African Gender Blogging...#oxymoron

In brief a young man decided not to wrestle a young woman at a wrestling contest in Iowa due to his moral convictions. Now its been argued by many including Jonah Goldberg that political correctness is a form of fascism and reading the comments on the cnn religion blog its hard argue against this. The poor kid by living up to his convictions has encountered a modern day potifer’s wife situation, where this young man is encountering persecution. You can see the whole article and comments here

I’m not going to even try to address all the accusations that have been put against this young man, but I will say I highly doubt he is a bigot, chauvinist or a wimp. He’s a man of conviction, and had the roles been reversed then the big “deal” wouldn’t be a big deal.

Also I’m two ways about whether women should be allowed to wrestle and such, I’m all for Co-ed Sport e.g. football (soccer for you in America), volley ball etc. But if I had a daughter I really would struggle letting her do any major contact sport or wrestling. By struggle I mean “No daughter of mine while living under my roof and eating my food…” kind of struggle. However seeing little xiao wei roundhouse the crap out of a snotty brat in karate class would bring all sorts of joy to the evil in my heart. If I had a son I wouldn’t want him feeling its right to pin down, tackle or otherwise rough up a girl regardless of the context. I don’t want him to be a wilting flower but the kid has to understand where and how to express his aggression. But I respect people who feel like that’s ok, I’m just not one of them.

MY FAIR LADY

But this view has lead me to argue what I’ve always argued (big shout Wa) that equality hardly means sameness. Take for example the Heart and the Liver, We need both equally to live. One keeps the body alive by pumping blood, the other cleans up our bodies assists with metabolism etc. As human beings we do not have a choice to live one without the other. We would die if our livers became hearts. Similarly humanity is incapable of survival without men and women. That is to say men being men doing man things, and women being women doing woman things. Granted there is a history of inequality, and I’m not advocating a “separate but equal” jim crow approach to gender issues, but we really do discount the rights women should have when we try to push for sameness. My homegirl Kendra said it best: “Fair does not mean always equal” what we all are really hoping for is fairness. A fair chance for a man to achieve his full potential within society and the same for women, nobody wants the brain with the cure for cancer barefoot and preggers in the kitchen and nobody wants to watch the WNBA (don’t blame me blame the numbers). We have to be fair, and fair is agreeing that women and men aren’t the same and play different but critical roles in society in the same way the liver and the heart play an important role in the human body. Fairness might mean for men allowing women a few more rights (lol like the right to complain that chivalry is dead but getting mad when you try to open the door for her) because historically we’ve treated them unfairly. For women it may mean letting your pride down just a tad and allowing a man to be a man (y’all know what I mean!). Fair is respecting the young wrestler’s decision and exercising his right to forfeit without persecuting him for having a set of convictions. Surprisingly enough with all the assault and gender based drama I thought it would be refreshing to hear that a boy decided not to try to wrestle a girl.

THINKING OUT LOUD

I really wonder if this gender gap and the resultant fall out has a lot to do with lack of expectation. I can only speak from what I know, and generally speaking on some of the most equal cross gender relationships I know. I do notice is there’s a great deal of expectation that drives equality, since roles are clearly defined expectations are established and met and there’s effective fairness. Possibly as we erode the definitions of gender and make it fluid it becomes increasingly impossible to create expectation around a gender. (sorry to use this again) but when a liver stops doing what a liver does, what other organ will do it, none the body dies…lol maybe this is what will kill this civilization. For the Greeks it was the Romans that ultimately sealed their fate, the Romans the barbarians, Anglo-American civilization the suits of PC (political correctness) committee.

SPORTS AND GENDER

On sports and gender…Recently I was reading how there’s a proposition that professional football (sigh soccer...American need to standardize with the rest of the globe) teams should have a mandatory spot for women on the pitch. (Since women’s leagues aren’t getting the big support they hoped for) now I’ve always felt that if a woman is good enough then we’ll see her signed for a team, even if this is in the lower leagues. (and it has happened in Italy I believe) but legislating this sort of thing is pure nonsense, quality is quality and if you’re up to playing 50 plus games a season and taking tackles from Rino Gattusso then the “glass ceiling” will come down otherwise its absolutely fine for women to play against one another in leagues. And honestly other than the few outliers the rules would have to be amended to cater the inherent physical imbalance between the genders. Will we ever see superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo in the female game, well if you follow football you’ve already heard of names like Mia Hamm, Marta, and Birgit Prinz, so we’re getting there but we’re not hearing from the terraces songs of “sign her” for any of them at Arsenal matches. The women’s game probably needs a little marketing and hopefully better approach than the WNBA (lol fundamentals my foot I just want to watch Blake Griffin dunk) After all there’s women’s tennis which is the more entertaining version of the game and has been for a hot minute.

Making Pirates Privateers

I’m taking a break because my brain is fried from a meeting that started at around 10 and ended at 4:30. Sigh gotta earn a living. You know you aint earning much when you someone tries to sell you a mortgage for your average house (3 bed room) in a run of the mill (that is to say not expensive) neighborhood and the repayments are more than your salary. (true story happened to me last week at the bank) I guess that’s why the 2 income household has become the norm, basically a single income can’t gain traction unless you’re name has “sheikh” some where there or you do “government procurement” (black range rover!) But I’m not here to complain I’m paid enough to survive and that really is what one needs, all the other things are over and above. (Do not confuse that for lack of ambition, just a realization that that ambition for stuff cars, homes, kids in expensive schools end up messing your priorities, and leads you in to all sorts of temptation to do “government procurement” and sit at java house all day speaking in hushed tones with important or Somali looking people.)

So I’ve been mulling about things these last few days, which normally spells trouble for my worn-from-use soap box and I’ve been lead to wonder why tv shows and movie makers decide on old models the consumer does not want. For movies and TV shows piracy out in the 3^rd world is rampant like water in the ocean. It’s a fact of life that very few people “follow” TV shows on TV any more. Honestly who would want to watch 24 season 2 when a walk to your local “video lib” has the latest season, and even your cousin “Timo” has just come back from abroad with the latest DVD’s. Its impractical, however Hollywood has cried foul that pirates in Indonesia and Pakistan have made their copyrighted material accessible for next to nothing. And yes this is wrong but really if the original copy of desperate housewives will reach my little corner of existence 10 years after original airing at a price I can hardly afford is it really My problem that Eva Longoria isn’t getting her fat royalty cheque with love from Malawi? (you have to remeber the tv show or movie normally has paid for iteslf in the first running in the US market) Instead of “fighting” the pirates by annoying local governments (for whom “DHW is the least of their problems with rampant crime and malaria) to undertake half hearted crackdowns on pirates, how about taking positive action as well, until you create a business model that assists you get revenue from the “low end market” don’t bother crying when they watch your material because at the end of the day you wouldn’t have gotten that money anyway. Its like me crying that I missed the sale of a million dollar home for 500 grand, I couldn’t afford it away so there’s no real loss. However here there’s real opportunity to tap in to the mass market in the same way bollywood and nollywood has. Its been shown time and time again that given the option people would pay for an original if they can get it “within their requirements” Anyway my 2 in all that is that traditional models of marketing distribution and access must be reviewed if you hope to capture the market. The other way to look at it too is often these unfavorable markets of today are the emerging and then desirable markets of tomorrow so why not put you’re stake in early and get it right and we all know whats going on and we know that “mad men” is popular and we want to see what its about, don’t make people wait like they did for the sopranos till it was done to be able to watch it.

So on a similar note, I went to a music store yesterday that says they sell “original” music, so of course it was expensive, shock on me that all the CD’s in the store were taken out of their cases and put in the back. It was weird but I thought it was fine considering the weirdness that is shopping in Kenya. It was only after I bought the CD (a double disk) that I realized that these dudes sell fake CDs. My album was supposed to have CD1 and CD2….here’s the problem the music on CD2 is exactly the same as CD1 although the CD art was for CD2. On closer inspection the CD did not look professionally done as well, lol the toner was running out when they were printing the copyright material. Here’s the kicker too, it’s a Christian music store and they had that FBI little picture warning me of the ills of pirating music…Suddenly a trip to pirate bay doesn’t seem so reprehensible.