It came to my attention that lately my writing has been seen as "oppressive to women". The remark came from a female reader who also admitted that she is taking a woman studies class at the time it was presented to me. As a cliché goes, when you have a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. That said, in the last couple days, I have spent sometimes thinking about a way to rebrand my image, to make this place somewhat more hospitable to those with slight exposure to feminism – a political movement that encourages women to become lesbians.
One idea is to build an app that helps boyfriends pretend to be thoughtful and caring. It could be automatically activated when it detected you are sending a message to your girlfriend and added "I'm sorry" at the beginning. You chump probably think that an apology is only needed when you have done something wrong. It's how uncaring boyfriends think. Thoughtful ones understand that there are only two possible situations. One: in trouble. Two: going into trouble/traps.
Let's say you are coming over and your girlfriend texts to ask you to get her some shampoo on your way because she is running out. Without my app, you assume there is nothing wrong. She loves you; you love her. All is good. But see how the app steers you toward the illusion of boyfriend thoughtfulness.
You: "I'm sorry baby, I should have noticed it yesterday that you were running out of shampoo"
Or
You: "I'm sorry, somehow I can't remember the brand you use even though I have seen it thousand times".
Without my app, you might accidentally text your actual thoughts. It might go for the following ways
You: "What brand do you use?"
Her: "What?"
Or
You: "I'm almost there. Maybe you can get it tomorrow when you go get your medicine at CVS"
Her: "What?"
Furthermore, the app can also add a feature to remind you when to compliment your girlfriend, and even suggest a safe way to do it so that you don't fall into traps like this
You: "You look so beautiful today?"
Her: "So I wasn't beautiful yesterday?"
A smarter one from the app shall goes like this
You: "Why do your friends look so old?"
What other features should the app include?
On the other hand, I wonder whether regular visitors think that the goal of my blog is just to be interesting and nothing else like I intend. It's not my goal ever to change anyone's opinion with my words online, mainly because I don't believe that human can be persuaded by better arguments, even if I had some. However I do believe that we benefit from exposures to ideas that are different from what we usually hear, even when the ideas are worse. That's what I'm after: just something different. I don't always write what I believe nor believe what I write and if I do sometimes happen to write what I think, it's often hidden among other things. I'm not moving anyone to my positions; as diversification is a good investment thesis, I think we can benefit with a diversified thoughts portfolio. For a moment, I hope the ideas are stimulating enough to be entertaining. In the long term, I believe good ideas come from people with broad exposure to different views.
Hello, friends. How are you?
-k
This is not redemption :(
Posted by: Sylvia | April 12, 2011 at 11:13 PM
No, I have to admit that you've changed my opinion. I'm now more and more critical than ever before. :)) I hope that you can keep your creativeness for the long time.
http://vn.360plus.yahoo.com/phamvietdaonv/article?mid=7706
P/S: Diversification is not always good because of something you called 'larger than life'. lolol
Posted by: Thanh | April 13, 2011 at 03:47 AM