Posts by BenWilson
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Most people also recognize it’s important than ever that more New Zealanders have advanced education. As machines and algorithms make ever more jobs obsolete, people need the smarts and ability to do jobs that aren’t easily replaced.
I do wish, however, that the justification of advanced education was less about the economy. Because it seems to me that the connection is really quite a lot less strong than many believe, especially on the count of "machines are taking the jobs". The jobs they can take are far more often the ones for the highly educated. The knowledge economy is the most automatible of all. Therefore, if it's automation we fear then supporting the development of the kinds of work least apt to mechanization seems to me the money best spent.
Fortunately, Labour's plan is also about trades. Apprenticeships as well?
And it would be awesome if at least some of the hard sell of higher education could be on it having worth unto itself, that goes well beyond future remuneration, and economic contribution. Of course people have to genuinely believe that is true, and I often feel like I'm slipping into a small minority in believing it. How often in the last 5 years of tertiary have I had to justify what I'm doing by it's financial future? Even to other students? It's like I'm crazy to think that becoming more educated could be an end all by itself.
But this isn't the main point of this thread, so feel free to not pick up the rant.
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It seems like desperate stuff from Hooton, and I concur with the sense that the popularity of the education policy is most likely causing genuine fears among the most extreme right in National. Accuse the other side of being extreme from an extreme position. Relative to where you're shrieking from it's almost true.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Yeah. Also, of course, lots of really nice hippies. Most of them, just like how most people are nice now.
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In fact, the funny thing about hippies is that they were among the most fearsome of the schoolteachers I ever had. I always speculated that it was precisely because it was so against their self-image as free wheeling anti establishment types who were full of love that they were so incapable of seeing what authoritarian wankers they were. It confused their essence and they put blame far harder onto whatever child was getting on their goat than a more mainstream teacher who might consider that occasionally it was actually them who had fucked up in their approach to this child's education. Also, quite often, prolonged verbal abuse is much more hurtful than a mere institutional consequence like a detention. It was always quite amusing to me that the coolest kids liked the hippy teachers the least - that's not something I think those teachers ever knew about themselves.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Alfie,
At the risk of repeating myself Ben, all of the gigs I’ve attended have been in the company of women, sometimes with quite large groups of friends. Of course it’s possible that some of the women were assaulted and chose not to tell the rest of us
Alfie, I'm sorry to say that I think that it's not only possible, but likely. What's changed between then and now may well be the threshold over which they would even consider something noteworthy enough to even call an assault.
Bear in mind too, that even though I'm not old enough to have been a part of the hippy generation, I have a perfectly good memory of what being raised by hippies was like, and they're every bit as capable of lying, raping, assaulting, abusing power and so on as any other demographic. To think it's otherwise is having rose-tinted spectacles about the past.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Emma Hart,
And I’m going to say this, and try to ignore how dirty it sounds*: I’ve never had a problem with a lack of male engagement.
I guess that's going to come down to how that engagement is defined, and I can't see how that could ever be rigorous, given the problem of, as you so eloquently put it, parsing silence.
I do get your point that not all conversations involve one of the parties listening - and even more conversations involve people only partially listening, not engaging with all the point's you'd like them to. Alfie's one right here is a good example to talk to. He has responded to points made by Raena about past and current misogyny, but then he seems (to me) to simply reiterate his perception that things are different now, without really taking into account the point that in not being one of the targets his own personal experience of the amount of abuse going on is not perhaps that reliable. Indeed, he complains of not being listened to on that point. Since he was alive and involved in the music scene in the 70s and 80s, and people that were not even born then couldn't possibly compare personally, there's some experience worth hearing in there. But unless he acknowledges the paucity of his ability to genuinely judge abuse, by virtue of not being a target of it himself, he's talking past many of the women speaking here.
Not all of them, though, I must note. Heather Gaye at least kicked off with perceptions of there being a real difference, and that was right at the start of the thread. In listening to her, I'm listening to a woman. In saying that "the women here are all saying it's same old same old", ironically, we have a situation of women not listening to women. Robyn Gallagher also kicked off with statements of a change of culture, comparing to the BDO. It wasn't until page 4 where Joanna really kicked off the meta debate. After that Robyn came back and clarified (I'm not going to say altered) her position, saying that this sort of thing had indeed always been a problem. Which indicates simultaneous agreement and disagreement with Russell - something that's not inconsistent. Underlying abuse may well have always been there, but be in a different form now.
Since then, James Littlewood, Stephen Judd, Max Rose, Simon Chamberlain, nzlemming (particularly strongly), Nat Curnow, Manukura and mpledger have all made statements supporting Joanna's objection. Several other men have made the point that they feel like it's changed, but admit their perceptions are only theirs and that they could be wrong.
Russell has mostly stuck to his guns, since he made the thread with the initial point, and has been backed up by both men and women on it.
I'm just trying to make sense of it, which means reading and re-reading.
TBH, I don't feel like the listening fail is that serious of a problem here. It's a robust debate. Sure, it's unfortunately got a lot of first principles in it, but ... well ... I just deleted a humungous mansplain about how incredibly optimistic it is to expect anything else on this topic. Short summary - first principles often ARE the most advanced topic, and in something highly controversial like this, it's almost guaranteed that discussion of them will never end.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Emma Hart,
It's a mistake to think that someone talking is a sign that they're not listening. Listening is an interactive process, not a one-way thing. I frequently paraphrase and/or summarize what people are saying, just so that I can get feedback about whether I even understood them at all. It can be quite annoying to be told that I'm not listening, after doing that. I've just gone to all the trouble of reading, re-reading, considering, drafting, redrafting and then committing something based entirely on what I've seen someone else write, and then their comeback is that I'm not listening, as if somehow magically the information/idea that is in their head should have transferred in its entirety into mine. Also anyone else that is reading who may have similar misconceptions or misreadings to me. Or, for that matter correct conceptions and readings of something that was poorly written or expressed in the first place.
I don't come away from an inactive thread with no commentary thinking "wow, that was so awesome that it just blew everyone's minds so much that nothing needed to be said". It just doesn't work that way. Effective communication involves so much more work than just reciting the information.
It’s well possible that’s just me, they’ve given up on me.
That's always going to be a suspicion, isn't it. Notice I wrote nothing on that thread. That was a conscious choice, a deliberate decision to make good on letting threads on that kind of topic not have my shot of testosterone in them.
Here's my question: Does that absence make you think that you got through to me? Or does it make you think I wasn't listening? How could you even know? I'm interested in your answer, but I'm also going to guess it (that's ALSO something people who are listening can do. It means I've thought about you a lot and am trying to model your answers - if I can do that, then clearly I'm getting you. If not, you can tell me so, and I can fix the model). I guess that you don't find a lack of male engagement indicative of having communicated to men well.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Manakura,
whom of the men on this thread regard te patriarchy and rape culture as an external problem, something Other People (men) do/perpetrate? and whom regard it as something both external and internal, that patriarchy is something that has been instilled in them, in ways they may or may not even see/understand, that it’s inside their heads and the struggle starts there?
Kind of begging the question here, just in the way it's phrased. Obviously I think it's instilled and we fix from the inside out for the most part (and I already said that upthread). But that said, me sitting back in a concert fixing myself while some dickheads assault a woman in front of me is not helping as much as I maybe could. Some condemnation of Other People's Actions is also worthwhile at times.
amongst all the other excellent tactics, strategies and suggestions (which the men here seem to be largely relying on the women to supply – this in itself is suggestive of something), i suggest this one: check yo’self.
It's worth doing, but I don't think it's easy. We often don't notice our own flaws until they're pointed out. And that goes to the "relying on women to supply" - I'm hardly listening to women if I come up with all the answers to their problems myself. That can often just be me patronizing them. I'm particularly interested in what it is that women see as the more useful male contributions. I may have thought that I was helping by grabbing a douche by the scruff of the neck, when in fact it was much earlier in the evening when he was already an unwanted turd that I could have been helping more but I didn't get any useful pointers to that effect. Or maybe I said something that really did or really didn't help. Perhaps I could have just been less free with the alcohol rounds or something?
I used to have a secret signal that an old girlfriend gave me when she was being harassed and needed help if we were out in public. It was used surprisingly often, and I could often not have picked it otherwise. She was being friendly because she was trying not to offend some aggressive shithead. Her body language was not screaming help. But the signal was flicking. I'd sidle over and just stand nearby. Usually the shithead would eventually piss off, thwarted in his sneaky creepering, but if not, I'd just strike up a conversation with him. That would generally work - he wasn't really there to talk to me, so he'd piss off. Occasionally he'd make something of it, picking up that I was "muscling in". But I don't recall any occasion where us simple moving away (with me in between) didn't work.
Could friend groups use this? I know the answer is "probably not", because half the problem with creeps is that they're friends of friends. But girlfriend groups could use it, and if they think male help is necessary, they can get it. Obviously this scenario worked for my gf because I was a big strong guy. But any kind of help at all can be worth it when you're getting picked on. Even another girl just coming in for the rescue with an escape pretext is a start, although unless you intend to leave the venue, they can wait for you. But surely plans can be made in bathrooms - I always just assumed that's what powdering noses was all about.
It's a suggestion, anyway. I can't see it helping much when a gang of people are already ripping off your clothes - that's a situation where the trouble already started much earlier. On that, I got nothing.
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Welcome welcome! Looking forward to your work. Please tell me if I'm hogging your threads too! I dig your style, even if I don't entirely support your chosen party. But I will admit they're inching closer to a win for me with a lot of moves recently. If you're helping with that, then well done, that man.
So, so sorry to hear about Sophie too. It makes very hard reading, having been close to a similarly horrible turn of events when my uncle (also a PAS reader) lost his first child, and then going through my son's lifelong disablement at birth due to a stroke. Images of an unconscious baby hooked up to tubes in NICU and weeks of internment in hospitals are the memories I visit least frequently. It's taken me years to get over it. I can hardly imagine where you guys are, except in so far as I do have personal experience of the healing power of living children.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Russell Brown,
I actually think kids today in general are pretty awesome.
Me too. But I can't prove it. I can only quite subjectively compare people of roughly the same groups that I used to have good knowledge of, and even then, I'm not socializing with them, going to late night parties and gigs and concerts to compare. Also, the way they act around me has to be compared to how the kids I remember in the past acted towards middle aged men. And none of that is telling me how they're treating women.
I’m grateful that my sons went through school when they did, and not to the schools that I did.
Which doesn't really tell us if the schools you went through are any better now.
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