The stories that the "Mythbusters" TV show investigates are all-too-vivid reminders of the deaths of my own friends and family members. "Killer Tissue Box," "Exploding Breast Implant," "Jeans of Fire"--these and countless other tragedies have deleted loved ones from my life. (Confession: I never wear jeans.)
As I sip a cappuccino and gaze hazily upon Düsseldorf's Altstadt exactly two weeks before Eurovision, I find myself in a pensive mood.
I replay the last moments of my father's life. He is coked-up and having the time of his life as he barrels down the ski run. He playfully moons other skiers as he passes them by. And there's the arctic fox, frightened out of her den, streaking white on white across the landscape, impossible to see or avoid. A surprised yelp from both parties.
Contact. Chaos. Catastrophe.
My father sailing off a cliff, his pants around his ankles, and the terrified fox wrapped around his head like a living ushanka, their separate screams blending into one.
Impact.
My server mops off my table. I seem to have knocked over my cappuccino during the flashback. "Is OK, is ok," the server grunts for the third time this morning. He is an old Polish man who no doubt came to Düsseldorf seeking a better life. Aren't we all looking for something?
I consider leaving him a tip for his trouble, but think better of that when I remember the cost of my hotel room. How do the Eurovision delegations from less well-off countries (and considering Germany is the EU financial leader these days, that would be everyone) manage to cover their boarding costs? I think a good journalist should investigate that. Then I remember that I am supposed to be a journalist. Then I sigh with relief, remembering that I am writing only for a blog, and I can leave the tough stuff (read: boring) for the professionals.
Cheered by my newly-realized lack of responsibility, I stride out into perfect weather: sunny skies and temperatures at a perfect 20°C, enough to distract me from the receding yells of my angry server. I remind myself that my father is disco dancing in heaven with Marie-France Pisier. An arctic fox frolics at their feet.
Dance, little fox, dance! :'-)
Showing posts with label East Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label East Germany. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Rise of the Dominant Woman
I keep hearing of places in the world where women are pursuing higher education whereas men are sitting around drinking beer after a day at the factory. Women have fled the former East Germany in massive numbers, leaving behind an increasingly anachronistic male working class. African-American women are outpacing African-American men in their pursuit of higher education. These sorts of stories interest me because they reflect a cultural friction as well, particularly the frustration that ambitious women feel as they attempt to find men that are their equals, and the frustration experienced by men unable to evolve and who are thus increasingly marginalized.
Only in the last hundred years has a massive shift begun to occur regarding the power of women, not just on a societal level, but on an evolutionary one. For the vast majority of our history (and our pre-history), men have dominated women simply because men generally possessed greater physical strength. Even the Renaissance and "The Age of Reason" were also ages of war where a country's number of fighting men and the brute strength of those men determined the fate of that country. And women remained politically subjugated through the end of the 19th century; intellectualism rose, but sexist beliefs took longer to overturn.
Only in the 20th century in the most democratically-advanced societies did women begin to vote and to enjoy equal access to education in any fields that intrigued them. Sexism remained--and still remains--to this day (it will forever be a fact of life; wherever there are differences there are prejudices), but access to opportunity has seen a tremendous rise in women doctors, lawyers, and other high-earning professionals whose station in life was determined by their pursuit of post-graduate education.
Only in the last few years have we entered a world where mental capability is all that matters and where strength no longer determines gender dominance in our species. It seems women in industrialized countries, including the United States ("As of 2008, women accounted for 59 percent of all students enrolling in graduate schools for the first time"), are more quickly rising up to take advantage of the opportunity.
While many standard benchmarks, like America's lack of a woman president, remain unmet, I wonder if we are rapidly moving into a world where women will dominate? And why do so many men, including myself, find it difficult to make the move into higher education that so many women are taking?
thoughts in Râmnicu Vâlcea, România
Only in the last hundred years has a massive shift begun to occur regarding the power of women, not just on a societal level, but on an evolutionary one. For the vast majority of our history (and our pre-history), men have dominated women simply because men generally possessed greater physical strength. Even the Renaissance and "The Age of Reason" were also ages of war where a country's number of fighting men and the brute strength of those men determined the fate of that country. And women remained politically subjugated through the end of the 19th century; intellectualism rose, but sexist beliefs took longer to overturn.
Only in the 20th century in the most democratically-advanced societies did women begin to vote and to enjoy equal access to education in any fields that intrigued them. Sexism remained--and still remains--to this day (it will forever be a fact of life; wherever there are differences there are prejudices), but access to opportunity has seen a tremendous rise in women doctors, lawyers, and other high-earning professionals whose station in life was determined by their pursuit of post-graduate education.
Only in the last few years have we entered a world where mental capability is all that matters and where strength no longer determines gender dominance in our species. It seems women in industrialized countries, including the United States ("As of 2008, women accounted for 59 percent of all students enrolling in graduate schools for the first time"), are more quickly rising up to take advantage of the opportunity.
While many standard benchmarks, like America's lack of a woman president, remain unmet, I wonder if we are rapidly moving into a world where women will dominate? And why do so many men, including myself, find it difficult to make the move into higher education that so many women are taking?
thoughts in Râmnicu Vâlcea, România
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