in a limited sense - we all sometimes think of ourselves above others or think of ourselves the exclusion of others. That in itself isn't enough to lead to us being assholes, though. What breaks through the asshole barrier is when we think that the near universality of these thoughts is a reason why those thoughts are okay to have.

It's not the human trait of being selfishness that's the problem, it's the
people saying that trait isn't a problem who are the problem.