Genkster (Neologisms 01) (Advice for Story Writers 02)

 
Genkster:  a writer who engages in GENder Knee-jerk STEReotyping.  Pronunciation:  See note below.

When a GENKSTER writes a story, nis important, active characters are male. The passive characters are female.  Ne does not do that on purpose. It's just that gender stereotypes rule nis unconscious mind.  A genkster imagines the protagonist, and the people who make the plot move, and then the doctors, lawyers, cops, criminals, politicians, scientists, writers, artists, athletes, entertainers, and teachers who also enter the story and, guess what, they are all guys.  So are elderly parents and sandwich generation offspring (think of Nebraska).   Victims and dupes may be women, but not if they pro-act rather than re-act.  There are far more examples than counter examples among the books, movies, plays and television scripts of our time.   Today's writers make Shakespeare, Thackeray, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Balzac look like feminists.

A GENKSTER with a partially raised consciousness may be so broad-minded (npi) as to make a small minority of the important characters female (think of Now You See Me) and may include a few females among the less important characters, but GENKSTERs never strive for gender equality, in number, interest, or importance to the plot.  It just doesn't occur to them that art should be like life in this particular respect.

Why I felt the need TODAY to invent this word:  I just read Robin Sloan's excellent Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.  I recommend it, by the way.   Sloan's book does have a very important female, Kat Potente, but she is not the protagonist. She is the narrator's love interest and she is the only female among the main characters. She is also the last one to appear -- we meet her on page 51 of a 288 page book -- and she is pretty much gone after page 229.   Alas, Sloan is something of a genkster.

Sloan has some delightful secondary females but they are scattered, one here, one there.  When they appeared, I would think "Ah. Proof that he knows that women exist.  How refreshing."  But then the men would take over again.

What most bothered me is the number of males in the story whose Y chromosome was irrelevant.  Mr. Penumbra himself could easily have been Ms. Penumbra.  A female Penumbra might have lent the plot more spice and made the character less 2-D: He is charming but rather flat. She might have been charming and alive.

When the movie rights are sold -- I couldn't find any news about that today, but maybe I didn't look hard enough -- I am available to identify for the screenwriters the other characters with male names who could as easily have female names and be played by women, all without harming the plot.  The changes might in fact improve the story.  They would also raise its Bechdel Test scorel.

Sloan has good intentions.  I thank him for Kat and Rosemary Lapin and some other minor but beautifully drawn female characters.  But he could benefit from some advice that I offered here to Pixar after seeing Up and here to playwright Kenneth Lin, and which I could have included here for Hurt Locker's Mark Boal.  Here's the idea:

Write your first draft or outline the way you usually do, without bothering to think about the M/F ratio.  Then ask yourself:  Are all or most of the important or active characters male?  Are all or most of the unimportant or passive ones female?  If yes, go back and switch things around to achieve gender equality, not just in number but also in importance and interest.  I bet you will find that the changes bring you more ideas and make your story better.  If you do not think so, please send me both versions and I'll see if I agree. I'll even give you comments for free, at least the first time.  And if your work improves by having true gender equality, please let me know that too.

***

Pronunciation of GENKSTER

Is the initial sound in GENKSTER a hard g as in gangster or a soft g as in gender?  The word started out in my mind as genster, soft G, no K.  Then I added the K for knee-jerk because KJ is the abbreviation I use in my notes on books for my blog wordswellused.  The K moved the sound closer to gangster.  Maybe the hard G has a certain amusing appeal. 

***

The Bechdel Test

When I told a friend my views on Up, she told me about the Bechdel Test. She had learned about it when her daughter introduced her to feministfrequency.com. The movie Up had focused my attention on how much better older movies were for actresses than newer ones are.  For example, most of the old Disney animated movies had female protagonists with title roles, as I noted in Up: Against. The other day I thought about She because of Her.   The ads for She, both the 1935 and 1965 versions, feature a woman's face. In both, an actress had the title role.  The ad for Her (2013) features a man's face. A machine has the title role.  (The only good news is that the machine's voice comes from a woman not a synthesizer.)  She v. Her may also have been why I wanted to write about GENKSTERism.

***

The Morris Number

In the spirit of the Bechdel test, I have now developed a test of my own, but one for all employers, not just movie producers. I call it the Morris Number. Unlike Bechdel, the Morris Number can go much higher than three and the bigger the number the worse the situation. In its ordinary form (OMN), you count how many men you pass on the way down an organization's org chart to finding the fifth-highest ranking woman. In the weighted form (WMN), the number of males between the top of the org chart and the first female are given more weight (npi) than the number of males between the first and second female, and so on. 

minor revs, typos corrected 2/11, 5/19/14; 1/12/15

Tenting and the Effect on Batteries (PhD Ideas 03.1)

After writing Tenting and Tempurpedic, I noticed something else that may be caused by one of the gases used in fumigation.

I started having to replace AA and AAA batteries in my clocks, radios, flashlights, etc.  Each time, when I opened up the battery compartment, the batteries and contacts were encrusted with salt.  Apparently the battery acid had leaked and crystallized. Batteries that were not connected -- the ones in packages or loose in my spare battery drawer -- were fine.

I suspect that the vikane, or more likely the chloropicrin, is responsible.  A PhD student might be able to do the experiment -- but very, very carefully because vikane is lethal and chloropicrin is tear gas.  A younger student looking for a science fair project might be able to work out the chemical equations or collect some data by doing a survey of battery failure among people who have been fumigated.

If I am right, the instructions for fumigation should include one that says, "Remove batteries from battery-operated devices."

Hobby Lobby, the Divine Right of Sperm, and Religion v. Religion (Hobby Lobby 02)

If I understand it correctly, some human persons hold a religious belief that they must never do anything, directly or indirectly, that could interfere with any sperm's ability to produce a human being.  Let's call that a belief in the Divine Right of Sperm*.

This belief is apparently the one held by the human persons doing business as Hobby Lobby. I mention human persons because the Supreme Court has not yet stated that corporate persons have the ability to hold religious beliefs, or, in the language of the First Amendment, to exercise any religion.  But after Citizens United, maybe they will do that soon.


Some of Hobby Lobby's employees might have a religious belief that they should not harm other human beings.  Consider, then, a mother of five whose spouse is too ill to have a paying job.  Or a childless husband and wife who are the sole support of their parents and siblings. These people might, as a matter of their religious beliefs, use contraception so as not to jeopardize the lives of those dependent on them.  Now we have religion v. religion.  What in the Constitution says that the employer's religion wins?

Maybe employers who believe in the Divine Right of Sperm should be allowed to refuse to hire women at all.  Otherwise, the employers would be complicit in violating some sperms' rights from time to time.  Or should these employers be free to make sure that any female jobseeker is menopausal, celibate or gay?  And what about married women who swear they rely on the rhythm method?  God made women fertile at certain times of the month.  The divine right of sperm is in conflict with the rhythm method.

Can these employers also refuse to hire men who have had a vasectomy?  Can it refuse to hire men who will not promise to sign an oath never to use condoms?

But wait, you say.  Hobby Lobby does not care how the employees spend their wages.  Hobby Lobby objects that the Affordable Health Care forces the business to pay for contraception using the business's MONEY, thus leaving less money for the human owners with the religious beliefs.   Well, I guess that means Hobby Lobby accepts some limits to both the Divine Right of Sperm and to the human owners' willingness to "follow the money" to protect that right.

I admit that government forces businesses to use money in ways that might violate the human owners' religious beliefs besides the one about contraception. That is because it is a government of ALL the people.  For example, a business violates the law if it discriminates on the basis of religion. That means it must occasionally use its MONEY to pay wages to employees whose religious beliefs differ from those of the business's owners.  Does the First Amendment religion's clause trump all nondiscrimination laws?  Not so far.


I say the "religion clause" to remind myself of the words of the First Amendment."Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."  That is not the same as "Congress shall guarantee every human person total freedom regarding religion."  The Constitution does not permit one human being's religious beliefs to trump another's and it does not permit one human being's religious beliefs to trump other rights that other human beings have under our laws.

***

* The Divine Right of Sperm:  I find only one hit for this phrase today:  here.  It concerns gender discrimination: the sole right of bearers of a Y chromosome to be bureaucrats in Europe.  I am talking about the right of the little wiggly things themselves, not of the human being carrying them around.

typo corr/minor rev 1/10/14 rjm

Employers' Religious Beliefs - What about Death to Infidels? (Hobby Lobby 01)

The Hobby Lobby case presents an interesting question.  Suppose an employer's religion declares death to infidels.  Can the employer refuse to pay for ALL medical insurance for non-believers?  After all, if those workers become hurt or ill yet still refuse to embrace the employer's religion, letting them die is what the religion dictates.

Citizens United and Hobby Lobby (Con Law - Nov 2013)

(Today I wanted to write about Hobby Lobby, see next posts, but realized that I should first post what I have been saying about Citizens United ever since that case was decided.  I had written briefly at the time of the oral argument, but not since.)

Unlike natural persons (that is, human beings), corporate persons can neither vote in elections nor go to jail.  Corporate persons also lack vocal chords and body parts that can hold pens, tap keyboards or touch touchscreens.  But because 'money talks,' corporations can speak.  Moneytalk has been granted First Amendment protection for a long time.  What was new about Citizens United?

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court granted corporate persons the right to speak
   - about elections,
   - where the penalty for violating the law is going to jail.
Weird, eh?

Citizens United also ensured that the human persons hiding behind that corporate veil of a corporate person have the right to speak anonymously.  That is a right not actually conferred by the First Amendment.  It seems doubtful that the Founders intended it.  After all, the classic example of free speech is Hyde Park Corner.  As far as I know, the right to stand on a soapbox never included the right to put a bag over your head and disguise your voice.  In the late18th century, what were the chances that nobody would recognize you when you spoke out in the town square -- and that you'd actually want to remain anonymous?  Not so good, I would guess, and becoming worse with each successive rant.

Also:  anonymous speakers who could maintain that anonymity would not need the First Amendment to keep the government from throwing them in jail or beheading them as long as they could run fast.

***

If we are going to talk about the First Amendment, we should look at the words. FYI regarding Hobby Lobby: The phrase 'freedom of religion' does not appear.

1.  Block Format:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

2.  Reformatted for ease of reading, to show what ideas are parallel and to see the overall structure of the sentence.  There are three verbs (-ing words). The first two concern religion:  respecting and prohibiting.  The third -- abridging -- concerns two freedoms -- speech and press -- and two rights -- to assemble and to petition.

Congress shall make no law
     - respecting an establishment of religion,
or
     - prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or
     - abridging
        -- the freedom
             --- of speech,
             or
             --- of the press;
        or
        -- the right of the people
             --- peaceably to assemble,
             and
             --- to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

typos corr 1/10/14

Gender Stereotyping in Plays and Movies: Advice for Playwrights 01

"Gender Stereotyping in Plays and Movies" is my first post in a new series on Advice for Playwrights (and Writers of Movies, TV, Video, Etc.)

I see many new plays, full length and 10 minute and in between.  Occasionally I have the privilege of acting in them.  Time and again what strikes me is that the playwrights, whether male or female, lose the opportunity to write more interesting plays because they unconsciously stereotype by gender. (Yes, also be race, ethnicity, height, age, sexual orientation, etc., but those choices are specified less often by the writer and more often by the casting director.)

The characters who are active, who have the power, who cause the events that are central to the plot and who change as the plot unfolds, are almost always MALE. The people who are passive, react rather than, dare I say, pro-act, the dupes, the losers and the characters we could cut from the script and just learn about from the ones who actually matter if we wanted to hire fewer actors, are almost always FEMALE.

I have been thinking this for quite a while. I wrote about it in connection with the movie UP and Pixar's apparent preference for a female-free world.  (Silicon Valley - Boys' Club is not limited to the South Bay?)  I have also written about it to Theatreworks - the organization that produced the play that prompts this post - especially when they solicit audience comments for their New Works series.  Theatreworks and Pixar have this in common:  they are not ready to listen yet.

I was motivated to write today because last night I saw Theatreworks' production of Kenneth Lin's Warrior Class. I found it to be mostly a rather wordy and dull affair, with maybe 20 minutes worth watching out of the 100-minute evening in the theater. (The acting, directing, sets, lighting and the costumes for the men were all very good, but those things seem easier to do well than playwriting.  Or anyway, I encounter not-so-good scripts much more often than not-so-good the other things.)

What sprung to my attention was that Lin could have alleviated the dullness, and found inspiration to make the plot more interesting, if only he had had the imagination or simply the raised consciousness to avoid gender stereotyping.

Note: The play has another defect that I find common among new plays: it is essentially a radio play. In most of the scenes, the characters sit at a table in a kitchen or restaurant and talk. The radio-play-problem may be the subject of Advice for Playwrights 02. It is one area where non-stage scripts have an advantage over stage ones, by the way, so perhaps it is not surprising that the TV generation exercises so little restraint in writing radio plays for the stage.

Warrior Class has just three characters:  a politician, a party boss and a romantic attachment from the politician's college years.  Did you guess that the first two are male and the third female?  How much more interesting the play would have been if the politician and the party fixer were female, and the former love were male.

The politician is Chinese and religious.  Neither rules out being female.

As to the religiousness, another post in this series may be about giving characters in a play traits to telegraph whether we should like them or not, that is if we share the playwright's political view.  I find this annoying because after the telegraphy there is nothing more, no fleshing out of that trait.  I feel manipulated, whether or not my politics and the playwright's are the same, as well as cheated.  This kind of lazy shorthand button-pushing means that the playwright did not think very hard.  Suffice it to say that Lin tells us about the religiousness:  he has the politician get upset at the use of the expletive Jesus but not 4 letter words -- I guess we are being told he is a hypocrite as well -- but fails utterly to give a word picture of the religiousness.  The protagonist's stopping in a church on the way home after a bad day didn't really do it; it was another cliche without any real detail.  Were we to think it was further evidence of hypocrisy?  I thought it was further evidence of insufficient self-editing by the writer.

Granted, Mr. Lin would not be able to identify with a Chinese FEMALE politician, but complete identification with the central character is not always necessary.  Lin might have used his identification powers on the romantic attachment -- the dupe here, the victim -- with the result that the play would have become more thought-provoking.

The romantic attachment is a victim because we learn (SPOILER ALERT) that the politician, back in college, was a stalker.  Women can be stalkers, too, and men even fear for their lives from female stalkers.  It is not the usual picture of stalking, but that's why it would have given this play some more snap, and maybe inspired Lin to think more and deeper about his characters and their problems.

Even the party boss could be a woman.  I bet if Lin did some research he would find that there are examples in the real world of women who vet political candidates, do some influence pedaling, know everyone on every state legislative committee, etc.

The other details -- that the victim wants to get a job for her husband not herself, that her motivation is that the husband is having an affair, that the politician's wife has just had a miscarriage after in vitro -- all could work with the genders switched.  OK, having the politician herself miscarry might be hard to work into the timetable, but maybe it would reveal even more about the politician than when he's a he and the miscarrier is his neglected wife.  Or the politician and her husband could have an adoption or surrogate mother deal fall through.  See: once you start thinking beyond the stereotypes, more original ideas may follow.

***

As I said to Pixar, I will say to playwrights like Mr. Lin:  Write your play the way you usually do, with the active parts for men and the passive parts for women.  Then go back and switch the males with the females.  Now rewrite the play using the non-cliche gender assignments.  If you don't end up with a better play, well, send me both versions, and I'll see if I agree with you.  And maybe give you some more pointers.  For free, at least the first time.  (And if you do end up with a better play, I'd really like to see a comment below that says "It worked! She's right!")

minor rev 10/31/13, typo corr 11/6/13
rjm

Tenting and Tempurpedic (PhD Ideas 03)

TENTING, TEMPURPEDIC, CHLOROPICRIN and My Smarting Eyes 

We were tented last week, Wednesday to Friday. More about that later perhaps, but right now I'd like to suggest a PhD idea.  Or maybe it is an area for EPA investigation.

The question is about the warning gas, chloropicrin, used in fumigations along with the fumigant gas (sulfuryl fluoride, known as Vikane ®).  Does chloropicrin stay in Tempurpedic foam mattresses, and possibly other household foams and fillers, long past when any airborne gas has dissipated?  And if it does, does Vikane as well?

Why I wonder:  We sleep on a Tempurpedic mattress.  Friday night and  Saturday morning, whenever I was in bed and awake, my eyes stung and teared up.  When I got up I noticed I had a raspy throat and a funny (bitter?) taste in my mouth.  I slept all right but was not comfortable being awake in bed.

Chloropicrin effects:  My husband and I returned to our house two hours after the fumigators had posted the sign permitting re-entry so that we could open all our windows and let the house air out some more.  Very soon our eyes began to sting. We left as soon as we could and did not come back for about three hours. We were surprised about the eye discomfort because we knew that Vikane, the fumigant, is not supposed to be detectable by people at all (hence its enormous dangerousness). I looked again at the re-entry notice and saw the reference to a "warning gas: chloropicrin." Ah, I thought, that's what is bothering us.

The question is whether gases lodge in foams such as Tempurpedic mattresses and other porous materials (regular mattresses, comforters, etc.) and do not dissipate at the same rate they do from the air or from hard surfaces like wood and metal or from single-layer textiles like table cloths and clothing.

Prior Research?  I would have thought there would be some investigation of this by EPA and Dow Chemical (manufacturers of Vikane, but they probably sell it in a package with the off-patent "staple article of commerce" chloropicrin).  I searched the internet for anything with both words, chloropicrin and tempurpedic. I didn't find anything directly relevant so I suspect that there are no specific studies yet.

10/30/13:   I found this 2008 EPA document about chloropicrin. The words "foam" and "mattress" do not appear in it.  The section on residential structures  says: "The Agency reviewed monitoring studies completed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) of the California EnvironmentalProtection Agency. These studies directly monitored chloropicrin.  The results of these studies are below the Agency's level of concern for bystanders."  I am not worried about the level of chloropicrin in the ambient air inside the house.  The question is whether within a few inches of the surface of a mattress, particularly one made of Tempurpedic or other foam, the level of chloropicrin is much higher, and remains much higher, for several days after the house on average is safe.

What I did find that grabbed my attention was a site with the standard warnings and preparation instructions for tenting. Here is an example. I had read that material several times in preparation for the fumigation, but this time I paid more attention to a sentence I had thought did not apply to us:

All mattresses encased in permanent, waterproof coverings must be removed from the structure prior to the introduction of the fumigant, including infant mattresses.

We have no infant or other waterproof mattresses so I had not been concerned earlier.  I know the Tempurpedic mattress has a covering but I don't think it is waterproof.  (Another internet search showed me that many people buy waterproof covers for their Tempurpedics, so I bet I am right.)

What I remain curious about is whether the kind of foam used in a Tempurpedic, possibly coupled with the kind of covering, traps gases and does not release them very quickly.  Gas that settles on hard surfaces like wood or metal, or on single-layer textiles like clothing and table cloths, and even inside the surfaces of drawers and cabinets that are left open during tenting and aeration, departs quickly.  There's nothing except air for it to interact with.  But gas in a foam mattress or fiberfill comforter might take longer to depart.

To use a recently overworked word (but in another context): does Tempurpedic foam temporarily SEQUESTER the warning chloropicrin gas, and maybe the Vikane too, in its air pockets?  Someone could get a PhD investigating this.

Meanwhile, I heartily suggest that the official tenting instructions be amended to mention Tempurpedic-type mattresses explicitly, and to explain what to do with them.  They are common enough nowadays and, alas, so is tenting.

Maybe Tempurpedic would fund the research?  Perhaps if it does, the company can improve how it makes the foam or the mattress cover (cheaper, less gas-trapping, etc.).   That way they could get more patents and keep their hold on the foam mattress market that much longer (the up-side potential of research).

***

By the way, our Tempurpedic had a very bad chemical smell when we first got it.  We were told it would go away in 30 days.  It took more like 8-10 months.  Perhaps our mattress was a lemon?  Or perhaps we are particularly sensitive to smells?   But I doubt that I am the only person to notice either the new mattress gas or the cloropicrin after tenting in my Tempurpedic.

***

Other Kinds of Mattresses,  Bedding:  On Sunday night my husband left for a business trip and I decided not to sleep on the Tempurpedic again.  I moved to the guest room's bed which has a regular mattress.  Two observations:

1.  I got snootfuls of gas when I removed the bedding from the Tempurpedic.  This seemed to confirm that chloropicrin takes longer to depart from foams and textiles than it does from air or hard, non-porous surfaces.

2.  The regular mattress was not as bad as the Tempurpedic, but my eyes did smart and my mouth got that funny taste.   Perhaps the regular mattress would have been as bad as the Tempurpedic on Friday night?  My impression, however, was that on the regular mattress it took longer for the chloropicrin to build up to an eye-stinging level.

I admit that I read and play phone solitaire in bed before falling asleep and during middle-of-the-night insomnia.  If you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow and you bounce out of bed as soon as you wake up, then your eyes are open in bed for mere seconds. My eyes are open in bed for hours.  If you're like me, and if you are also sensitive to smells and eye irritants, I suggest not sleeping in your just-tented house for several days.

PhD Research - Details:  After confirming that the level of chloropicrin (and Vikane?) is higher in or above a Tempurpedic or other mattress than it is in the ambient air in a house after tenting, the researcher might consider whether the heat of the sleeper's body speeds up release of the gas.  I would guess it does.  PhD candidates who want to avoid human subject research, and home owners who just want to avoid smarting eyes and irritated throats, could simulate body heat with heating pads or an electric blanket or turn up the thermostat.  The PhDs could then measure the gas near the surface of the bed; the homeowners could turn on a fan, and if they used pads or blankets, they could cycle them off the bed from time to time to let the fan have better access to the surface of the mattress.

***

Conclusion:  If you are getting tented and use a Tempurpedic mattress and have sensitive eyes, consider these options:

1.  Move the mattress out of the house before the tenting begins.
2.  Move your food, meds, plants and pets back in when the re-entry notice is posted, and get the gas company to turn the gas back on so that you can warm up the house and have hot water, but sleep somewhere else for several nights.  And maybe try the
warm-body-simulation-plus-fan idea in the previous paragraph about PhD Research details.

RJM 10/28/13, rev 10/30/13

[original version available on request]