Friday, May 22, 2020

More Covid-19 Era Thoughts: On Gender Roles, The Role Of The Media And Trump's Masks


1.  I am not a fan of rigid gender/sex roles, because they are one of the main channels which have historically been used to keep women second-class citizens.  I would love such roles to be reduced to the absolute minimum.  Indeed, I see no alternative to that if we are actually ever to create a world where male and female people have roughly equal opportunities.

One recent example highlights the effects of the traditional division of labor at home, when combined with the covid-19 pandemic:

In April Dr Elizabeth Hannon, deputy editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, noticed that the number of article submissions she was receiving from women had dropped dramatically. Not so from men.

“Negligible number of submissions to the journal from women in the last month,” she posted on Twitter. “Never seen anything like it.” The response was an outpouring of recognition from frustrated female academics, saying they were barely coping with childcare and work during the coronavirus lockdown.

This particular anecdote is about academic work from home but the same concerns would apply to all who now must work from home and who also have minor children to care for and educate under the lockdown conditions.

More generally, the pandemic-related job losses are hitting women particularly hard because women are more likely to be concentrated in the kinds of jobs which deal with people*, and those jobs are the ones most affected by the lockdowns.  At least some of that sex segregation in employment is linked to societal gender roles and beliefs about the most suitable occupations for men and women.**

2.  It's astonishing how much attention the various protest movements wanting instant reopening of the economy have gotten in the media.  Or at least I find it astonishing, given that clear majorities of people are opposed to the very idea.  Even the most recent Fox News survey found 55% of its respondents agreeing with the statement that the US should wait before reopening the economy, even if this means that the economic crisis will last longer.

I mostly blame the media's need to create angry debates in order to keep getting the most clicks on the stories that are published.  Advertising revenue goes up with clicks and, sadly, most of us are vulnerable to click-baiting.  Given that the ad-based business model is the only one that seems to work at all to fund journalism the situation is not easily remedied.

But still.  I find the outrage-based news media extremely irritating and depressing.  Social media, in general, is even worse.  Twitter, for instance, seems to monetize rage.

3.  Our Supreme Leader refuses to wear a Coronavirus mask in public.  I don't care why he refuses so adamantly.  It could be because of his narcissistic vanity or because of some belief that when a tough 100% manly warlord president glares at the virus the virus will disintegrate without any sissy masks needed.  Or because he wants to stick it to the media.

But in judging Trump's choice not to wear a mask, we should remember this: 

The Coronavirus masks we wear in public, when in contact with others, are there to protect those others, and their masks are there to protect us.  Should Trump catch the virus and not yet know that he has it, he would be somewhat less likely to pass it on if he wore a mask***.   So he is choosing not to care about that.

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*  These are also often low-pay jobs.  Even women with children who don't work in traditionally female jobs depend on the traditionally female job category of child care workers to be able to continue their own work outside the home.  (Or so it looks if we wear the traditional gender role blinders and see child care as the responsibility of mothers first and of all female people second).

**  For more on this wider question, see this 2018 article.

*** And considerably less likely if the others coming into contact with him were also masked.







 

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Trump And Hydroxychloroquine: Another Game



Remember my earlier post about the games Trump, as a great narcissist, plays?  One of narcissistic tricks is to start a new game when it looks like another, still ongoing game is not letting the narcissist win.

That is the best way of understanding why Trump suddenly tells us that he is taking hydroxychloroquine.  Journalists can't ignore this new game, for obvious reasons, and so the media attention moves away from the game Trump no longer wants to be played.

That earlier game is about Trump firing four inspector generals in the last two months.  The most recent firing, that of the State Department's inspector general, Steve Linick, is the most controversial of these.  Trump really doesn't want the media to focus on whether the fired inspector general was investigating Pompeo and whether Pompeo then asked him to be fired:

The State Department Inspector General who was fired by President Donald Trump late Friday was investigating his administration's use of emergency powers to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia despite congressional opposition, according to a senior Democratic lawmaker.

Inspector General Steve Linick is the latest federal watchdog removed by Trump and the latest impeachment player who may have faced some form of presidential retaliation. Pompeo recommended his dismissal and supported the president's decision, a senior State Department official told ABC News Friday.

The watchdog office was also looking into whether Pompeo used staff to run personal errands, according to a congressional aide.

That game doesn't look great for Trump.  So he starts one of his "scandal" games.  Those won't bother his base much at all but will keep the media, and the public,  occupied.