sundries

[rm]

It was cranky day on the trains this morning. It's raining and everyone is angry. And in fairness, it's easy to get annoyed. People don't understand to keep to the right. People who don't sit down make the train cars more crowded and block the seats for others. We're all wet, the trains are delayed, people's bags are in the way, etc. But man, there is only so much I can take of the fucked up reasons people think they are more special than others on the New York City subway system.

It's another piece about how boys are behind girls in school and so civilization will crumble.

Articles like this make me seethe, for starts because not only is our educational system shit, I have watched it go from bad to worse and watch kids on Craigslist hire people to write their essays -- for college admissions, for their film school class, for their fucking med school unit! So many of my friends teach university here, at _good_ schools, and the student who can express themselves cogently (not elegantly, just with basic subject/verb and an understanding of how if/then works) is absolutely, positively the except to the rule. And it galls me. So for starts, wow, our education system needs fixing in about eight hundred different places in about eight hundred different ways.

Next: if boys are so behind in school, why are men still so ahead in the workplace? Oh right, because it doesn't count when women do things (and well get back to that later, I'm going somewhere broader with this). An academically successful woman doesn't count for anything. She can't be seen as a leader, after all. And women are good with the school thing, it's not special. Dime a dozen. Ignore her. Ignore them. Women - interchangeable parts, all the same, you know how it goes. Now let's say we can even stomach the reality of the above and are okay with it (and apparently large swathes, even a majority of our society, is). Now we do have a serious problem: the people we're letting get ahead are skills-poor.

This business of "women don't count" (insert snarky "math is hard" joke here) is hardly anything new. In fact eumelia wrote this morning about the pink triangle and how in the Holocaust women never wore it. You see, the crime of lesbianism was an "anti-social" crime, one the Nazi's assigned the black triangle. The issue was not sex (probably unacknowledged because of lack of PiV), the issue was their not marrying and breeding for the Reich.

I am dead, and I did not exist.

It comes up too in arenas that many of you would consider not to matter. If you're aware of the OTW you know that part of their mission statement says "we value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary."

I'm a member of the OTW, and I think the statement is essentially true, and I still hate it. Because what it says is that there are activities people do and activities women do. It's self-othering, it's not particularly reflective of the fandom I spend the most time in (Torchwood -- whose dominant culture, I would argue is queer, gender aside) these days, and it -- in its attempt to do anything but -- plays into the "see, some boys write fanfiction" speech a whole lot of women do to somehow legitimize fannish creation.

95% of new students in general aviation are men. Hardly any women. But airplanes are real and not sin.

I am sick of a world in which the presence of women devalues activities, educations, television shows (even though women make more purchases than men in almost every category, a male demographic is preferred by advertisers) and desires merely by their turning their eyes towards something.

But it's nothing new. And I don't, tragically, believe it will ever be anything old and quaint and once was either. And it's one of the small reasons I can never be quite happy: because nearly everything I have ever been taught -- by my parents, by my schools, by my fandom, by more than a few lovers, and by my persecutors -- tells me one simple thing. Because I have a cunt, when I love something, I make it less. It's a strange power, being the null, and it's not one I want or like or enjoy and I would like to give it back now.

North Koreans use cellphones to tell the rest of the world about life there.

True fact most people think is just an urban legend: More than three unrelated people living together is illegal in NYC.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Hey!!

Female pilot here. I do agree with all your points in this post - but remember, when you consider general aviation across North American, 5% is still a lot of women.

Rowing is an interesting phenomenon. All rowers agree that it's about the hardest, most taxing sport there is (yes, we're biased, but we've also got data substantiating the point). Once you get past college and the national team level to club and masters rowing, women are a definite majority of new rowers. We also tend to be better at learning it (there's a lot to be said for being willing to learn technique before you try to apply power). Now it's true that club and masters rowing gets less glory than junior or collegiate rowing, but I think that's mostly because adults' sports in general do get less attention. But at least no one devalues womens' rowing in favor of men's. These days, anyway - it's may be telling to look at the history, in which Ernestine Bayers was being told "women don't row" in Philadelphia at the same time Dorothy L. Sayers was writing Gaudy Night, which features a fair number of .... women rowing.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Am I right in remember that the % of women who actually go on to get pilots licenses is much smaller than that 5% though? My recollection is fuzzy, and I haven't really looked at the numbers in a while (hi, general aviation student dropout who keeps trying to get back to it here).

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I just got around to looking it up: according to Women in Aviation, of the nearly 600,000 active pilots in the United States, approximately six percent are women and only slightly more than three percent ATP rated. Women account for only 3.85 percent of the more than 500,000 non-pilot aviation jobs in the United States.

Not sure what they count as an "aviation job", though; 3/4 of my working years to date were spent as an aerospace engineer, so I don't know if I'd be counted. (Aerospace engineers don't strictly work in aviation, but they're sort of necessary for there to *be* any aviation!!)