Generation Narrow

I was watching YouTube over dinner, and "the algorithm" suggested "Psychology of Gen X." Being a member of "Generation X" myself, I decided I'd have a watch, and see if I recognized anything of myself. I'm of the opinion that age cohort, as the informal groupings known as "The Baby Boomers," "Generation Z" et cetera are known have become the new Zodiac; clustering broad swaths of the population together and assigning them a pithy list of traits seen as so universal that all members of the group may as well be the same person, just with different haircuts and outfits.

What made "Psychology of Gen X" slightly different than the other profiles that I've come across now and again was that it didn't simply list random traits... it attempted to explain them. It was all very surface-level; the video is, after all, only eight minutes long, and so there wasn't much room for specifics.

But even with that, I quickly realized that the video was really seeking to explain the White, middle-class, urban/suburbanites that I grew up around. Very little of the video seemed relevant to the lives of my cousins who lived in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago. It was taking the kids from Stranger Things and extrapolating out from them to all of the millions of people born in a 15-year period.

And realizing that gave me a bit of insight into the Trumpist/Make America Great Again movement: of course they see themselves as the legitimate Americans, they see themselves in the broad generalizations that people make about the United States. Sure, Psychology of Gen X did as much to leave out rural Americans from Appalachia as it did Native Americans, but its viewpoint was very much White and male, and there was no indication that it even understood that other people existed, let alone had something worth mentioning to contribute to the experience of being "Generation X." (And that leaves aside the fact that the age cohorts are often taken as worldwide phenomena.)

Part of it seemed to stem from the fact that it was short, and the fact that the channels seems based in the United Kingdom could also play a part, but a lot of just seemed perfunctory. If you've seen one video claiming to explain the psychology of a given age cohort, you've seen them all, and this one was no exception. The stills that played in the background to illustrate the narration were of the bland, generative automation-created style that's come to typify artwork that needs to be done, as opposed to illustration that really adds to the experience.

And a quickly-made, short video about a group of people is going to focus on the mainstream, because that's what there's time to do. And this wasn't a video for Gen X, to lay out the breadth of the cohort... It's a video for today's young people, to offer an easily digestible explanation of their parents, and other older people they encounter at work and in other aspects of their lives. The fact that it only deals with a minority of the overall group would be lost on many of them.

Not that I expect that the target audience would be fooled into thinking they had the complete picture. They likely understand as well as anyone else the difficulties of cramming decades of people's lived experiences into 8 minutes. But it's one thing to understand that one is seeing snippets of the lives of a certain group versus seeing a slice of nearly everyone's lives. That important distinction struck me as missing, and when it did, I realized how many other times it hadn't been made.

While much has been made of the fact that so much of American history is focused on the White middle and upper classes, I'm not convinced that the idea that this means there should be a greater focus on other people has really sunk in. I doubt that the person or people behind this particular Psychology Simplified channel set out to ignore the lived experiences of most of Gen X. When one's making short videos on an every-other-day basis, there likely isn't a lot of time for deep research without a fairly extensive team; and while the video does cite references, there aren't a lot of them, and nothing about any cultural differences in the experience. (Okay, granted, I don't often have a lot of citations here, but Nobody In Particular is intended to be about the United States as I experience it, personally.) So it's understandable that for someone like me, who lived through the time period in question, a lot would seem to be missing. But there are people for whom the narrow focus reinforces an understanding of themselves as the center of the world.

Panic Button

Participant homophobia was found to be the driving force behind their willingness to accept the gay panic defense as legitimate. Higher levels of homophobia and religious fundamentalism were found to predict more leniency in verdict decisions when the gay panic defense was presented. This study furthers the understanding of decision making in cases involving the gay panic defense and highlights the need for more research to be conducted to help understand and combat LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) prejudice in the courtroom.
When Is "Gay Panic" Accepted? Exploring Juror Characteristics and Case Type as Predictors of a Successful Gay Panic Defense

There is, of course, no "straight panic" defense that attorneys generally deploy when seeking to defend people against charges of violence. Because one suspects that it would be open season on stalkers, jackasses and abusers if juries could be counted on to decide that women being targeted, being bothered "over and over and over again" and having unwanted sexual advances made to them justified killing their tormentors.

But given the fact that homophobia and religious fundamentalism are positive predictors of leniency in such cases, it's not surprising... In such circles, the crime is treating a man as one would a woman, rather than a lack of respect for other people as a whole. I would guess that women have to find it extremely frustrating, understanding that there are people who feel that the sort of behavior that many of them put up with on a regular basis justifies violence based on sexual orientation, and that lawyers are willing to play on that in order to help their clients; and that with the right juries, it works. If straight men have a right to expect gay men to take "no" for an answer, why don't women have a right to expect the same from gay men?

The "obvious" answer is that sexually-aggressive straight men are a norm, and sometimes, an expectation. A perhaps less-obvious answer is the overall fragility of many standards of masculinity. If men are so tough, and so able to withstand hardship, why are they given a pass in this way? Simply because having a gay man come on to them risks their self-image as men?

But I guess it's easy for me to say... I'm not staring down the barrel of life in prison because someone threatened my sense of myself as a man, and I responded with lethal violence. Were never setting foot outside of a prison again a real possibility, maybe I'd be all in favor of my lawyers looking to use the jury's deep-seated prejudices in my favor. I like to think that I'd be adult enough to own up to what I'd done, though.

Not that I can see myself doing it. And I guess that's the paradox that rubs at me. I'm not "man enough" to want to kill someone for making an unwanted pass at me, and that's what allows me to be "man enough" to not want to use unjustified prejudices to bail me out. Maybe that's not the correct framing of the issue at hand. Maybe linking those two things, expecting that a masculinity that permits the use of violence over relative trivialities should also demand taking ownership of one's actions (or loss of self-control) is simply playing into a different set of prejudices; one that's just as limiting and unjustified?

Masculinity is a box, one that many segments of American society have decreed that men shall not leave. I don't find it terribly stifling, because I'm not really at all motivated to move any farther from the center of the box than I already am. But I'm also not in a place in that box that compels me to need to defend the actions I take (or don't take) to maintain that place. My tendency towards crankiness prevents me from having much sympathy for those who do, and maybe that makes me part of the problem, as well.

Sloganeering

On a recent episode of "The Opinions" podcast from The New York Times, host Michelle Cottle was discussing whether adopting "Abolish ICE" as a slogan, was, in effect, simply asking for the Republicans to take it and turn it against them. Which, in the wake of "Defund the Police" is a rational way of looking at it, but the idea that a different slogan could be proofed against a conservative-lead backlash, I believe, mistakes the forces in play.

In short, it's never about the actual slogan. It's about the people who identify with it. The problem with "Critical Race Theory" or "Woke" wasn't that there was some built-in negative connotation to either of them. It's that they are associated with Black people and Liberals; two groups that, on the whole, Conservative White Americans feel are unjustly resentful of and hostile towards them. And so it was easy for Conservative activists, like Christopher Rufo, to convince them that these terms were code for all sorts of terrible things.

So declining to chant "Abolish ICE" in favor of the more anodyne "Smarter Immigration Policy," for example, wouldn't prevent Republicans from branding it as code for "open borders," because their target audiences already believe that the American Left wants open borders, and is willing to allow them to be victimized by non-White immigrants in exchange for votes from Black and Hispanic communities. Just was with Critical Race Theory, Conservative activists would be able to attach "Smarter Immigration Policy," or whatever else someone decided the slogan should be, to anxieties around immigration via anxieties around people who understand ideal immigration policy differently that they do.

Accordingly, as long as the anxieties are present, there is no slogan that one can imagine couldn't be linked to them. I think that Ms. Cottle doesn't really grasp this part of the equation. And given the general lack of understanding that the American Left has for the American Right (which, I would submit, is not completely mutual), she's not the only person whose fingers it slips through.

Reminders

The first of the large postcards had a picture on the front; a stock photograph of a man typing into a calculator with bills in his other hand. In the out-of-focus background, a woman played with two small children, a bright pink toy in her lap.

"Politicians in Olympia are proposing new taxes to make our vacations more expensive," it read, bold yellow text with white underlining on a blue background.

The second postcard was more austere, but more strident, "Why Are Legislators In Olympia Raising Taxes On Washington Families Already Struggling To Make Ends Meet?" There was no picture this time; just stark black text on a yellow field. The underlining, again, was in white.

Both had the same message at the bottom:

Paid for by Airbnb Helps Our State Thrive (HOST) PAC, 2350 Kerner Blvd., Ste. 250, San Rafael, CA 94901, Top Five Contributors: Airbnb, Inc.

The back of the first postcard, the one with the picture of the family on the front, lead off with an interesting message on the back. "We're already paying more for housing, groceries and gas. Now, politicians in Olympia are looking to raise the cost of our vacations, too."

But it's understood that some small part of why "we" are paying more for housing is people using homes for short-term rentals, rather than long-term residences. Will a tax on short-term rentals change that? Probably not by much. Are there better solutions? Likely. But Airbnb isn't proposing any. Instead, they're looking to trigger financial anxiety in voters, to enlist them in looking out for Airbnb's interests.

Because it is somewhat likely that a tax on short-term rentals will take some of them off the market, at least for a time, and that cuts into Airbnb's revenues. Airbnb matches the supply of homes available to be rented with people looking to rent homes for short periods, and takes a cut of the asking price... they're a middleman, and as such, they're sensitive to dips on either side of their two-sided marketplace. Accordingly, they're acting to protect the supply of short-term rental properties... the cost of living for people here in Washington isn't really their concern.

And there's nothing wrong that. Corporations are as entitled to look out for number 1 as people are. But I'm not a fan of looking to people's anxieties to enlist them in one's own cause. In part because it's disingenuous. And in part because economic anxiety can last much longer than the debate over a single bill or policy. Whether or not short-term rentals are taxed is unlikely to make a significant difference in most people's broader economic outlook. And if Airbnb gets its way, the company is simply going to go back to minding its other interests, rather than having its Airbnb HOST PAC continue to advocate for the public. Airbnb doesn't need the problems it claims to care about to be solved. And that allows it to claim that solving its problems is the best thing for everyone.

Weather-Wise

While everyone talks about how much it rains in Seattle, being a native of Chicago, I find that is mostly drizzles. I miss the heavy, audible, rain and the rumble of distant thunder that used to be a fairly common occurrence, and so when it happens here, it is something to be savored.

(Unless, of course, I'm on the road. Because for someplace where it allegedly rains 14 months out of the year, a number of people seem to have remarkable difficulty with wet pavement.)

That said, drizzly and dry are not the same, even if they both are something other than genuinely raining. While Winters in the Seattle area don't have the same homicidal instinct that that Midwestern cold can often exhibit, they're still a poor time to not have a home to be inside. I wonder how many people find themselves here in (admittedly short) Summers, and think they've found a clement place to get back on their feet, only to realize that a good nine to ten months of off-and-on precipitation has been awaiting them. Recently two whole weeks passed between rains, and nearly set a new record for January being dry. But the wet is back, and while it doesn't require an umbrella, it's much more pleasant with a roof.