CSotD: Don’t read, just click
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Stone Soup has been addressing the issue of civilized behavior this week, as Val attempts to take her daughters to a restaurant at which food is served on plates instead of wrapped in paper.
This sets off one of my pet rants, which (A) is that we are allowing our children to be raised Tarzan-like, by apes, or perhaps Mowgli-like, by wolves, and which (B) I expressed very well nearly a year ago. You should read that, because it describes the lack of social anchors with which our kids grow up.
Thing is, this restaurant, so far, is not a particularly "formal setting" in the sense of a half-dozen forks and a waiter in a tux hovering over one of three tables he will be serving.
That may be coming, but, at this stage, they are simply at a somewhat upscale restaurant that would be nice but unremarkable in an earlier era.
Or, from the kids' point of view, on the surface of Mars.
Read that rant. I'll try to go short on verbiage to compensate.
Never miss a good chance to shut up
Speaking of things about which you should simply click the link and read, I consider myself a feminist, but that doesn't mean I've got much to say about all this, and I take comfort in the ambivalence Sarah Laing brings to it. She's such a sensible woman that, if she's wrestling with it, I don't feel so bad that I'm having trouble, too.
Back in the 70s, in the early days, there were some mixed messages ricocheting around.
There was, for instance, an awkward moment while we all recalibrated, so that getting to a door or a drinking fountain simultaneously did not automatically result in the guy allowing the woman to go first, but, then again, sometimes letting the other person go first is a sign of good manners, not of sexism, and guys sometimes defer to each other, too.
That monumental issue seems to have faded quietly into the background, giving way to non-sexist elements of age and who is carrying a package and so forth.
And I feel confident about holding out on this one: Liberation does not mean "also getting to behave like an ass."
Well, okay, it does. But even back in 1975, when SNL did the "female construction workers harass male passersby" bit, it was kind of a tired throwaway that has not freshened with age, and, for all the times throwing a drink in somebody's face is used on TV and in movies as some sort of sign of self-respect, it is an act of violence, not a sign of independence.
But there will always be people who don't get it. Today, the men who don't get it and the women who don't get it have achieved equality. They are equally clueless.
Meanwhile, sexuality is the third rail that smart men have learned to avoid, since all we know about it is that we apparently don't get it.
Part of it is our somewhat basic approach to clothing: If I'm wearing an NFL jersey, I kind of expect that someone might strike up a conversation about football, but I understand that some women wear outfits to the office that look like outfits you'd wear to a singles bar and I should shut up anyway or we're all going to have to go to a mandatory meeting and watch a PowerPoint presentation.
The fact that, to us, it seems like blaming a cat for chasing the laser pointer around the room is … well, a good opportunity to shut the hell up and let the women hash this one out.
I thought Sinead's original letter was a wise, affectionate and certainly well-intentioned message from someone who had been through a lot herself and had some hard-knock lessons to share, but what the hell do I know?
Here's what I know: The whole sexuality/feminism thing is beyond me, but I know about cartoons, and, as far as the cartooning thing goes, it's over.
Twerking cartoons are officially yesterday. Stop drawing them right now. They aren't funny and they certainly aren't witty or clever.
Rico has posted to Facebook what he declares to be, and what I agree ought to be, absolutely the last cartoon ever on this whole foolish topic:
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