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0 Boys 4 Real – Reflection Weeks 2/3

I was negligent and didn’t post a reflection last week, so this one will encompass two weeks of the program.

My level of anxiety about the program has dropped precipitously over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been able to lean on the active participation of the two Facilitators I have in my group to do a lot of the programmatic stuff, and I have been able to work mostly behind the scenes rather than trying to drive things forward. Martin and Michael, my co-volunteers, are both highly motivated to do well and highly capable, which is a relief. I think it would be a bigger problem if I had a lackadaisical team than if I had a few unruly students.

Week 2 was largely uneventful, and I don’t really have too much to say about it except that I am disappointed that our group chose to do a cancer fundraiser. Obviously I respect their choices, but I would have liked to see them choose something that involved more than raising funds “for cancer”. Community service should, I think, involve actually interacting with the community. Of course, considering the multitude of ways I have failed to live up to that over my own 29 years, maybe that is an unreasonable thing to expect from a group of 12 year-olds.

One of the things I have noted with interest is that when our group combined with the ‘WTML’ group, some of the strongest personalities in the room belong to the young women. They clearly have no biological programming to make them more demure and soft-spoken, and it looks like they haven’t internalized the talking points about “women’s roles” in scial interactions yet. I am as challenged by the most outspoken young women as I am by the outspoken guys in my own group, but that is not something that is ‘their fault’ as much as it is something for me to learn to deal with effectively.

I did pull one of my more rambunctious guys aside at the beginning of our Week 2 session because someone had mentioned that he had been a bit disruptive the previous week. I think I managed this conversation well. I told him first that he wasn’t in trouble and I wasn’t upset with him. I said that I was really glad he was in the program because he’s got a great sense of humour and pumps everyone up, but that some people have a hard time dealing with that level of energy. I told him I struggled with it a lot, and that I had to learn to keep my eyes and ears open for the reactions of others to figure out how not to bowl them over. He seemed receptive, and I’m willing to bet he’s heard something along these lines before. I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the magic of one conversation, but we’ll see how it goes.

The last thing I want to reflect on here is the ’empathy’ session we did in Week 3. The topics we’re discussing in these sessions are really broad and important, and we have to cram them into 20-minute chunks which is really frustrating. I understand that we are time constrained, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by presenting these things as ‘soundbyte’ topics. This was particularly evident to me this week when we did 20 minutes on ’empathy’ that required us to first define it and then act it out. A lot of the guys hadn’t really been exposed to the concept before, and asking them to act it out resulted in some sketches that were not only completely unrealistic but also (in some cases) missed the point entirely.

I am glad that I was able to inject something I think is important into the discussion though: the idea that it is not enough to simply not participate in harmful behaviours. We ought to, when we can, speak up in opposition to them. This wasn’t mentioned in the syllabus materials, but it’s an important lesson I’ve learned in discussions of misogyny and bullying. Part of the problem is that the victims feel like they’re ‘crazy’ for feeling victimized. The presence of a few supportive voices saying “you’re not wrong, and I’m angry too” makes a huge difference, and I wanted to get the guys thinking about that a bit.

I remain optimistic and excited about the next 5 weeks.

3 All models are wrong; some models are useful

October 25, 2013
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · feminism · race

This is a phrase I use often in my work: “All models are wrong; some models are useful”. A meaningful portion of my job involves using statistical methods to create models. Some of those are the kind that one thinks of when you use the phrase “statistical model”, which is often some sort of regression analysis – you take a bunch of variables, apply some kind of mathematical rules to them, and then interpret the results. I’ve made vague reference to this before.

The other kind of model that it’s common for someone in my field to build is referred to properly as a ‘Health State Transition Model’, but colloquially called a ‘Markov Model’, or even more colloquially simply as ‘a model’. In these sorts of models, a matrix or array stands in as a possible state of health that someone can be in, and you describe mathematical rules that govern the likelihood that values held in one ‘state’ might migrate to another ‘state’.

3 Boys 4 Real – Reflection Week 1

This past Tuesday I begun what will be an 8-week after-school mentorship program sponsored and organized by the YWCA of Vancouver. The program, called “Boys 4 Real”, is targeted at grade 7 students who are preparing to make the transition to high school. I heard about the program through a friend, and immediately leapt at the opportunity.

I am near-absolutely sure that I don’t want to have children, but I still believe deeply that adults should be involved in the raising of children – or, more accurately, that children are a part of our society and should be integrated rather than segregated. My father grew up with multiple ‘parents’ – people who were not his biological relations but who nevertheless took responsibility for his upbringing and well-being. I spent my middle childhood on a street with lots of children my age, meaning that their parents were often acting as my surrogate parents. I think it makes more sense than a ‘nuclear’ and closed-off model where children are essentially the property of their two guardians rather than participants in the world as adults are. I think kids do better when they have rich social networks with lots of points of contact and perspectives on life, and I think it’s better for all of us, regardless of age to remain connected to our most vulnerable selves. … Continue Reading

3 Secular Woman: Thank You

October 11, 2013
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · feminism · freethought community · gender · politics · privilege · secularism

I am tremendously honoured, surprised, and deeply flattered to accept Secular Woman’s award for Man of the Year 2013. It is particularly gratifying to be so named, considering the other names put forward as their award recipients. I have always been grateful to anyone who reads or otherwise notices my work toward racial and gender equality, and to be named with such distinction is not something I ever expected.

As the secular community grows, like all political movements it must begin to look inward and reflect on its actions. For those of us whose motivation toward a secular world is grounded in humanist values, we must periodically turn the lens of scrutiny and the tools of inquiry upon ourselves and interrogate whether we are living up to our own values.

Among the foremost of these is the idea of ‘equality’, and what that means to us. To some, equality means nothing more than “treat everyone the same”, a definition that seems laudable at a superficial level but which, upon any amount of honest scrutiny, is deeply flawed. We do not live in a world where a ‘level playing field’ exists. We live in a world in which individuals are treated according to shopworn stereotypes about the social group they belong to; whether that is race, class, sexuality, and of course gender. In many cases, such treatment happens even in the absence of intentional or conscious malice. The forces arrayed against members of minority groups are simply not the same as those arrayed against the majority, and an “equal” response to those forces will only serve to perpetuate these discrepancies. … Continue Reading

4 A conversation about “dogmatic and overzealous” feminists

September 28, 2013
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · feminism · freethought community

This conversation continues from one that happened on Twitter.

Blake, my interlocutor, sent me this e-mail as a way of expressing his arguments and concerns more clearly: … Continue Reading

5 #Gen10: the worst generation ever?

There has been much hue and cry of late about the perceived flaws of my generation, sometimes known as “Millennials”. These articles bemoan the selfishness and narcissism of what they call the “Me Me Me Generation”, raised in an environment of helicopter parenting, social media, MTV, iPhones, “participation” ribbons, and the steady drumbeat of a culture that says “you deserve everything and don’t have to work for it”. If these articles are to be believed (and they are, because this article has been written about every generation since the advent of print media, and cognition-free generalizations just get more true over time), Millennials will be the complete undoing of the flawless and thriving economy and political system that our hard-working, never-had-a-handout forebears bequeathed to us. … Continue Reading

8 Don’t Go In There! Talking about Race, Racism, and Race Issues in the time of the Zombie Apocalypse

September 11, 2013
by Crommunist
· anti-racism · blog · crommunism · freethought community · Media · presentation · race · racism · skepticism · Video

Horror films are a wonderful source of escapism, where we can feel the thrill of terror in the relative safety of our living rooms or a crowded movie theatre. One of the all-time classics within the horror genre is the zombie movie: hordes of shuffling, shambling atrocities hell-bent on devouring the flesh of the still-living. One of the iconic images of any good zombie movie is the panic-stricken victim of a zombie bite who is slowly turning from human into monster, as all morality and reason drains from their body while their comrades feverishly debate whether or not to put their erstwhile friend out of hir ‘misery’ courtesy of a well-timed shotgun blast to the face.

Cinema. … Continue Reading

10 Was it Kierkegaard or Dick van Patten who said…

August 19, 2013
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · forces of stupid · freethought community

So today I want to talk about labels. I don’t mean those things your passive-aggressive roommate puts on each egg in the carton in the fridge you share (yeah that’s right Gary, I’m talking about you! Eggs are like 20 cents apiece – get over it!). I am talking about the labels we use to describe ourselves and each other. We use labels when we discuss ethnicity, philosophical or political affiliation, religion, gender, you name it and we put a name on it. It’s what we do. … Continue Reading

35 Non-Violent Direct Action Anyone Can Do (That Everyone Should)

June 26, 2013
by Crommunist
· #IdleNoMore · blog · Canada · history · Jamie · law · politics

It’s been a while since I last posted (and in fact, even since I last wrote an entry on my personal blog), and this entry is about part of the reason why—and that if you’re reading this, you should take up similar pass times. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the distinction between so-called “peaceful” actions and non-violence, I’d suggest you keep a stopper on that query until a later date, when I will answer that question for you in another piece of writing. In this piece of writing, I am deliberately choosing not to talk about “peaceful” anything; however, I am also not talking about aggressive behaviour or confrontation of any kind, while focusing on a specific form of non-violent direct action. … Continue Reading

8 Big announcement from Point of Inquiry podcast

Mixed news for fans of the podcast Point of Inquiry with Chris Mooney and Indre Viskontas. This just arrived in my inbox:

On Friday, Point of Inquiry’s two co-hosts—Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney—resigned from their positions at the Center for Inquiry. On Monday, Point of Inquiry producer Adam Isaak followed suit. This note is to explain our reasons for departing CFI and our future plans.

In May of 2013, when the Women in Secularism II conference took place in Washington, D.C., Point of Inquiry—the flagship podcast of the Center for Inquiry—was more successful that it has ever been. Following a format change in 2010, our audience has increased by 60 percent and our growth rate has doubled in the last year and a half. We’d recently done a highly successful live show featuring Steven Pinker before a packed room at the 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, and interviewed guests like Oliver Sacks, Jared Diamond, Paul Krugman, and Mary Roach. We had started to incorporate new, successful video content. 2013 featured our most listened-to show ever and we were averaging well over 2 million total downloads per year.

Then came the events at that conference—including a widely criticized speech by Center for Inquiry President & CEO Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay then went further, writing a blog post which referred to a post by one of his critics—Rebecca Watson—as follows: “It may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea.”

In response to public criticism of Lindsay’s speech and blog post, CFI’s Board of Directors issued an ambiguous statement regretting the controversy, but going no further than that. … Continue Reading