Liminal states

CNN’s Peter-Sorel Cameron asks the sixty-four thousand dollar question and really goes out on a limb with his conclusion: “No one really knows what to expect, apart from three legends of heavy rock playing some of the best music in the genre.”   Headline numbers include the 11,000,000 people signed up for a chance for tickets, and average age of band-members: 61 ,
still less than the Stones’ mean age [his term not mine] of 63.25 and Dylan’s “turning 67 in 2008”.

Continuing the theme for the day, I was looking at a couple of abstracts from Christian Jarret’s excellent BPS Research Digest:

• Why do some men insult their partners? concludes “men who habitually insult their wives or girlfriends do so, somewhat paradoxically, as part of a broader strategy to prevent them from leaving for someone else – what evolutionary psychologists call ‘mate retention'”

• Does your boyfriend let you out of his sight? suggests that “certain male behaviours tended to be associated with the use of violence against women.” The ones they discussed in the summary are pretty much what you’d expect: “men who were violent toward their partners also tended to use emotional manipulation (e.g. threatening to hurt themselves if their partner left them), to monopolise their partner’s time (e.g. not letting her go out without them), and/or to punish their partner’s infidelity (e.g. by becoming angry when she flirted with anyone else).” By contrast, ‘mate retention behaviors’ such as telling your partner “I love you” and spending lots of money on her* is associated with a lack of violence.

[The mate retention inventory (.doc file) makes interesting reading … too bad there’s nothing in the digest summary about the assocations of “56. Wore my partner’s clothes in front of others”. I’d really like to check out the full paper … alas, at $29.00 for the online copy, it can wait until I get to a library. But I digress.]

Of course, whether or not it’s linked to physical violence, as a mate retention behavior, insulting the other person clearly has the goal and effect of tearing down their self-esteem. So do quite a few others others on the list, such as ’17. Told other men terrible things about my partner so that they wouldn’t like her’ and the first batch of the ones listed above. By contrast things like ’58. Complimented my partner on her appearance’ and the second batch (“I love you/will spend money on you”) show appreciation and are more likely to be done in a way that builds self-esteem. My guess would be that there would be a general correlation between self-esteem-destroying mechanisms and violence … it’d be interesting to see the data. I wonder if the authors would make an anonymized version of their data available?

Anyhow. Two thought-provoking pieces of research, and an interesting synergy. Other thoughts welcome.

jon

* although presumably these results largely generalize in a gender- and orientation-independent way!

Today’s the last of the 16 days of activism against gender violence and so I wanted to highlight December’s Carnival against sexual violence, hosted by abyss2hope. Categories include legal, media watch, personal stories, raising awareness, research, and my fave solutions, which has a link off to shakesville’s excellent What Men Can Do.

A few especially worth highlighting (all previously from Kevin‘s list on A Call to Men):

1. Acknowledge and understand how sexism, male dominance and male privilege lay the foundation for all forms of violence against women.

2. Examine and challenge our individual sexism and the role that we play in supporting men who are abusive.

3. Recognize and stop colluding with other men by getting out of our socially defined roles, and take a stance to end violence against women.

4. Remember that our silence is affirming. When we choose not to speak out against men’s violence, we are supporting it.

Well said. Actually, they’re all worth highlighting; and worth reading in context, so please do.

Thoughts on these recommendations, the rest of the article, other articles in the Carnival, related topics?

An anonymous commenter on Mini patronizingly critiqued me for “airing dirty laundry” about Microsoft on a public forum under the guise of a “helpful” warning me that “my new employer” might have second thoughts about me because I’d presumably “do it to them as well”. (See the thread for the full language and context — it’s near the end.)

Especially in context, it’s one of those comments that’s fascinating on so many levels, and representative of certain kinds of thinking that it’s well worth analyzing. Where to start?

First of all, it’s kind of bizarre and very amusing to critique me for “airing dirty laundry” in a thread that starts with Mini’s saying “What does it take to be disappeared from Microsoft? We can only guess one day Stuart Scott was walking outside of his building when a black Escalade with VI0L8R plates pulled up, Ken DiPetrio swung open a door and said, ‘Get in.'” So no matter what the poster thinks of my argument, he’s shooting himself* in the foot by framing his critiques in this way. In an environment where people value transparency, “airing dirty laundry” is something that’s generally seen as a good thing. Putting me completely aside, showing his lack of understanding while unnecessarily dissing and devaluing whistleblowers and all the people who *do* see appropriate airing of dirty laundry as potentially in the company’s best interests (like Mini and his/her/their fans) isn’t a good way of starting an argument.

For his goal of criticizing my behavior, rather than using the vague and loaded term “dirty laundry” it would have been better for him to be more concrete about what he thought I had done that was against Microsoft’s interests. Making blustering and sneering implications like he did is easier but usually counter-productive, leaving him with a hard time responding when you’re challenged — for example, if he attempts to advance a more concrete argument now he risks looking defensive.

Lots more to cover, including the reason potential future employers at Microsoft and elsewhere would be likely to see this discussion as a positive rather than counting against me (quick summary: it embodies positive transparency and empowers employees by helping them understand existing processes), why the “let me explain” framing similarly backfires, the hegemonic effects of devaluing personal experience, and of course gender issues.

To be continued,

jon

* Or, potentially, if the poster’s a she, shooting herself in the foot. Since the communication style here has several pattern that are much more common among males, I’ll use male pronouns for simplicity; so whenever you see “he” in relation to the poster, please mentally translate to “the poster, whatever gender he and/or she might be” or something like that.

Ann Rostow’s excellent Bay Times article gives details and context. After transwoman Diane Schroer was denied a job at Congressional Research Service when she told them she would be reporting at work as a female,

Schroer sued in federal court under the aforementioned Title VII, alleging that her job was revoked due to impermissible sex discrimination. The government asked U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson to dismiss the suit, based on the fact that Title VII doesn’t ban discrimination based on transgenderism. Judge Robertson declined, pointing out that Price Waterhouse [the 1989 Supreme Court precedent] might apply, and also wondering in a court memo whether Title VII’s ban on “sex” discrimination might be interpreted to ban discrimination against transgendered people based simply on the plain language of the statute….

The bottom line is good news for Schroer. Robertson ruled that her suit could proceed based on the possibility that she could prevail under Price Waterhouse and its ban on gender stereotyping. But Robertson then rejected the idea that Title VII might outlaw trans bias on its face. Why? Because of the trans-less ENDA that recently passed the House of Representatives.

“At the time of my 2006 opinion,” wrote Robinson, referring to his initial memo on the case, “there was no relevant legislative history as to Title VII’s relationship to discrimination on the basis of sexual identity. That is no longer the case. In recent months, a bill that would have banned employment discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity was introduced in the House of Representatives. An alternate bill that prohibited discrimination only on the basis of sexual orientation was also introduced. The House ultimately passed the version that banned discrimination only on the basis of sexual orientation.

“…Even in an age when legislative history has been dramatically devalued as a tool for statutory interpretation,” Robertson went on, “one proceeds with caution when even one house of Congress has deliberated on a problem and, mirabile dictu, negotiated a compromise solution.”

Ouch. So much for the argument against trans inclusion on the grounds that transfolk are already protected. Thanks, Barney Frank (and thanks, HRC) for a ‘compromise solution’ that compromises existing protections.

jon

In  a comment in the Power vectors thread, Vanita said:

You were useless (I met with you several times at Microsoft) and it looks like you still are. I am glad to hear you are gone – it made no sense for Microsoft to pay you a hefty salary given the “work” you were doing. All this high level bullshit…

I let the comment through because it’s a great illustration of the kinds of attitude and environment that’s disappointingly common at Microsoft these days, unwilling to take the time to understand new ideas and so threatened by anything “high level” that might actually lead to a change in the system, that the response is to hide behind the cloak of anonymity to spread around virulent negative abuse in completely inappropriate situations.  Yeah, that’ll help.

Imagine working in an environment where this kind of behavior is widely tolerated.  When I was at Microsoft, I got reactions similar to this from maybe 5-10% of the people, and so on large mailing lists or with the 200+ people who attended a mashup the odds were extremely high that somebody would jump in with some garbage like this — with superficially more polite phrasing if their names were associated with it, but still the same mix of knee-jerk uncomprehending rejection and personal attack.

And bear in mind the impact this has not just on the person receiving the abuse (me), but all those witnessing it.  No wonder so many people at Microsoft are unhappy and frustrated.

I just made my first HTML comment here, at the end of the Lorelei experiment, pointing to its continuation with Leone (the theme not the director).  w00t w00t!

It’s not at all obvious but by default WordPress blogs are set up to allow HTML in comments. There’s no preview feature or WYSIWIG editor though so it’s a little nervewracking to post something with formatting in it … I think I’ve got the ability to edit comments so I can always clean things up if need be.

[This is by the way an excellent example of a technology-imposed power differentiation between the original poster and commenters.  While it’s not inherent in the blog format, and some systems avoid it (ezBoard and Joomla/Community Builder for example, using bbcode instead of HTML), it exists to a fairly large extent in most implementations:   Sharepoint by default has HTML disabled in the comments and a huge differential in font size — and doesn’t have preview; Blogger allows just a subset of HTML and doesn’t allow editing after the comments are submitted; etc.   But I digress.]

Of course once I had posted the comment I discovered that it wasn’t strictly-speaking necessary; WordPress had auto-generated a trackback from my continuation post, and even managed to extract a very useful summary.  Impressive.  What I really want is a combination of the two, both the explicitness of “story continued here” and the quick summary to be able to read in place and see whether to follow the link … that should be equally easy to generate automagically.

Looking closely at this reveals another power differential: links in posts get these kinds of trackbacks generated, but links in comments don’t.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing [there are a lot more comments than posts, so autogenerating this for links in comments might overwhelm threads with these notifications — and the comment-spam problem would be magnified hugely] but there is an asymmetry.

Or as they say in the What Kind of Postmodernist Are you?  quiz: “Foucault.  It all starts with Foucault.”

“a lovely theme by Amsterdamn“. alas, it shares the “tiny font” weakness of Leone. it’s two-column layout is clean (and has a blogroll, unlike orchid) although Leone’s three-column layout has more useful information and navigation options on the screen. and it certainly responds to the points that Adam made in the Leone thread: black text on white background, and noticeably more pink.

maybe this is a good time for me to learn how to tweak font sizes in CSS files.

James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague have a good short article in the most recent McKinsey Quarterly (free registration required*). The categories include managing relationships (for example, “extracting more value out of interactions” and “using consumers as innovators”, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways. Clearly written, and solid references. I worked a lot with Kara (and a little bit with Roger) on some of the early Ad Astra projects a year or two ago and so for me it’s doubly nice to see these broader perspectives.

The dividing lines between some of these aren’t quite clear: does the discussion of TopCoder belong under “distributed cocreation”, “tapping worldwide talent”, or a generalization of “using consumers as innovators”? And applying similar ideas within a corporation starts to relate to the discussions of innovation under “using more science as innovation”. Similarly Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation and Florida’s Creative Class work span multiple trends. A different way of looking at it though is that artificiality of the distinctions highlights both the linkages between the trends they identify, and the importance of viewing them holistically: the combination of the trends opens up even more interesting possibilities.

* Update, 1/15/2008: for those who don’t want to register and expose yourself to Mckinseyesque spam [no, I don’t want a premium subscription, thank you very much] Pierre De Vries excerpts the categories and references on Deep Freeze 9.

by Lisa Kazo of Lorelei Web Design.  Usually, when I think of Lorelei, my head spins all around; then again, I do like the three-column layout and color scheme, so it’s worth a try.  Comments welcome.

There were a couple of interesting articles about this year’s presidential election in this month’s Atlantic.

Andrew Sullivan suggests in Goodbye to all that that Obama’s real significance is that “unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.” Putting aside for the moment the question of why Atlantic isn’t embarrassed to be paying and promoting Sullivan, it’s an article well worth reading for many reasons.

In the first section think Sullivan does an excellent job describing several dimensions of divisiveness and the general sense by the vast majority that we’re ready to get beyond that — I remember dignitarian Robert Fuller saying a similar thing after his All Rise book tour over a year ago and so it’s nice to see that it’s now getting accepted even by the testosterone crowd.

For me it started to go off the rails for a bunch of reasons at the paragraph starting with “of the viable national candidates…” Who is Sullivan to be judging who’s “viable”? What affect does his restriction to “Obama and possibly McCain” have on the rest of the discussion? At this stage, how could anybody possibly view McCain as a transformational candidate of healing? And so on. By the time we get to “What does he offer? First and foremost: his face.” — laid out at the top of a page, no less, to highlight its importance — it’s unusually revealing: of Sullivan’s blinders, and of how deeply cultural norms frame our discourse. Too bad there wasn’t discussion of the very challenging intersectional issues related to race and orientation; I would have thought progress here is key to getting beyond our divides, and Sullivan apparently not only doesn’t see it that way, but doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning.  Revealing indeed.

Hey, I said it was worth reading, I didn’t say I thought it was a good article.

Marc Ambinder’s subscriber’s-only Teacher and Apprentice by contrast is a great piece, fully living up to its billing as a “story of nasty surprises, dueling war rooms, and the Drudge Report.” I thought the author did a great job of presenting both perspectives, putting the question of media coverage squarely on the table, and highlighting the challenge Obama faces trying to go the (relatively) high road. How to defend onesself against unfair accusations and framing, how to call out your opponents spin and sometimes outright lies, without looking like you’re “going negative” yourself? How to get real discussion of this in a situation where most media is either co-opted, colluding, racist, or hostile?

The idea of Drudge and the Clintons, together again for the first time, is well worth calling out in the subhead. Do the Clintons really believe this kind of alliance is good either for the causes they believe in, or the party they claim to care so much about? And it’s a nice tie between the articles by illustrating Obama’s transformational bridge-building possibilities: these enemies and ideologically-opposed men and women who have fought so bitterly in the past have indeed joined forces in response to him. Yay! Let’s all hold hands, sing folk songs, and go negative — just like Matt used to do to you!

And at the meta-level, it’s really disappointing to see Sullivan’s (intellectually shoddy, blatantly racist, from a conservative standpoint) piece being freely-available, while Ambinder’s (well-thought-out, noticeably more conscious, from a neutral-to-progressive standpoint) article is locked behind subscriber’s-only walls. Oh well. At least it’s an unusually stark example of how restricting IP invariably leads to a situation where views and people favoring the entrenched power base get preferential treatments to dissenting views.

I went out last night to see Anthony Pappa at Scott Carelli’s Satellite, “bringing you the best underground DJs in the middle of the week for 5 years.”  I always feel so lucky when I get to see somebody of his caliber in such a small venue, and the crowd was great, very diverse, there to dance and hang out with their friends.  His set was a lot like his Global Underground mixes (which were the first ones of his I heard).   As usual I woke up the next day feeling clean, relaxed and energized.  Heck yeah.