Shut Up, Get on With It

The first of my rants is on people who complain about their lot in life, and I have two groups to target: the first is feminists, and the second is public school teachers. I do not mean to say that I am opposed to either feminism or the public school system: the latter is the backbone of society so far as youth are concerned, and the former keeps the neck in place. The way that people involved in these groups act on issues, however, isn't making anything better.

I'll start with the feminists. In my first post I refered to my hatred of Australian feminist historian Miriam Dixson, after encountering her introductory essay to The Real Matilda in History Extension. Both her text and my response can be found by following the links to my wiki, History Nerds! However, I am not here now to raise historical arguments, just to point out why I am an anti-feminist. I support equality between the sexes, but the way that people such as Dixson go about trying to acheive it only creates arguments that leave women 50 years behind. While there are some interesting points raised - many of which I oppose, but they are nonetheless interesting - Dixson goes out of her to way to find them. For example, a 'matilda' is a name given to a napsack that just happens to a girl's name, and Phar Lap might be male, but he's also a horse. Dixson's work demonstrates that you can argue anything you want with the right [sic] perspective, whereas those of us in the real world understand that sure, women have had a rough time, but things are a lot better and they're certainly not being oppressed.

Last week I argued with a fellow UNSW student over a petition opposing war crimes in the Gaza Strip. The argument was partly for fun, and partly to find out what is what that my signature was going to acheive, considering that neither the Israeli government nor Hammas are likely to notice that a few foreign students have signed a piece of paper, and I remain sceptical that it would have any impact on bringing the UN to hold talks between the warring groups. Noting that my opposition argued well on my moot point, I signed the petition, seeing no harm in doing so, but also stated that I did so without commenting on who was in the wrong. Naturally, this sparked a historical argument which my fellow took back to 1945 and I took back before the birth of Christ, but then he stated that Israel were clearly the opressors. The logic behind this astounded me - that Israel has money and weapons, therefore they are the opressors. I concede that they have the opportunity, but being rich doesn't make you wrong, as much as being poor doesn't make you right. A true Leftist would suggest that if a poor person steals what they need to live off it's not really stealing, but that doesn't extend so far as blowing someone up.

My point here is that this student, much like Dixson, saw one of the groups involved in the kerfuffle (although in the case of Gaza, on a much larger scale) as being in the wrong because of a minor point and therefore accused them of oppressing the other group. So arises my opposition to the feminist school so far as history is concerned: it may be correct to say that women have been in a position under men for the past millenia (and feminists reading this may well notice my poor expression here, although John Stuart Mill did point out that men had unlimited rights over their wife and this continued into the 1980s when sexual assault between spouses was recognised as illegal), but that's not to say that they are now. Both the Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Premier are female. The Young Australian of the Year is female. Germaine Greer is hated by damn near everyone. The world for women is just as it should be so far as being equal with men goes. There may be a few things left to iron out - women still have far greater domestic responsibilities than men, and society is still in the mindset that men make better leaders - but these are not the result of oppression, merely the way that society has always thought and will continue to think. The work of Dixson might show us that it is wrong for society to think this way, but the only way to fix it is to accept it and move on in the hope that it will eventually change. Pointing out every minor detail that she can find will only result in Dixson being labelled as a bra-burner, with men (not unlike myself) taking opposition to her - although others out there will take further exception to her arguments and be even more chauvinistic than they were before.

The far shorter Round two: Public Education. It might be time to give it more, but let's think about where and how. I am politically active, attending my meeting most months, and have found that at these meetings the only people to complain about the public education system are teachers and former teachers. If you see a problem, feel free to point it out, but these people have an amazing tendency to nitpick everything, start arguments in which they almost instantly state that they agree with each other and subsequently end up making inside jokes during general business. My real problem, however, arises from the fact that public school teachers have, during my lifetime and according to my recollection, had more days on strike than any other group in Australia. There are things to fix about public education, and the main thing that they need to fix them is money - both for schools and for teachers. The same can be said, however, about roads, hospitals, and any other government body or government-funded initiative with the exception of the (thankfully rejected) Fishing Hall of Fame. If you really want the problem fixed, get on with life and do what you can to fix it from within until the funds are available to do some more.

Das UberNerd Starts Blogging

Freshish out of high school and on his last working day before starting an Arts/Law degree, Das UberNerd has decided to expand his current nerddom by having his own blog. This isn't my first internet adventure, I've already started a wiki for Extension History - but now that I'm not actually studying it, I'm hoping that others will add to it and I can sit back and be the overseer for a while.

To introduce myself - I'm eighteen, I should be tidying my desk, and I know too much for my own good. If you think I'm just saying that, I've actually studied enough Freud that a lot of the time I really don't want to know how your brain works but I still do. And my desk is rather messy and for some reason has a street directory on it.

This blog is going to be about everything that I think I should have a say in (Asian languages education coming up!) as well as the things that I discover over the next year or five as a uni student. I realise that most bloggers either are uni students or wish that they still were/will be soon, but to me it's still new and exciting. Odds are that most of my blogging will be done from the UNSW Law computer labs, so don't be surprised if you find something on here about the world's ugliest carpet.

Saying 'readers beware' would be far too cliched at this point, and frankly not applicable. I'm the kinda guy that when he has a spleen to vent writes a letter, posts it on the internet and reads it to people when he has access to a computer to make sure that they hear it - and that's what you can look forward to.

What I'm basically trying to say is that I rant, for those who haven't noticed. Things that I loathe include feminist historians, people who can't tell the difference between softball and baseball and feminist historians (Miriam Dixson, here's to you!). Things I like are Neil Gaiman (also Neil Diamond, but that won't have so much revelance to me as an UberNerd except that I'm stuck somewhere thirty-five years ago) and webcomics - for those who haven't, check out http://xkcd.com Having proven that I rant, the next installmant will be on some minor point that I find irksome. Happy reading!