ThomStratton.com

Things are not always the way we interpret them. Take time to have an open mind.

And read this story…

I like this fellow’s videos. Often they are dramatized versions of familiar stories, but worth hearing nonetheless. This one, however, is especially interesting and pertinent. He takes three strangers, blindfolds them, and puts them in a room together. Their voices and their words are all they know of one another. After a while they are allowed to remove the blindfolds and see how close their assumptions about one another really came. I suspect you can guess the results…

The Holderness Family always seem to get tons of pollen where they live, enough to inspire this parody:

Fortunately it’s not that bad here, but there’s definitely dangerous little microscopic spiky-balls floating around out there.

I like to think I’m immune to marketing. I can see through most advertisers attempts to convince me I need to “be cool, like these people.” But recently I discovered my weakness: I like to think of myself as an experienced outdoorsman. I like to imagine myself as the kind of guy that not only has the right gear for any occasion, but knows why he needs it, and values substance over flash.

The truth is…somewhat different. While our family loves hiking and spending time outdoors, we’ve never been on any hike longer than maybe 8 miles, 10 at the most. We go camping, usually once a year (except for the boys’ scout trips), and usually to places where we can drive up, not hike in. Sure, it’s no-frills camping (except the menu–we eat pretty well), but it’s a far cry from back-country camping where you live off of only what you carry in.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want all the gear that would allow me to do that. I can make up for the fact that I don’t live the true outdoorsman life by at least knowing I could, right? It’s not like I’d be like those people who buy North Face jackets just to wear around town. I’d buy a brand more obscure but more functional, of course, and keep it stored away for the time when I’ll actually be able to use it. I don’t care if anyone else knows I’m an outdoorsy type, so long as I know.

Fact is, I was a lousy boy scout. I only got my Tenderfoot badge, albeit it twice. I’ve been on more campouts as a parent of boy scouts than I ever went on when I was one myself. As much as I think I would like to go camping more often than we do, would I really? Is it even all that feasible under my current circumstances? And by the time I have that kind of time will I still be in shape enough to do it?

Let’s face it. I love the idea of being an outdoorsman. I love the idea of owning the gear of an outdoorsman. But do I really have what it takes to be one? Probably not.

But our local outfitter sure has my number.

Beware the ominous music….

I swear The Onion is becoming a real news source even as the news channels are moving into entertainment.

My wife and I were about to go to bed last night when the phone rang. Something told me that no one calls that time of night if it’s not important, so I answered it. It was an automated message from the school district, which is usually not that important. But then they also don’t usually call that late, either. So I kept listening.

Someone reported seeing a threat against our youngest son’s middle school on social media. The message didn’t detail the threat, but indicated that while they did not think it was credible, the police were investigating and would have officers on site today. School district officials would also be on hand. They would understand if any parents wanted to keep their children home today.

Not that we had to worry about today. Our son was actually scheduled to be off campus today with the band. But still, two main thoughts ran through my mind. For one, I was glad the school district was taking it seriously. But for another, it occurred to me that today would probably be the safest day to be in school. No one would dare try anything today after that much attention. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t wait until things calm down and people forget.

We’ve heard nothing more today except an email from the principal indicating that nothing happened today and the matter has been investigated and the poster has been dealt with. It’s business as usual on Monday. But this is the new world we live in. And let’s face it, even on days when no one knows of a threat it doesn’t mean there is no threat. Same can be said for where I work, the store I’ll be going to tonight. The world is a safe place until it’s not.

Most of the time there will be no warning. Some idiot runs a red light. An airplane crashes into your neighborhood. A random psycho goes on a spree. Guns, knives, cars, bombs–does it really matter what they use? Someone’s life will be changed dramatically, even if no one is killed.

I read an article the other day that a college professor is resigning from a campus committee because she couldn’t bear the thought that there would be conservative students on that committee. Really? We have enough to be afraid of without having to make up threats. Idiots with SUVs are a real threat, not someone with a different perspective.

Speaking of perspective, we really need a nation-wide adjustment of ours.

Life is precious, magnificent, even thrilling. We shouldn’t waste any more of it than necessary worrying about the dangers we can do so little about, let alone imagining threats that just aren’t so.

Various scholars agree that eating meat promotes “toxic masculinity”, but now someone is claiming that giving up meat leads to “white masculinity”.

Ever get the feeling that they’re just avoiding coming out and saying the problem is masculinity in any form?

For my part this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” approach to men has me to the point that I just don’t care anymore. This is just further proof that I literally cannot make everyone happy, so I may as well just give up and be happy my way.

But seriously, this study, “Meatless Meals and Masculinity”, by Mari Mycek is being touted as a scientific article. But based on what I was taught about science, that’s a rather dubious claim. Let me explain.

According to the article (granted, from FoxNews, which undoubtedly means Mycek and her report are entirely fictional):

After Mycek conducted 20 in-depth interviews with self-identified vegan and vegetarian men, she concluded they “uphold gendered binaries of emotion/rationality and current ideas of middle-class, white masculinity.”

“Gendered binaries”? Is Mycek is claiming that women are emotional and men are rational? Apparently so.

She argues the meatless men contribute to unnoticed inequality and fall in line with a masculine identity because they used “masculine-coded discourses” by making a rational decision to avoid meat “based on scientific research rather than personal opinion or emotions,” which she argues would be expected from women.

Ouch! She expects women to act based on personal opinion or emotion? And somehow acting from rational choices is somehow bad? It must be so, because science! (Never mind the irony of a scientific study getting down on people making decisions based on scientific studies.) But in what world is twenty men even a statistically significant sample?

To continue:

Before starting her research, Mycek thought vegan men would base their decision to give up meat on emotion and receive negative feedback for the switch; however, her findings were the opposite.

Huh. She’s a vegan herself, and she seems disappointed that men are become vegan for reasons other than, presumably, her own! It’s not enough that we’re becoming vegan, we have to do it for the right reasons?

I’m afraid her assertions sound increasingly weird as she goes on:

“The men effectively engage in a feminized practice (eating only plants) but masculinize it, rather than feminize themselves and their consumption identities,” Mycek wrote, further arguing “masculinity receives its prestige, privilege and power in the US at the expense of women and femininity.”

Exactly who is she to lay claim to eating plants as a “feminized practice”? It is a practice, pure and simple. There’s no gender to it. There’s no species to it. She’s setting up an argument where men only have two options: be toxic or be women. I reject that false dichotomy.

But wait, there’s more!

She concludes veganism is a form of “cultural capital” or food choice privilege, where they symbolize social and cultural prestige at the expose of people in less privileged positions.

“It is evident that a certain amount of privilege is needed in order to eat a [vegan/vegetarian] diet,” Mycek said.

So after getting on men for being men, she finally admits that she’s privileged too? She doesn’t really address whether or not “white femininity” is also a problem (I’m guessing it’s not, since she remains a vegan).

She does, at least, admit to some bias in her approach.

Mycek admits that her choice to identify as a woman and as vegan may have influenced her data collection interviewing the men for the project.

She argues more research should be done with less economically advantaged people with diverse race and ethnic groups.

I’m left to wonder why she didn’t do that “more research” herself. I mean, how long could it have taken to interview only 20 men? But at least she’s resourceful. Having failed to prove her hypothesis she still manages to get a paper out of it, even though the only real scientific conclusion she could have reached is that the men in her sample did not choose to become vegan/vegetarian for emotional reasons. I mean, she had a backup plan in case she found that they did choose based on emotion (“but it’s only because they’re privileged!”).

To be fair, I’m not going to argue with her that eating a vegan diet implies a certain level of privilege (as she calls it) or income (as I’d call it). Vegan food tends to be a little more expensive, and so it would be more difficult for the economically disadvantaged to justify that expense, let alone the difficulty of finding and/or learning to prepare vegan foods.

On a final note, I’m left to wonder just how she selected her study population. She says she chose those who self-identified as male, which is fair to a point. But did she interview any vegan/vegetarian women to determine if any of them had actually chose that lifestyle based on rationalism over emotion? Did she interview any carnivorous men or women? Her methods of selection (fliers in coffee shops asking for people willing to be interviewed about their vegetarianism) may have also tainted her sample. Based on her statements and conclusions I’m left to assume she set out to prove something very specific which was not the null hypothesis, and completely failed to provide any control group against which to test her data. (The null hypothesis would have been “there is no statistically relevant difference between how men and women choose to become vegetarian/vegan”.)

The sad thing about this study is that her social agenda gets in the way of what could have been a fascinating look at veganism and personal interactions. Could it be, for example, that male vegans tend to use rational arguments for their choice because they’re most often defending themselves against men, and therefore know that an emotion-based defense won’t work? While I do get negative push-back from women, I’ve found it’s much more common from other men.

In any case, she stated that in most instances the men showed up not knowing if the interview would be pro or anti-vegetarian, and a fair number of the men she spoke to came with a defensive mindset. They likely came prepared to debate, which would normally rely on rationalism over emotion. Also, if they were the type of men who have only emotional reasons, would they be as likely to volunteer for such an interview in the first place?

Oddly enough, the majority of the pro-meat arguments I hear in such discussions tend to be emotion-based, which she completely doesn’t consider her study (for, I suspect, obvious reason). She didn’t attempt to speak to any meat-eating males to see how they justify their choices. She clearly went into this with the assumption that male vegetarians would choose to be so for the same reasons she is and, when failing to find what she expected decided to simply base all her conclusions on that instead of backing up, refining, redefining, or expanding her study and trying again like we’re taught in every science class I’ve ever taken. As a result she misses a tremendous opportunity to really learn something rather than just create a new form of masculinity to despise.

But overall, I have to question the “scientific” moniker attached to this study (granted, that may have been entirely FoxNews’s choice of words). I saw very little to suggest any real scientific rigor. What’s worse, I saw nothing to suggest that, for someone who is supposedly pro-vegan, she was looking to make veganism more inclusive. I suppose it’s human nature, but in my own experience vegans are not overly inclusive. Far too many see it as another opportunity to virtue signal and exclude. You have to do it for the right reasons. You have to be 100% compliant. You have to share other similar, yet unrelated, beliefs.

They’re not all that way, of course. But enough are to a sufficient degree that it turns people off. And, quite frankly, I don’t see a purely emotion-based appeal as being effective. If it were, there’d be a lot more vegetarians. Rather than excluding male vegans as impure, Mycek and others should be welcoming everyone who chooses the lifestyle, regardless of their reasons. Unfortunately, Mycek seems mostly to be interested in complaining that men aren’t women.

So it seems Gal Gadot posted a tweet regarding the passing of Stephen Hawking in which she expressed the sentiment that he would no longer be restricted by his ALS-stricken body. Immediately the Eternal Personhood of Eternal Outrage went on the offensive, calling her able-ist and Zionist (I’m not sure why this would be relevant to the discussion) for implying that he might have preferred not to be crippled.

While I understand their concerns to a degree, they are as usual reading far too much into what would normally be a heartfelt expression of loss and a hope for something positive. Certainly Hawking was not and should not be defined or evaluated based on his disease. Certainly his worth as a human being cannot be calculated solely on his disease–or even his response to it.

But to take offense at suggesting a person might be happier being freed from that disease, or to have not contracted it in the first place? Gal Gadot is not the warped one here. The EPEO may as well declare that cancer just happens and there’s no point in whining about it. In fact, by their apparent thinking, even committing funding to researching cures for diseases like cancer and ALS is able-ist–they’re implying victims are just as well off as those without it, so why even try to prevent it?

Am I going to extremes here? Perhaps, but no more extreme than getting upset with someone who imagines that someone with such a disease might not have enjoyed every minute of it and may actually have wished for something better.

No one was implying that Hawking or anyone else with physical limitations are any less of a person because of those limitations. No one was implying that those people’s accomplishment are in any way diminished by their limitations. Gadot was just imagining that Hawking might just enjoy not having those limitations.

I can only wonder how many of the EPEO have ever changed their hair color, applied cosmetics, started an exercise program, changed their diet, or selected clothing specifically for its figure-enhancing features. Are those not a suggestion that their life could be better by changing some aspect of the physical cards dealt them?

But that’s not the most insidious aspect of this whole incident. This is part of a larger, more disturbing pattern: How dare any of us assume we know what will make another person happy? How dare any of us assume that any sort of sentiment might be even remotely universal? According to the EPEO, it seems, we should never attempt to wish anyone well in any way, shape or form because that makes assumptions that might be erroneous. Sad that Hawking is dead? You’re assuming he didn’t want to die! Should we instead be glad Hawking is dead? How can you know he didn’t want to live?

The bottom line they are racing toward is this: don’t speak to anyone for anything other than to convey information. Period. Any attempt to convey emotion, sentiment, or opinion, however well-intentioned, is potentially damaging (unless it’s the EPEO doing so, of course–they are never in the wrong).

These people just don’t get it. Yes, it’s possible that someone may inadvertently be offended. Everyone has their limits. While I likely take it well if someone wished me a Happy Hanukah, Feliz Cinco De Mayo, or even a fine Solstice Rituals Day, I suppose I might be disturbed if someone wished me a Happy “Your Mother Didn’t Terminate Your Fetus Like She Should Have” Day, and I might question the sincerity of the person expressing the sentiment.

But while it’s conceivable that some people with ALS might not like such a sentiment as Gadot’s, is it really that inconceivable that there might be just as many who would? Is it really so bad that she played the odds a little that the majority of those with ALS might actually appreciate being free of it? Is it so bad to attempt to console those mourning the loss of someone with ALS with the thought that death might have a bright side?

These EPEOs are certainly banking on general good will when they presume to speak for people with ALS. They don’t seem to consider that their generalizations might not be appreciated. They fail to imagine that such railings against those who clearly had good intentions only undermines their own cause.

I recently participated in an online conversation, however brief, in which a young woman appeared to posit that “offense” was the vehicle by which beneficial change occurs. If enough people are offended by something, she seemed to be saying, they will band together and bring about revolution, making the world a better place. While she was not entirely wrong, she offered no delineation between “good offense” and “bad offense”. I can assume she didn’t mean to imply that those who find homosexual behavior offensive, for example, would be right to gather enough compatriots together to bring about revolution and eliminate homosexual behavior. Taking offense is by no means intrinsically good. While sometimes it benefits society to eliminate the thing that is offensive, more often than not society is best served by simply not taking offense at all.

Life is not all about avoiding offense. It’s a rare person who cannot be offended. We can all pretty much assume we will be offended at some point–even deliberately. It’s just part of life. We won’t fix it by becoming even more sensitive. We won’t change it by being ready to destroy anyone who so much as looks at us cross-eyed. We won’t make the world a better place by putting everyone on the defense to the point they’re reluctant to speak at all. But that’s where the EPEO want to take us.

I don’t want to go there. I see nothing desirable in their vision for the world. In stamping out all chances of causing offense we stamp out any chance of meaningful connections as well. The world is not served by continual, relentless hyper-sensitivity.