Sparkly and clean - for now

Awhile ago I had a battle with pigeons on my balcony.  They were roosting in groups, laid an egg in a flower pot, and had thoroughly coated the balcony with poop.  I pulled all the balcony funiture inside to deny them hiding spots, and they stopped coming by.

A few days ago I decided it was time to get things looking shiny out there again.

After four rounds of mopping, two rounds of sweeping, and two rounds of poop scrubbing, the place finally looks good again.  Getting the railing windows clean was tricky!  I could squeegee the top 80% of the outside, but that last 20% was going to involve significant risk of going over the edge.  Wendy and I managed to do a passable job my bending our arms under the railing though.

And now I can spend some of my quarantine time doing this:

Critter likes hanging out in the sun, and he likes sitting on people, so this is two of his favourite things combined together.  I love being naked, and I love sitting in the heat, but unfortunately people get all flustered when I am naked, so I have a minimal amount of clothing on to avoid confrontations... but I do have the sun on my skin and a fuzzy critter, so all is well.

And now the weather service has announced an upcoming shift towards unseasonably colder weather again.  Bring on the heat, I say!

Here's hoping that with the balcony furniture back outside again we don't get a return of the pigeons.  Neither side will prosper in that particular war.

Learning from disaster

The ongoing crisis has taught me some things.  While I hang out at home a lot, I apparently chafe at the requirement of staying home.  I suppose that isn't unusual, but present circumstances certainly bring it into stark relief.  I also discovered that while I support substantial restrictions on our collective behaviour to combat covid-19, some of them really grind on me.

Throughout my life a lot of things I try to do have been criticized by people under the umbrella of 'safety'.  Going barefoot, you can't do that because safety!  Polyamory, you can't do that, because safety!  Marijuana, you can't use that, because safety!

My usual response to this is to bristle with indignation and then swing back, hard.  I tend to go on about how those same people yelling about safety happily support all kinds of things that are drastically more dangerous, and argue that their real issue with my behaviour is simply that I am doing something different than they are used to, but they fall back on 'safety' when they have no real arguments.

Sometimes I don't have time for debating the topic and my response boils down to

FUCK YOU I DO WHAT I WANT.

It turns out the restrictions on behaviour because of Covid-19 push my buttons because of this.  I agree that I should stay at home, and I agree that we must endure inconvenience to make grocery shopping less likely to transmit diseases, and I agree with most the things we are doing.

But damn when authorities tell me how to live because 'safety' my instinct is to snarl and tell them to get bent.

Even though those arguments from safety are well grounded these days I have gotten so used to safety being thrown around as a catch all for 'I have no actual reasons or data' that it really winds me up.

This came up in regards to grocery store population caps.  Recently I was really grumpy after a grocery store visit where the security person enforcing store population sat on his phone ignoring everything and occasionally looked up and motioned a random bunch of people into the grocery store.  The cashiers were standing around bored because the security guard wasn't keeping enough people in the store, and the people waiting in the enormous line were standing close together, often chatting with one another.  Keeping us all in line was simply increasing the danger to all of us, not just wasting our time but also *increasing* our risk. 

It bothers me to restrict people's behaviour for no gain, but it *really* burns my bridge when regulations in the name of safety actually make things worse.  It is a tough thing to argue though, because I actually support greater safety measures that are effective, and if I argue against restrictions people will naturally assume I am in denial of some kind, or that I buy into the 'let all the old people die to save the stock market' thing.

While I don't think I will come out of this mess with new skills, I suspect I will end up at least learning a few things about myself.

Folks hate trash

Earlier in July I went to my first music festival - the Hillside folk music festival near Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  I had heard stories from friends about the festival but they didn't give me a good sense of what it would be like because the stories all started with "Person X got SO HIGH" and then proceeded to detail the antics that followed.  Watching people who are way too high be ridiculous can be fun and all but I imagined that there must be more to the experience than that.

Other people really took the preparation thing way more seriously than I did.  They listened to all the bands ahead of time to figure out which ones they wanted to hear, made careful schedules with each act ranked in a priority system, and had playlists built of everything they would likely hear at the festival.

I just showed up figuring I would listen to stuff that sounded good and go find something else if it sounded bad.

My strategy worked fine!  I don't care that much about music so just wandering around listening to what seemed good to me was successful.  You might wonder why a person that doesn't much care about music would go to a music festival, and the answer is that I wanted to hang out with the people I went with and I wanted to try something new.  In the end my response was predictable - I thought the music was fine but no big deal, I quite enjoyed the company, and now I know what a music festival is like.

One thing that greatly surprised me was the amount of trash at the festival.  I worked a couple of rock concerts as cleanup crew when I was a teenager and the result of those concerts was disgusting.  I recall the floor of the concert hall being slick with goo composed of sweat, beer, piss, and who knows what else.  The entire place was filled with sharp, shattered bits of plastic stuck to the floor by that tacky goo and it was revolting, as well as hideously difficult to clean up properly.  That disaster was created in only a few hours so I expected a music festival that goes over three days to be much worse.  I had images in my head of wading through drifts of trash and dodging puddles of vomit.

It wasn't remotely like that.  Hillside is run by a bunch of people with serious environmentalist leanings so all the cutlery and plates were reusable and they had volunteers washing them.  Everyone got a mug to use to drink with, and no disposable cups were available.  At the end of the three day festival I looked under the tables as saw an average of one piece of trash per table, which is mind boggling coming from my experiences younger in life.  I was extremely impressed with the operation, and surprised at what they had accomplished.  It takes a lot of organization and will to make this sort of thing happen.

There certainly were people who were drunk and high but it wasn't a problem.  Going back to those rock concerts of my youth, I recall drunk men moshing and screaming and trashing everything.  It must have been terrifying for some people - I was big enough that it was bizarre but not frightening.  But Hillside people displayed their drunkenness by asking lots of questions about my tattoos and being overly friendly before wandering off... hardly a problem.

At one point the sky opened and the rain came thundering down, forcing all the people to huddle under tents to wait it out.

Well, not *all* the people.  I just walked out into the rain clad in just my kilt and stood there, arms outstretched, letting the fury of the storm slam into me.  I closed my eyes and just stood soaking up the rain, feeling it hammer onto my body.  When I opened my eyes I had acquired three disciples who were standing in a row with me matching my stance, enjoying the rain.  They told me that they were hiding from the rain and when they saw me revelling in it all they realized I had it right, everyone else had it wrong, and it was time to stand in the rain.

Glorious.

I went barefoot throughout most of the weekend and ended up with a splinter in my foot.  A quick trip to the first aid tent sorted that out, and I learned that the first aid tent was mostly a place for people with foot injuries to get help.  I guess there are a lot of barefoot hippies like me at this particular festival - no real surprise there.

My nipples are a terrifying thing

Today there were new signs in my building's workout room.  They said all the usual things about being quiet and not damaging stuff, but there were two new clauses tacked on at the end.  One said that everyone must wear proper shoes while using the equipment, and the other said that everyone must be properly clothed in a Tshirt or exercise clothing.  I HATE the word proper.  It can die in a fire.

My nipples are at fault.

I have been working out barefoot for almost three years now, so that isn't the thing that has prompted this new grasp at power by a bored bureaucrat.  The difference is that over the past few months I have occasionally gone shirtless while lifting in the weight room.  Normally I am alone, and sometimes I get so sticky and hot during my routine I shuck my shirt.  A few people have walked in, and while none of them have said anything, obviously somebody was extremely frightened and offended at my nipples and they complained to the authorities.

Nipples are terrifying as fuck, y'all.

Before anyone starts excusing this nonsense let us be clear:  My shirt, by the end of my routine, is soaked.  My bodily goo is getting all over everything no matter whether or not I have a shirt on.  Women often wear sports bras as their only top, and nobody is complaining on that account.  This is purely a nipple issue.

I know what will happen if I protest this.  I have been down this road before.  They will make noises about 'safety' and cluck disapprovingly about disease.  This is the standard nonsense people spew when anyone does something outside social norms, because it masquerades as concern, when in fact it is purely classist bullshit.  We don't want *those* sorts of people in our building, they think, and those undesirable types must be full of disease and filth.

It is the same whether or not I am trying to go without shoes, be polyamorous, or not wear a shirt.  People assume that because it is weird that anyone doing it must be filthy and dangerous, and they don't even bother with a cursory examination of their reasons.

But you can't fight city hall.  They can enforce any bullshit ruleset they want, and nothing I say is going to convince the condo board that my right to dress how I like is as important as other people's right to tell me how to dress.

One good thing though is that when you are replete with rage, full to the brim with fury, and consumed with a desire for righteous vengeance, doing your workout routine is easy as hell.  I tore through those reps like they were NOTHING.

Standing oddly

My workout routine has given me a lot of things to think about.  One of those things is "Holy crap it is hard to get six pack abs."  Seriously!  I started off doing three sets of crunches, 20 per set.  Now I am up to 120 crunches per set, and I can feel the difference.  My stomach is so much stronger, and when I poke myself I can feel the muscle underneath, shaped exactly like a superhero six pack.  Those muscles are there.

But on the surface?  Nothing.  No change.  My body doesn't bulk up easily in any case, but apparently six pack abs are a pipe dream for me.  Now I have to figure out if I was doing all those crunches for core strength or just vanity, because if it is just vanity it was for no gain.

The other thing that is weird is how people react to me being stronger.  I don't look much different (adding 10 pounds of muscle on a 175 pound frame is a little noticeable when I am naked, but not much of a thing when clothed) but sometimes people figure out the differences and then everything becomes odd.

I was up at the cottage and people were talking about what to do with a really big rock that was sitting near the dock, somewhat in the way.  Apparently my brother in law and father in law had tried together to move it and couldn't budge it, so people were tossing around ideas for what could be done.

Of course I suggested that I could just move the rock myself, and people laughed and told me it was impossible.

Naturally this meant that I would push myself to the point of injury to move the bloody thing.

I got a good look at the rock, and upon closer inspection I was pretty sure I could not move it.  At the time I took a rough stab that it weighed 700 pounds, but honestly I don't know.  I couldn't wrap my arms around it, not even close, so I jumped into the water, grabbed the rock, and put Passion in charge.

I think this must be a weird experience for other people.  Passion, when trying to do something physical, is perfectly happy to grunt, groan, scream, and howl.  This seems to help, but I think it is quite at odds with my normal Director behaviour.

I am about 80% stronger than I was before my workouts started, so it is entirely plausible that I am stronger than brother and father in law, but I also have the advantage that I am only one person so I don't have somebody else to get in my way.  However, the rock was at the absolute edge of my capabilities, and I could feel my whole body straining and creaking with the load.  Over the course of a couple of minutes I managed to roll the rock over four times and get it to an appropriate resting place.

It felt wonderful.  I was filled to the brim with adrenaline, tingling from top to bottom.  My body hurt, but it hurt so good.  My arms were bruised and cut but all I could feel was victory.  The thrill of overcoming a challenge just poised at the edge of possible is wonderful, doubly so when surrounded by people who five minutes ago were assuring me it was beyond my capabilities.

For the next day my lower back and right shoulder were a bit sore and my arms are pretty nearly healed now, but otherwise there were no casualties.  However, minor injuries were not the interesting result.  The neat thing was how different people were around me.

It was generally really small, tiny differences in stance or attitude.  Something that an outside observer would never notice, because it required a lot of experience to realize.  People were acting differently based on the fact that I am stronger than before.  They stood next to me in ways that were shifted, somehow.  They spoke to me in phrases that just had something tiny different in them, but not so much different that I could articulate it.  That change in perception altered all of the ways that I relate to people, and did it in a way that is barely detectable... but definitely exists.  I only noticed the difference after people saw me move the rock, so I don't think it is attributable to me acting in a new way, it seems it really is just other people changing their models of who I am.

I think this is a major blind spot for me.  I haven't changed much in my life.  My mode of dress, presentation, size, and other basic factors have remained the same by and large.  Compared to many people I am static, both physically and otherwise, so I wouldn't be exposed to sudden shifts in the way I am viewed or treated very often.  People who have gone through much greater changes like, for example, coming out as gay or transitioning in terms of gender would have a grasp of this that I lack completely.

In theory I might have been treated differently when I came out as polyamorous, but since I had been out to many people in my life before the official coming out day on this blog it is a hard thing to measure.  My relatives might well have treated me slightly differently, but if you only see someone once every couple of years you can't detect such a shift unless it is blatant, and it never was.

I suppose I have seen this in one very stark way - going barefoot.  That is an easily changed thing, but definitely shifted people's reactions radically from polite indifference to overt hostility in only moments.

This all shouldn't surprise me - I change who I am slightly, and others react in minor but noticeable ways.  It was an unusual thing in my life though, and it gave me a peek into how challenging it must be to make changes that radically alter how other people see and treat you.

It does make me wonder how these differences would play out based on obvious and not obvious strength.  If I had huge arms would it matter more?  Are the greatest differences associated with the appearance of strength, or the actual application?  I wish I knew.

Oh my feet

For several years now I have been going barefoot throughout the warmer half of the year.  There have been plenty of issues with this, nearly all of which have been based around other people reacting to my bare feet with irrational rage.  It is very hard when someone dresses in a way you aren't expecting, you see, and the only reasonable way to deal with that confusion is to lash out at them for daring to challenge your preconceptions.  There are occasionally issues with overly hot road surfaces, pokey bits of gravel, and other physical challenges but those are minor compared to the social blockades people put up when you step outside the lines.

This year I have only gone barefoot three times.  Spring is the ideal time for it as it is warm enough to be comfortable but the roads are not yet able to burn me.  Despite that I just haven't been in the mood to fight with people about my mode of dress and so I have been wearing sandals nearly all the time.  I like being barefoot generally speaking but I don't actually relish the confrontations that go along with it, despite the attitude I often display around it.  I want people to stop being assholes about policing my footwear but I don't take joy in their indignation and bitterness being directed my way.  I just feel like it is a thing worth changing.

I have felt distracted, tired, and uninterested in fighting this spring.  That might be due to me getting less sleep than usual because of my new raiding schedule, or maybe it is my generally higher level of busyness.  I can't say for sure, but I have definitely been slipping on my shoes because I just don't want another showdown about it.

It makes me sad to be this way.  I want to be the fearless crusader, a neverending font of energy and vim, fighting the good fight at all times and against all foes.  That isn't me right now though, unfortunately.

The shoes aren't the thing, exactly, though obviously I think people's attitude towards shoelessness is ridiculous.  It is the general assumption that people make, the entitlement to tell others how they must dress, that is my real target.  Hard to say if I ever make any real progress that way but that larger goal is important to me and I want to strike at it when I can.

For now though I am going to try to nap more and be more efficient with my time so I can get back to fighting shape.  At the very least I want to have that 'bring it on!' attitude back, regardless of any attention that I get from random shopkeepers eager to send the riffraff on his way.

A little bit of agreement

Though I have not been writing about it much these past couple years I have continued to go about barefoot from spring to fall ever since I started doing so in 2010.  It has become a bit of a thing in the eye of the public though very few people actually go full on barefoot.  Generally they buy minimalist shoes that kind of feel like going barefoot and hope to gain all the benefits without the risk of punctured feet and rude shopkeepers.

538 did a piece rounding up the available research on the topic of minimalist shoes and the general conclusion is that it is probably a good idea for most people but that the data is very limited.  Certainly there are some people that should be using minimalist shoes, some that should be using thick shoes, and for nearly everyone it makes only a small difference.

Generally speaking my experiences with going about barefoot have been positive.  Most of the time I get strange looks and stares but occasionally something more interesting happens.  This summer I was approached twice on the subway by curious people and both times the interaction was pleasant.  One of them wanted to show me pictures of her home country (it was someplace tropical but I can't recall which country) and describe how going barefoot there made so much sense.  The other was worried about talking to me about it because he wasn't sure if I was going barefoot because I couldn't afford shoes or because I disdain to wear them.

I had yet another store hassle me about going barefoot this year though this time they were much more willing to bend.  They talked to me because other customers were complaining that they allowed me in the store with no shoes on.  Seriously people, this is your problem?  That the local grocery store isn't enforcing a dress code and keeping out the weirdos?  First world problems, right there.  At any rate, when I said to the manager of the store "Oh, no worries, I will just shop somewhere else then." they responded by assuring me I could still shop but that they wished I would wear shoes so they wouldn't get more complaints.  Small victories, I suppose.

However, the time for bare feet has passed in Toronto.  It is now definitely too cold for me to do that so I have begun wearing socks and shoes like a chump.  My eclectic habits seem to be piling up as I age - I am going to be one weird ass old man.

Teachable moments

Summer is beginning.  Not truly arrived yet, but its tendrils are slowly grabbing hold of Toronto, tightening their grip, preparing for the beast itself to arrive and smash us with it glorious warmth.  The balcony door is open letting the wind flow through the condo and it is time to wear a lot less clothing.  Especially foot based clothing.

It is time once again to revel in feet freed from the tyranny of socks and shoes and marvel at how angry and upset people get at me for doing so.  Elli has decided that she wants very much to emulate me in this so we have been going about barefoot a lot these past few days.  We were in the grocery store and a random person walked up to us and began to lecture Elli on the dangers of being barefoot, going on and on about how didn't we know there were sharp rocks on the ground and glass and this is just so Dangerous.

Because obviously I can't have thought of that!  Clearly between the person who has never gone barefoot and the person who has gone barefoot the one who has never tried it is the one who knows things.  Moreover being in that position of complete ignorance it is critical to go and yell at a child because clearly that is both polite and justified.  /sarcasm.

However, the random angry person who thought that our clothing was very much their business was useful in providing a great opportunity to try to teach Elli some things.  I talked to Elli about the whole scene and asked if we should listen to the angry person.  She decided that we should not listen because we knew better and that the person was rude for bothering us like that.  I don't know how much deliberate teaching really works in this regard but I hope she can take away that just because some loud buffoon wants you to do things their way there is no compelling reason to do so.

Also having wandered about the city some I noticed that there was a really substantial difference in the way people viewed us.  In midtown where I live people generally look at us like we are freaks and steer away but downtown people saw me and Elli wandering about together barefoot and smiled.  The feeling I got was that folks generally thought the whole scene was heartwarming and cute instead of deviant.  I think I really don't fit in here as much as I did when we first moved in.  That vibrancy and wildness that you see in the city core (intermingled with all the suits, of course) has real appeal - maybe someday I can live closer to there again.

What is weird

I have been watching Black's Books recently.  It is a British comedy about a drunken, crazy bookstore owner and his friends.  They get up to all kinds of wacky hijinks that generally start off with 'so I drank way, way too much wine...'  I found it funny because in some ways the lives of these characters are so absolutely nuts as sitcom character's lives tend to be and they make my life look fairly boring in a lot of respects.  I don't often take a job at a burger joint just so I will have a warm, dry place to spend the night because I locked myself out of my home, for example.  Nor do I end up at friend's houses trying to figure out what horrible thing I did during a drunken stupor at the party the previous evening.  I just don't have that level of bizarre and interesting going on.

Then I got to wondering if maybe I was looking at it all backwards.  Clearly the lives of these characters are very different from my own but I think they are actually closer to the norm in a lot of ways than I am.  (Well, the burger joint story probably isn't.)  I have issues with getting into confrontations with authority figures who can't deal with the fact that I go about barefoot everywhere.  Not a lot of people have that issue.  I get into fights on the internet about the proper way to build an excel simulator for a Retribution Paladin in World of Warcraft.  This is not a thing most people can relate to.  I spend a lot of time arguing about the ethics of various Hanabi strategies and whether or not they make winning the game too easy.  Ethical arguments about cooperative game conventions are *fascinating* by the way.  Also if you play games you should play Hanabi.  It is phenomenal.  (And these are just the weird things I am telling you about... imagine what the rest of my life is like!)

Despite the fact that the characters in Black's Books drink way too much and do completely ludicrous things I think their lives are actually a lot closer to the norm than mine.  Figuring out exactly what stupid thing you did during an alcoholic haze just isn't that weird after all, not next to refusing to wear shoes.  It makes me feel a little bit weird to realize that even though sitcom characters in a ludicrous comedy are really weird I am even weirder than them.  Granted I like being weird and I have no particular interest in trying to be normal and a distinct distaste for trying to *appear* normal but somehow being weirder than those buffoons is a bit unnerving.

The weather is awesome.

The weather lately has been awesome.  20 degree days with empty skies makes for a fantastic time.  It is hot enough to go out in shorts and tshirt but not so hot you can't run, play, and be active very comfortably.  We went to the park today and it was ideal - Elli zipped around on her bike and ran with other kids while I hung out and shot the breeze with some friends.  Sitting in the sun so much got me just a little bit of a burn, enough that I will be stronger against the sun in a day or two.  That first minor burn sets me up for immunity if I do it right!

Of course there are other consequences to great weather.  Your friendly neighborhood noncomformist will tend to decide to crack out the kilt and ditch the shoes.  Thankfully the school has decided to just ignore my bare feet now and thus I can go mostly wherever I want; the only two places that require shoes I really don't need to visit anymore.  This year I am going to try to avoid being macho though and I will endeavour to only go barefoot when it really is more comfortable.  In the past I tended to just power through it with a ralling cry of 'for freedom!' but this year it is all about doing what feels good rather than some kind of potentially misguided cause.

So I bought a skirt

Though it might have seemed impossible that I could stand out even more than I do just by wandering around shoeless I think I have done it.  I went out and bought myself a ridiculously overpriced UtiliKilt and now I can wander around appearing in gender nonconforming clothing while also refusing to wear shoes.  The question is:  Once I have violated one clothing norm does violating one more multiply the crazy, making me appear totally nutty, or does adding on nonconformity hardly matter once you break the barrier once?  I do know for sure that the children at Elli's school were quite taken aback and couldn't seem to decide between questioning me about the kilt or my bare feet.  They were all quite certain that men weren't allowed to wear skirts and that everyone had to wear shoes but which violation was more strange and offensive wasn't clear.

As Sthenno rightly pointed out, this UtiliKilt really does look like I am trying to draw particular attention to my groin with its strategically placed triangle of snaps - I assure you that isn't the intention, though my groin getting extra attention seems like it could provide some nice entertainment value.  Elli was very interested in the snaps and eagerly touched them when she first saw them.  This may have been slightly awkward as I was in a crowded room with her teacher and classmates at the time. I look forward to her introducing me to her dates in high school with "And this is my crazy dad who doesn't wear shoes but does wear skirts... please don't think I'm weird?"  She is going to have so many things to tell her therapist when she gets older!

I apparently have a lot to learn about how to sit down properly with a skirt and probably need to consider how I am going to avoid flashing the public at large during wind gusts and such.  I haven't yet gone commando in my kilt but it seems like a thing that has to be done.  That is how they are supposed to be worn, after all.

I don't know why I am doing the Egyptian.  I had a normal picture with me standing there with a pasted on smile but who puts that kind of boring crap up on the internet?  Goofy or get out.  In closing:  UtiliKilts are awesome, and not just for making other people uncomfortable!

Teenagers and fashion violations

I have been going barefoot a lot this past week.  Two years ago I ended up being forced to wear shoes at Elli's school due to 'health concerns' but I have given up on obedience and decided to risk a telling off.  So far, no fights, but I have happily been without foot coverings for a week.  I did manage to have a hilarious encounter with a pair of teenage girls on the bus yesterday though.  They were very curious about why I would go without shoes and asked a bit about the basic logistics; the conversation got really amusing when they started to focus on the fashion faux pas portion of being barefoot.

Teenagers:  So, do you have a girlfriend?

Me:  No, but I do have a wife.

Teenagers (Incredulous): You have a wife?!?

Yes.

Does she go barefoot too?

No.

So, does she go outside with you?

Yes....?

But isn't that a problem?

Why?

Isn't she worried about what people will think?

I guess not!

To be sure, Wendy would probably prefer it if I just wore shoes.  She doesn't like the idea of confrontations and doesn't have my intense desire to avoid covering my feet.  However, she does seem to have decided that I have some kind of appeal that warrants staying with me even though I break every fashion law I become aware of.  Also, fashion laws I am very much ignorant of.  Teenage preconceptions notwithstanding, it is in fact possible to find someone to marry you even if you are a teensy bit weird.

As the teenagers got off the bus they threw their gum at a random lady in a nearby seat and ran away laughing at her.  Apparently it is preposterous to imagine being romantically involved with someone with doesn't conform to fashion norms but hucking gum at strangers is all good.  People, I present to you:  Teenagers.

Crime? and Punishment

I get myself in trouble now and again for refusing to wear shoes.  I am less hardcore about it these days then I was back in my first summer doing my barefoot project but I still love the feeling of being barefoot and I think it is an important statement to make.  That is, our laws and rules should enforce safety, not cultural norms and modesty.  In the UK there is a well known man who believes much more strongly in this philosophy than I do.  He is known as the naked rambler and has served many years in jail for his 'crime' of wandering about nude.  Even being in jail wasn't enough to pay for his transgressions so the naked rambler spent much of his time there in solitary confinement.

How can this be seen as appropriate?  When we count up the number of people hurt by his actions we arrive at zero.  When we count up the economic cost of his actions we arrive at zero.  However, when we count up the cost to society to try, convict, and incarcerate him we are looking at half a million dollars or more.  Add to that the cost of misery and suffering this man has had to endure and the necessity of this action becomes indefensible at best.  He has paid a greater cost than someone who violently assaulted another person and left them crippled!

The state needs to step in and keep people from stealing from each other, attacking each other, and taking extremely reckless actions that might put other people in danger.  It has no business trying to protect people from being offended and that is *all* that being naked will do.  I am offended by an endless variety of things, which the frequent reader here will no doubt be familiar, but the government has no obligation to step in and incarcerate people who utter racist or homophobic slurs, say grace before public dinners, or vote for Stephen Harper.

Legalizing nudity in the UK and here would have no noticeable effect.  In Toronto some years back there was a great furor over changing the laws to allow women to go topless - it was argued by some that there would be a wave of topless women running around everywhere corrupting the youth.  Unfortunately for me women ignored the change in the law and I have yet to see a single woman taking advantage of it.  Getting rid of laws that regulate nudity would do exactly the same thing:  A few people would run around naked, a few people would see a naked person and be deeply offended, and the police would never be involved.

Actual safety concerns

Normally I rant about how things are too focused on safety, particularly safety that is really about legal butt covering or plausible deniability instead of a real cost benefit analysis.  Yesterday I saw something that really got me wondering where the safety inspector was at Elli's school.

There is construction going on at the school as they are swapping to all day kindergarten in the fall (exactly when Elli will be done kindergarten, naturally) and they need to add on room to accommodate the additional students.  As I was dropping Elli off I saw a large crane lifting a huge metal section of stairs about ten meters long into place in the new construction.  It must have weighed thousands of kilos at the very least and was slowly being moved into place by the crane next to a new unsupported brick wall two storeys tall.  The children were playing in their sandbox in the playground... three meters from where the stairs and the brick wall were.

I was standing there at a reasonable distance watching and suddenly realized what utter lunacy was going on.  Sure, if everything works perfectly the crane lifts the stairs into place and everything is fine but if the stairs bash into the brick wall it could easily fall and kill half a dozen kids.  Obviously in the great majority of cases nothing goes wrong but it is bloody insane to be using heavy machinery with children pretty much directly under the work area.  One of the workers not directly involved ran in and started screaming at the others to put the stairs down and lambasting them for being idiots; while this was certainly warranted I was the one who had to rush to the kids and yell at them to run away from the construction zone as neither the teachers nor the construction workers seemed to be doing that.

The construction has constantly kept parts of the school locked up for absolutely no reason and regularly directed us not to do things that are no danger at all.  We have to escort 11 year old children to school and back because they aren't 'safe' going home alone even if home is on the same block.  Nobody can come to the school in bare feet because of the 'toxic' chemicals on the floors.  When it comes time to hoist huge objects with cranes around though the kids get to play practically under the huge object in question.  Quite the case of misplaced priorities.

Learning about lack of privilege

Recently John Scalzi made a post to explain how life is for those who aren't straight white males (SWM) to those same SWM people.  He talked about how it is like a video game and being a SWM is a lot like playing the game of life on the easiest difficulty setting - people give more weight to your opinion, you get more money for no reason, things tend to go your way.  He specifically wants to avoid the word privilege in his post and in the discussion that follows but obviously it is the core of the issue.  The best way gain an understanding of someone is to walk a mile in their shoes, of course, so how would a SWM like me gain such understanding?

There is an event where men walk in high heeled shoes to generate awareness about violence against women.  It gets attention of course because they look utterly ridiculous in high heeled shoes and it raises the question:  Why is such foolish, outrageous footwear expected of one gender and expected to be absent in the other?  In particular, why are the reactions to people stepping outside of stereotype so strong and negative?  I asked Wendy if I should do this sort of thing and she told me that I should not, but rather put on fake breasts, makeup and a dress and go out that way instead.  I don't know if she intended that I actually try to pass as a woman, as that would require considerably more doing, or simply look like a man in drag.

Clearly crossdressing isn't going to give me the perspective of someone who has lived an entire lifetime as a non SWM, particularly since it doesn't cause people to treat me as a woman, minority, or gay person.  I think it might give me some perspective on how people who refuse to conform to gender norms are treated though, and it certainly could get me some experience on doing things with considerably less privilege than normal.  I do all kinds of weird things that have people treat me strangely already like go barefoot everywhere but these things that I do now are all done because they are actually more comfortable or better in some way.  Putting on a dress isn't that - shorts and tshirts are eminently practical clothes and I have no interest in dresses outside this experiment.

I don't especially want to go to tremendous effort to disguise myself so I think if this is a project I wish to undertake I should probably not consider trying to pass as female.  Not least of course because I am one of those people for whom it would be exceedingly difficult.  I don't know that I could pass for a minority outside of a very professional makeup job (even then...) and I also have no clue what I could do to convince a random person I was gay without being ridiculous.  (Hey random person!  I'm gay! So, ummm, yeah, react naturally to that.)  Strangely the fact that this would be a big deal to many people is making me want to do it more.  People shouldn't care whether or not my clothes violate gender norms but they do care.  A voice inside my head tells me I am obligated to call them on their prejudices and make a scene.  That voice is the one that gets me in trouble.  

Of course, it is easy for me since I can go back to my normal mode any time I want.  This isn't about being allowed to live my life, just about learning a bit, which makes me appreciate how hard it must be for trans folks and others who violate these sorts of norms constantly.  I have the fallback of "I'm doing a social experiment, you have a problem with that?" and other people don't.

Don't make me think

People don't think nearly as much as they think they do.  Most of our decisions are made by very simple heuristics, are extremely repetitive, and barely even register on our conscious minds.  Whether it is driving a car or buying groceries we spend the better part of our lives on autopilot.  This isn't a bad thing in general because we simply can't afford to think about everything we do.  Thinking is hard and letting our subconscious heuristics deal with most decisions is easy.

You can see people breaking out of autopilot easily if you present them with a decision that they don't see very often or change the parameters of a decision to be outside their comfort zone.  They look up, focus their eyes, and usually get an irritated expression on their face as they realize they are going to have to work for it this time.  Some of the time they will simply resolve the situation by going back to a heuristic that really doesn't apply instead; this is easy on the decider but often generates foolish decisions.  Parents tend to do this all the time when children do things that are out of line because actually sitting down and figuring out how risky / annoying / messy the child's latest desire is can be difficult.  "You can't do that because I said so."  It applies just as much to politicians, of course, because they desperately try to avoid decisions that require real thinking because it is likely they will end up being wrong.

It's tough because especially as a parent you end up in situations where you simply don't have the mental energy to fully evaluate all the risks and benefits of whatever crazy thing your kid has decided to do.  They want to jump in the river, so you say no.  Maybe it isn't a problem because they will have lots of time to dry out and the river is small and slow but figuring that stuff out takes energy and they will never cease coming up with strange things to request that might be a problem.  The difficulty is that when we use simple heuristics to decide to keep the kids out of the river we vastly overestimate the chances of catastrophic things happening (drowning) and fail to notice the subtle good that comes from letting children sort out their own mistakes and trials.  This makes parents frustrated because they just want to enjoy what they are doing and instead they have to either be autocratic or think all the time and thinking is work!

Now that the weather is getting nicer I see the same thing when I go out barefoot.  People get flustered and upset at my bare feet even though it cannot possibly affect them in any way; it is strange and unusual and forces them to think and they don't like it one bit.  They just want me to conform so they can go back to slotting me into their normal 'tall white dude' box and forget about it.  They worry that I will do something crazy and they worry that they will do something wrong because their normal strategy says nothing about what to do with a barefoot person who isn't homeless and muttering to themselves.

Not that there is anything we can do about this.  People need simple heuristics to make decisions and can't possibly think carefully about everything they do and we really don't want them to try.  I wish though that the first response to being pushed out of autopilot was curiosity instead of hostility.

Movember

Ziggyny reminded me of Movember. (The mustache growing fundraiser for prostate cancer and men's health in November.)  I find it a very strange sort of event because so much of what we are told about prostate cancer is completely backwards.  I am a bit torn because trying to raise awareness of health issues and get them recognized as general topics rather than hushing them up is a fantastic goal.  We as a society benefit hugely when we can comfortably discuss health issues instead of surrounding them with shame and a shroud of lack of information.  We do have to be careful exactly how we go about doing this though.  For example, I recently have seen several advertisements on bus stops and subway walls talking about prostate cancer and advocating that people like me go get tested.  We shouldn't listen to the posters because right now the treatments for prostate cancer are so unreliable in actually making us live longer and so reliable in their hideous side effects that pretty near nobody should be treated.  You should not be tested for ailments we do not have effective treatment for.

Of course I would love to have an effective prostate cancer treatment that doesn't leave huge numbers of people impotent or with serious urinary problems.  Research is definitely a good prospect since this is a widespread disease with no effective cure.  I won't be growing a mustache for Movember (though I will have facial hair as usual) since I generally refuse to take part in charity that pretty much revolves around me trying to wheedle money out of my friends.  If they want to donate to charities I heartily encourage it (Doctors Without Borders or the World Food Program are my favourites currently) but I don't like using a random event to try to pry money out of them.

Overall the Movember site is good and really covers a broad range of useful topics but they seem to avoid laying out the uncomfortable facts about prostate cancer treatment - probably because you aren't going to encourage trips to the doctor and screening if you tell people how bad the treatment really is.  "So, want to find out if you have a disease that has a treatment that regularly causes impotence?  No?"  That said, the general goals of education, positive lifestyle alterations and demystification are excellent.  Walking around barefoot got me into lots of interesting conversations where I was able to teach people all kinds of things that would normally never come up; mustaches in November would serve the same purpose it would seem.

So yes, eat better, go to the doctor and be tested for things when you need to and be open and honest about health concerns.  Just don't worry about prostate cancer, as it will either kill you or not and there isn't much to be done about it at the moment.

Over the top

Recently a new grocery store moved into my neighborhood called Marcheleos.  I knew from talking to people that they were aiming to be an upscale grocery store but I never quite realized what that meant until today when I discovered that they employ two full time valets and a security guard in addition to the normal roster of two deli personnel, two cashiers, three managers and some backroom staff.  All of this for a grocery store that is really quite tiny, probably measuring six meters by twenty meters of floor space.  Their prices, of course, reflect this extravagance and I sure won't be buying anything from them.

Can they really expect to sell enough overpriced groceries to pay for all these extra (and almost certainly useless) staff?  I bet on them being closed in under six months.  There are people in my neighborhood who have the kind of money that they will shop at this sort of place I suspect but I can't imagine there are anywhere near enough - this isn't located in a trendy shopping area but rather sandwiched between Popeyes Chicken and a vacant storefront on Eglinton Avenue.  Bizarre.

I wonder if they will kick me out for going in barefoot?  :)

Whipping Girl

Recently Corporate Plunderer sent me Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.  Much props are due because this was a hell of an interesting read.  I recommend reading it for everyone, though you should expect much more of a textbook than a shocking expose.  Much moreso than the transexual experience itself I was intrigued and informed by the feminist portions of the book and the things it had to say about our society's assumptions about women and femininity.  It is clearly obvious that female attributes are an object of revulsion and terror for many men - just imagine a woman holding a man's wallet and compare that to a man holding a woman's purse for a moment and you can see how people react to the idea of men being associated with femininity.  Even moreso I think about what happens to Wendy or Elli when they dress in a masculine style, that is to say nothing at all happens.  If I wore a dress out and about though I would expect a constant stream of stares, some veiled hostility and a really reasonable chance of some kind of confrontation or other unpleasantness.  It is strange to know that a thing has always been true and that I have internally acted knowing the truth of it and yet be surprised when I finally come to grips with it intellectually.

One of the most telling points Serano makes is that when she gives speeches she will often invite her listeners to contemplate the following question:  Would you transition to the other gender permanently for 10 million dollars?  Clearly if you buy into the idea that just continuing to live with a mismatch between your subconscious and assigned gender isn't that bad you must think everyone would transition for 10 million.   Despite this practically nobody is willing to (barring those who want to transition anyway, presumably).  Non trans people want to continue to live and look like their current gender even when faced with an immense incentive to change; this alone should serve as plenty of proof that we must fully accept people's self identified gender as legitimate and equal rather than as some other category entirely.  We see all the time on TV what ludicrous things people are willing to do for a moment of fame and a shot at a million dollars and that serves to give us some kind of benchmark for things that are really important to people.

I usually identify as pretty left wing politically but I do often end up in fights with left wing radicals and pundits when I criticize their means, if not their motives (I generally disagree with both the motives *and* the methods of right wing folks).  I was expecting to write this post with a healthy dose of "The author is too radical and divorced from reality" until I got to the final chapter where Serano talks very harshly about a substantial portion of the trans/queer community dedicated to the destruction of the male/female binary and the glorification of non-standard gender and sexuality identifiers.  She feels that she identifies as a woman and that refusing to accept people who do identify cleanly into the male/female binary is a mistake - whether you are talking about male/female or binary/radical you should not marginalize how someone else chooses to experience their gender or sexuality.  Huzzah!  I certainly support the idea that everyone should be given the freedom both legally and socially to have their own ideas and practices surrounding gender and sexuality.  I am reminded a bit of my Barefoot project; I don't mind if people wear shoes so long as nobody tries to make me do so.  Despite the extreme difference in our experiences I find that the sort of world Serano wants to create is the sort of world I want to live in.

I find myself tempted to try putting on women's clothes and wandering around just to see exactly what happens.  I like challenging people's assumptions and I am extremely curious to see the differences in the world when I change nothing but a single piece of clothing - it seems like there are so many things that are hidden from me by my gender and my my usual conformity with the associated norms.

Picture taken from: http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html

Gender Bender

In light of the recent flurry of comments on my recent post about being pranked Wendy and I have been talking a lot about gender roles.  Both of us thought a lot about it and came to the conclusion that we couldn't really understand the mindset that would be necessary to go through the trauma of changing genders, whether it be just the social changes or the medical treatments.  Not to say we don't support those who feel they need to, but rather that we just can't grok that situation.  We both thought back on our lives and looked at the things we have done and want to do and gender would not have particularly changed those life paths as far as we can see, though this may be because Wendy already took a more 'masculine' path by choosing a serious career focus and I took the 'feminine' path of going to university to meet someone who wants to go out and earn money so I can stay at home.  We both are very at home in our bodies though and she knits while I like chopping things with axes - there are plenty of stereotypes that we fit very cleanly.

I get a lot of really weird looks and questions when I talk about what I do that I know women in the same situation would likely not get.  People seem very concerned to figure out what sort of business I have cooking up at home because clearly a man wouldn't stay at home without being some sort of entrepreneur.  After defending my choice not to turn my hobbies into sketchy small businesses I often have to put the questioner on the defensive.

"You know, our experiences at 1 o'clock are probably really different.  You think about how you only have 4 hours left in the damn place before you can go home whereas I have to carefully decide between a long afternoon nap and just surfing for porn for 4 hours straight.  Good thing all that working has left you almost ready to retire, right?"

People don't like it when I say this but it sure gets them off my back!  When I get hassled about going about barefoot it is a little different though - sidelong glances are everywhere, sneers are reasonably common and outright hostility happens now and again.  That obviously isn't the same thing as violating gender norms but it sure gives me insight into just how ridiculous people get when someone makes a small change to normal behaviour that is entirely personal and harmless.

I am reading Whipping Girl and a big focus in the early parts of the book (which are the only parts I am done up to this point) is how the female role is looked down upon by society.  Having considered Wendy's experiences and my own it becomes abundantly clear how true this is.  A person expressing shock or disbelief at Wendy's career direction would be a very strange thing indeed as she is a woman pursuing a traditionally male career role but I am a man pursuing a traditional female career role so I am deemed strange because that role is looked down upon as inferior.  Why would I choose to avoid a career when I could choose that option so freely?  Well, I have plenty of good reasons, not the least of which is that I mostly don't give a damn if people generally don't respect my choice and in fact enjoy challenging people's assumptions.  Those who know me will not be surprised by this!

I also got to thinking that I know I am male and I know I desire women but I have no idea what that means.  Do breasts define a woman?  A vagina?  The ability to bear children?  Two X chromosomes? Acting like a woman?  Feeling like a woman?  I have no idea where my boundaries are - I have never been in a situation where that came up as a point of contention so even though my desire for women is a pretty defining part of my personality I don't even know what it means.  Bizarre.  Just as much, what does it mean for me to understand myself as a man?