entry written entirely at work in my computer procedures notebook

Ten minutes late for work, thanks to a sudden snow squall that dumped a couple centimeters on our fair metropolis. The guy in the cubicle next to me has spent the last hour complaining about the driving conditions. I find people's attitudes about driving to be generally fucked, but the general reaction to driving in snow takes the cake. You'd think that after decades of coping with the inclement weather that's part & parcel of being a resident of this country, we'd become less surprised when snow makes roads difficult to drive. Added to that is a sense of outrage - in our sheltered and convenience-driven lives, 'how dare anyone cope badly with inclement weather when I need to get to my cubicle?'

Everyday I become more & more certain that the independent vehicle concept is not only physically suicidal, but also hugely injuring to the human psyche. Days like this - where the lucky survivors of slippery roads arrive safely at their destination only to pulse with anger - only prove it further.

Of course, I mustn't neglect the only positive psychological aspect of owning & operating your own conveyance: the sense of accomplishment when you actually go anywhere. I feel that my subway commute is wasted time, even though I can read & be productive during the ride...something I can't do behind the wheel of a car. I suppose it's the loss of direct control that makes me so disgruntled.

Well, that and the fact that Tuesday night I came across a woman who had managed to get her dog caught in the automatic entrance gates. I think she was walking too fast with the dog behind her, and...well...it got stuck. I don't know any more details. There was a crowd of students looking on in queasy horror, but I couldn't bear to stay.

All in all, it hasn't been a good week for me and transportation systems.

I really like my job. It's almost like a real job with real responsibilities...almost. I'm still on the first quarter of the learning curve; I know how to do 5 or 6 different things (filing, data entry into Excel, checking numbers, etc.) but I can't put it all together yet. Some places I never learn the big picture. I hope I will here.

I also really like the people I'm working with. My supervisor is either genuinely friendly & helpful or he takes One Minute Manager communication theory really really seriously. The girls I'm working with seem normal in every way - yet they're friendly and seem genuinely interested in me. I suppose I should've predicted it. One of the side effects of getting married is that I'm suddenly interesting to a whole new segment of the population. It has normalized me - marriage, after all, as an affirmation of membership in society; a sign that you're willing to play by the rules & perpetuate what your culture has taught you. No wonder I'm suddenly more accessible to strangers...especially normal looking strangers.

Speaking of culture, I've been really angry about some assigned reading for gender class, an article that should've cut to the chase & stated its premise in the title: "White Christian Men Bad." As Stacy pointed out so succinctly, the real irony is that the same groups who insist on recording the diversity of experience among marginalized peoples are the same people who reduce 'Europeans' to an undifferentiated mass o' badness. That's not just offensive, it's sloppy scholarship.

Example: the article speaks at great length about male authority, explaining that all Native societies were largely egalitarian with balanced gender roles and generally equal power between men and women. It implies that before the arrival of the white demons, no Native man would've dreamed of raising his voice - let alone his hand - to a recalcitrant woman. Now while it has been reliably documented that a key feature of Native philosophy (if you'll allow me to homogenize an enormous number of social systems into a large one for just a second) is the principle of non-interference. They may not personally like their unmarried daughters hopping in & out of every wigwam in town, but they don't claim the right to interfere with another adult human being.

Fine. That's more than laudable. But this author attempts to suggest that the Native peoples of North America were the only society in human history to maintain a society where men didn't have the whip hand by right of institution or tradition. Of course! It was the arrival of the white demons - with their durable portable copper kettles - than tainted this wonderful female-positive egalitarian paradise.

But it wasn't the VD-infested traders freely handing out liquor that drew most of the author's righteous anger. No. It was the Jesuits who were the real evil-doers. And boy, did that get my panties in a bunch [there you go, Dav]. I have my doubts that Christianity was in the best interests of the Native people, but no one can dispute that the Jesuits of all people had good intentions. It's funny. For a subject that purports to treat history in terms of individual experience, there's no quarter given to the intent & experience of people who did not exploit people for their immediate personal gain. The Jesuits didn't set dogs on the berdache or trade sex for rations or commit regicide in the name of gold. Not all visitors were the same.

But Christianity is an easy target. And I suppose life is easier when you can pay lip-service to diversity while cloaking your prejudices in scholarly rhetoric and fuzzy logic; when you can replace genuine concern for human experience with implicit moral judgements about who is the victim and who is the enemy.