enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary
"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh
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I'm hungry and thirsty and not in the mood for a run. But I've skipped too many lately. ..:)
OK so this week was a relatively awful week.
I was forced to attend not one but TWO gender-related, mind-bendingly unscientific and annoying seminar/training programs.
And then I had to write "trip" reports about them.
Again, shudder.
I sat today reading through the slides presented by the one woman--a psychologist and women's study professor at a university that shall remain nameless--and wanted to scream at the illogic of many of her arguments.
I won't harp on about them. But let it suffice to say that when a questioner in the crowd--one sympathetic to her mission, no less--asked her what she felt was wrong with the way that economists are trained (the point of her session was to refute the human capital model as a tool to analyse gender wage gaps) she answered, "I don't know. Um. Well, economists are too rational!"
ARGHHHHHHHHHH.
If only these people had ANY understanding of economics before they opened their mouths.
Let me say this once: Employing rationality is not the exclusive domain of Economics.
And let me also say that HUMAN CAPITAL MODELING IS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE WITH AN UNDERSTANDING THAT DISCRIMINATION EXISTS.
In fact, I am currently seeking out ways to tease out sources of discrimination.
And plotting new ways to implement discrimination.
Against errant psychologists.
It was a craptastic week for a variety of other reasons. Among them, that a little weasel in my department manipulated me into essentially writing the substance of a memo that went to the deputy minister.
And for which I received no credit.
My immediate boss became very angry over this--as he knows that the analytical skills of the guy who received the credit for the work are sorely lacking--and yet this complaint had no effect.
This is what worries me. I hardly know the boss immediately above my boss at this point; I've only presented one piece to her and that seemed to go over well. And yet she seems to favour weasel boy to a point at which she would advance his career to the detriment of mine. I've seen her in action with other boys--summer students, junior policy wonks--and she seems to be particularly comfortable with them.
To be honest, as she's not a quantitative person, I suspected some resentment as I tried to explain the research project that I was proposing a few weeks ago.
I've experienced this resistence before. I fit in much better with a crew of analytical boys than with smart older women who don't have this particular interest. And being analytical when one is a boy seems to be acceptable. And it is not when one is a younger woman who also looks nice in a pencil skirt.
Oy. Seriously. I've been down this road before and it was not pretty. It was called my relationship with my Ph.D. supervisor.
So anyhow. I'm not going to think further about it.
The week actually went downhill from there, if you can believe it. I've basically summarized the week to Wednesday only. But it is Friday night and hot and I am trying to cajole myself out the door for a brief run...Best leave the exodus of my resentment to another day. :)
***
But before I go I must confess my guilt over something horrible that I felt and did this evening.
The guy who lives in the apartment on the main floor of the house in which I live is a weird guy. He's middle-aged and he prays all the time and yet he always ogles me as I come and go from the building.
Needless to say, I don't particularly like the company of this guy.
So his nutty mother was visiting today. See? See how awful I am?
I like old people. Usually I do. But this woman was irascible and I was tired and how the heck do I know where her son is and why he wasn't home?
And I don't have air conditioning in my apartment--I don't believe it--and my apartment is very hot and on the top floor of the house.
So I didn't invite her up. I set her up on the front porch in her walker and with a cold drink. I thought I was being at least somewhat pleasant. I sat with her until he came home. I thought after a while that perhaps she has a touch of dementia. I don't know. She seemed rather confused.
But the thing was that I was thinking the whole time that I didn't want to be talking with her. There was something that made me feel unsympathetic to her and I loathed myself for it. There was something about her that told me that she had hated lots of people in her life.
I don't know. But if I can't feel sympathy for an old lady seeking out her troubled son what is the point of it all? Am I lying to myself about my compassionate nature? Do people need to be kind and deserving to get my caring?
It's a dilemma. And I felt selfish and impatient today.
I don't like this. I thought back to the professor I loathed once for saying that what he didn't like about Quebeckers is that they don't believe that there exist undeserving poor.
Ugh. Not a pretty thought to end with. I must go out for a run. Pronto.
That's the funny thing about human nature. It's like something I heard recently when listening to an interview of Lydia Dav1s. I don't remember the precise story from which she was reading as I was only half listening, but the speaker was saying something to the effect that, "I was thinking that the person to whom I was speaking was not evolved at all. But I didn't yet want to be so evolved myself that I wouldn't be having this internal dialogue about the person with whom I was conversing."
It didn't go exactly like that. But that was the idea. And I was so amused, in the way that one can only be deeply amused by something so very true.
|10:22 p.m. - 2007-06-15
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Come al solito - 2011-04-16 unfettered spending - 2011-04-15 How does it go? - 2011-04-14 Whirlwind. - 2011-04-13 bleak that flips over to daffodil - 2011-04-08 |