So I propose a new three-strike law: first crime, you get rehab (maybe it was truly an accident; maybe you’ll change your mind about stuff; maybe you’ll grow up); second crime, you get imprisoned (okay, this is punishment, pure and simple, because if that’s what it takes – ); third crime, you get exiled – you get kicked out.

Given your inability or unwillingness to follow the rules of this society, you should live in some other society, yeah?  If you have found another society willing to take you, great.  Bye.  If not, we will escort you to a remote designated area.  You’re on your own.

Really, it’s not as if the bar is set that high.  Basically, you just have to pay for the stuff you use (via taxes for the stuff in common, such as roads and parks, and at the check-out for everything else) and abide by a bunch of laws, most of which are pretty reasonable.  Sure, some of our taxes are unjustified and some price tags are too high, but we don’t have to say we agree, we don’t have to serve in the military, we don’t even have to engage in that bare minimum of participation, voting.  And a lot of price tags are too low, given the actual materials and labor.  So geez loueez if you want a free ride and you can’t abide by a few rules, then I say get the hell out.  We’re tired of carrying you.

I wonder if the overwhelming sense of entitlement, which is what, I think, justifies much lawbreaking in the eyes of the lawbreakers, comes from a life of getting what you don’t deserve and not getting what you do deserve (and, conversely, seeing others get what they don’t deserve).  For example, most ‘kids’ who live at home – do they still have to do daily chores to earn their allowance, not to mention their food and shelter?  Every time I hear that they expect their parents to just give them money – for everything – I think, wait a minute!  You want it?  You work for it!  Slave at a minimum wage job for a year and save up for it.

As for not getting what you deserve, yeah it’s hard knowing that people with ten times as much didn’t work ten times as long or ten times as hard.  They either had it given to them or they got it through grossly unfair salary differences (bonuses at work, golden parachutes, severance pay – I’ve been declared redundant, I’ve been fired, and I’ve quit, but I’ve never gotten more than a – well, actually I never got a farewell party either.  But that injustice doesn’t justify the other injustice.  And anyway, all this addresses just theft and property damage in all its manifestations – economic violations of the social contract, if you will.

Other violations of the social contract, such as personal damage in all its manifestations (assault, manslaughter, and so on) are harder to explain.  And, truthfully, I find these people easier to exile.  If you have so little control over yourself or so much disregard for me, for my life, I’d rather you be somewhere else.  Far away.

So, go!  Let us escort you to our border.  Cross over into this designated non-country, and you can do whatever you want.  If you’re not killed first by others like you.  Or by just trying to live without society, without the benefits of a couple thousand of years of others’ work.  Work that has given us dvd players and ipods, not to mention medical treatment, and shoes, and light bulbs, and flush toilets.  But hey, you gave all that the finger.  So make your own damn shoes.  And be careful not to step in your own shit.

(I dare say you’ll miss us a lot more than we’ll miss you.)

What!?  Why? Why is it that a woman walking alone in a park at night is understood – by men – to be implying consent to sex with any and all men?

Are parks designated sex zones?  I suppose in a sense they are.  Lovers often meet there for clandestine encounters.  Yeah, for consensual clandestine encounters.

Okay, but parks at night are also popular mugging zones, perhaps because of the poor lighting which makes escape easier in the event they are policed.  Okay, but a woman walking alone in a park at night is more at risk for rape than for purse-snatching.

So why is a woman walking alone – ah, is that it?  A woman unaccompanied by a man is unowned?  Up for grabs?  Literally?

I’d like to offer some comments in defense, or at least in explanation, of that position.  First, teachers give marks for attendance – for just being there.  And no matter how many mistakes you make, you’ll still pass.  So, hey, who says the students don’t pay attention?

Second, the job you’ve been hired to do is probably so trivial and boring, it’s impossible to keep it without sending your brain out to lunch while you’re there.

Third, showing initiative has, in my experience, backfired more often than not.  Do a good job, yes, but be careful not to do too good a job, be careful not to do, or even point out, what your supervisor should’ve done.  That’s called insubordination and it’s just cause for dismissal.  Seriously.  For example, when I worked at a detention centre, I noticed one night that the previous shift’s reports had several spelling errors.  I corrected them.  For this, I was reprimanded (because the reports were used in court and, I was told, any changes would be suspect).  So, later, when I saw a coworker collecting statistics in a most onerous fashion (not only without computer assistance, but without using a symbol key – he’d write out the full referral agency every time rather than assigning, say, numbers to each of the six possibilities and providing a key), I did not make a suggestion to our supervisor.  I guess you could say I showed no initiative; I guess you could say I displayed no desire for improvement.

Gone are the days when one gets a raise or a promotion for a job well done.  The salary grid and the advancement ladder are based solely on number of years, on seniority – on how long you’ve been there.

Excuse me, but when someone knowingly infects another person with a fatal disease, he’s killing her.  And if someone takes away someone else’s right to life, I say he forfeits his own.  And not only is the HIV-infected rapist guilty of murdering the woman he rapes, he’s guilty of murdering in advance the child he creates (whether he himself is HIV-infected or whether he rapes an HIV-infected woman).  There’s something incredibly sick about knowingly creating a human being that will die, slowly and painfully, because you have created it.

So, the solution?  Drugs, yes.  But the kind vets use when they put an animal down.  (Or, if mere prevention rather than justice is the goal, castration.  At the very least, vasectomy.)  I mean, let’s have some accountability here!  Those 20,000 kids with AIDS didn’t just appear in a pumpkin patch one morning.  Someone made them.  With a conscious, chosen, deliberate act. 

For the same reason Ed jokingly says to Greg, when he questions his rank, “Should I get you a dress?”—and they both laugh.

Because in 2012 being a woman is (still) (STILL!) (STILL!) being subordinate.

I love that on Grey’s Anatomy, so many main characters, surgeons every one of them – are women.  Actually they outnumber the men.  8:6.  And yet Owen gets the Chief position.  Richard, then Derek, then Owen.  3 of the 6 men get to be Chief.  0 of the 8 women.  Bailey’s been there longer than Owen.  And longer than Sloan, the other contender.  And yeah, okay, Kepner got the Chief Resident position even though she was there longer than Karev, but he didn’t want it.  (And we see it primarily a position of responsibility, not power.)  At one point, the Chief (Webber) said he was grooming Bailey for Chief of Surgery—what happened?

And Sam gets to be team leader in Ed’s absence.  Not Jules.  Again, she has more seniority on the team.  And is just as competent (if not more so—she can shoot and she can negotiate a crisis).

This is why I stick to my Cagney and Lacey, Murphy Brown, and Commander-in-Chief reruns.

(We’re going in the wrong direction, people.)  (And just when did we turn around?)

And since a large percentage of their crime is violent, it follows that men are responsible for far more ER visits than women (assuming no gender differences with regard to illness and other injury) (actually, since men take more risks than women, there probably is a gender difference with regard to injury) (don’t forget the driving thing), so men should pay more of the tax that supports the healthcare system.

Oh and the military. Men are the ones who thrive on aggression, they get off on the excitement of fighting. They want to join the military. They want to go to war. So let them pay for it. Let them pay the $530 billion required by the military budget.

Then there’s all the environmental stuff. All those beer cans, empty cigarette packs, fast food cartons – most of the litter along the highways was put there by men. As they continue to drive their big gas-guzzlers with the high emissions. And the companies that dump toxic waste, and clear cut forests, and dam river systems? All run by men.

We could call it the Gender Responsibility Tax – a $5,000 surtax could be levied on each and every male. Payable annually, from birth to death. By the parents, of course, until the boy reached manhood.

In both cases, the central theme, and that which drives the action, is winning. In the soaps, what the players are trying to win is money, power, love, and/or happiness. These are pretty substantial goals. In the game, however, the players are trying to win – the game. Frankly, it verges on circularity (you play the game in order to win the game), which comes close to utter triviality.

And while both sets of players use strategy, often involving manipulation, the strategy of the soaps is considerably more complicated than ‘Go left, fake, then go right.’ In fact, I would venture to say that the soaps is to the game what chess is to checkers.

With regard to setting, the soaps have a bit of an edge: while a well-furnished room is the norm, at least the set does change. (One has the well-furnished office, the well-furnished den, the well-furnished living room…)

With respect to dialogue, again the soaps have the edge: there is some. (Actually, I expect the game players speak to each other too, but for some reason we never get to hear their dialogue; instead, we are privy only to a voice-over commentary, explaining the action, rather like a Greek chorus – as patronizing now as it no doubt was then.)

While the characters of the soaps are more gender-inclusive, the characters of the game are more race-inclusive. (And in both cases, they’re rich.) I’d call it a tie here.

As for plot, again I’d call it a tie: in both cases, the events are terribly predictable. I’d venture to say one is hard put to distinguish one game from another or one soap from another – only the characters give it away.

In the cinematography category, the game is superior for its long shots, but the soaps are superior for their close-ups. Again, a tie. However, in the soundtrack category, the soaps walk away with the prize.

As for sex and violence, I’m afraid the soaps lead the game on both counts. There is simply no sex in the game – unless you count the occasional ass-pat (but that is so very elementary, it hardly even counts as foreplay). And while there is a lot more physical contact in the game, of a violent-seeming nature, and while injury must therefore be frequent, it is seldom permanent; in the soaps, however, people get hurt all the time, in rather long-lasting ways. Death is even rarer in the game; not so in the soaps.

One might point out that the game is real, whereas the soaps are not, and on that basis alone claim victory for the game. Unfortunately this very ‘advantage’ backfires: given the level of injury and death in the soaps, it’s to its credit that it’s not for real; in the game, however, real people get hurt.

Tally up the points and I rest my case: the soaps are pretty substantial stuff compared to the schoolyard play of the game.

She’s ‘native’. Well, she was born in Canada same as me, actually in the same year even, but her parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ parents were living here before the Europeans moved in.

So, the argument goes, the money is compensation for past prejudice. Okay, then let’s establish past prejudice. I mean, how exactly were her parents and grandparents denied opportunities – that, presumably, my parents and grandparents were not?

She tells me that in high school, she got 50s and 60s. So? She also tells me that she was delinquent. Excuse me, but that’s her fault. How can it be her parents’ parents’ parents’ fault? Did what the Europeans do (deny them jobs?) somehow create a culture of laziness among the people who were here first? And they were powerless to resist that? I attended school every fucking day, did all my homework, and then some, and got 80s and 90s. I guess because I’m white. And lower middle-class. Bullshit!! There were plenty others like me who skipped class. And got 50s and 60s. My brother, for one.

But I was encouraged, she explains. She wasn’t, because school isn’t important in the native culture. Yes, I was expected to go to school every day. And my parents were happy, though not particularly enthusiastic about, my grades, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t say I was encouraged. In fact, I was discouraged from pursuing a graduate degree in Philosophy.

If she attended every class, and did all her homework, and then some, and scored well on a culture bias-free IQ test, and still got 50s and 60s, then I’d say, yeah, okay, you’re a victim of prejudice.

But even if that were the case, how does $675/month compensate for the prejudice? How does it equal my privilege? I got As but that didn’t lead to $675/month. I ended up with the same part-time job she did. The same number of shifts, at the same rate of pay. If she had applied for the same jobs as me and not gotten them in spite of similar qualifications and experience (and opportunity to get said qualifications and experience), then I’d say, yeah, okay, unfair discrimination.

But still, why just give her $675/month? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give her a job that pays $675/month? Doesn’t the hand-out just repeat the past, which presumably is at fault, for putting her in this awful present of hers?

It wasn’t provoked – well, perhaps it was – in the way a red miniskirt provokes an assault:  I was running, which in itself is provocative to most canines for at least accompaniment, if not pursuit; and I was running past (but not on) his property, so I was, given the canine propensity to extend legal boundaries by a few miles, ‘in his face’.

Thing is, almost everyone I’ve spoken to encourages me to report it to the police so the dog can be ‘put down’.  Now, true enough, while my thick thigh survived the bite and I’m not now traumatized for life regarding all furry brown and black things, a child would not have fared so well.  I understand that.

But dogs can make mistakes, and I don’t think we should necessarily be killed for our mistakes.  Again, true enough, this doesn’t sound like a mistake – but I decided to meet Willy and Axel before taking any further action.  I did so and concluded that Willy is not a psychopathic killer or even a beaten and abused dog with an understandable but incurable ‘attitude’: I had both he and Axel eating out of my hand – those little doggie treats shaped like little letter carriers (or, come to think about it, like little joggers); Axel even licked my face (Willy gave me a look that seemed to discourage that sort of invitation – though he could have been remembering just at that moment that cellulite tastes rather yucky); and both dogs were quite obedient to their owners’ commands to lay down in their corner.  So, I concluded instead that Willy is ‘simply’ a big, rough, strong dog who hasn’t been taught that Biting is Unequivocally Unacceptable (Bad).

Where am I going with all of this?  Here: we routinely let people live who have done far far worse than Willy.  Are we just inconsistent or is our distinction between human and not-human/dog justified?  Frankly, I don’t see the justification.  I think there’s as much likelihood that Willy can be rehabilitated as there is that the forementioned people can be – perhaps even a greater likelihood, given the (relative) simple clarity of Willy’s mind.  (Furthermore, the human’s greater potential to control natural tendencies with reason make such assaults less excusable and therefore more punishable than Willy’s assault.)

Rehab aside, is Willy more likely to repeat the attack?  I don’t think so – it was a fluke of timing and circumstance (I happened to run by his property just at the moment he was let out of his kennel and then left unsupervised for a few minutes – first time in five years).  Furthermore, fencing the entire property (the solution I advocated to the owner) would reduce the likelihood of repeat attacks.  Unlike Willy, most of the forementioned humans know how to open a gate.

Lastly, Willy has an owner, of whom I can request a remedy short of death.  Alas, the forementioned humans don’t.

Am I wary when I pass by now?  Of course.  But I’m still more afraid of the camouflage-clad hunters with their beer and rifles, and the half-wandering drivers with their cell phones.

Consider Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Separate indeed. It’s set at a boys’ boarding school. The boys are obsessed with jumping out of a tree. This involves considerable risk of crippling injury. And yet they do it, for no other reason than ‘to prove themselves’. Now my question is ‘What are they proving themselves to be – other than complete idiots?’ We don’t get it.

They are also obsessed with going off to war. While this again involves risk of injury, it could, at least, be done for some lofty and heroic reason. But the reasons for the war are not once discussed. So it seems to be just another peer pressured ego thing: ‘My dick’s as big as yours.’ Again, we don’t get it.

Consider also Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In all three, a major theme is the loss of innocence – not through the discovery of evil in the world, but through the discovery of evil within. The boys discover their heart of darkness, their capacity for cruelty. Well, we can’t identify with that – after all, we didn’t spend our childhoods tearing the legs off harmless flies and putting fish hooks through live frogs.

We especially can’t identify with the feelings of pride, which lie just beneath the pretensions of horror, that accompany this discovery. For make no mistake, in forests and on farms, and on foreign battlefields, killing is still the rite of passage, the test of maturity, for boys to real men. Hands up, does anyone else see this as sick?

Let’s go back to Lord of the Flies for a minute. Again, all boys. Plane-crashed on an island, their task is simple: co-exist. They must figure out how to live with each other. They can’t do this. Instead, they figure out how to kill each other.

Would girls have done any better? Well, yes, I think they would have. Would they have splintered into rival groups? Probably. Would they have picked on the fat ugly girl? Sigh. Probably. But they would not have killed the pig, especially like that, laughing about its squeals of pain. (Especially not with all that fruit around.) And the little ‘uns would’ve had lots of mommies to look after them. And at the end, they would not have been discovered smeared with blood and war paint. Instead, they probably would have been found on the beach singing and doing the Macarena. (And the really horrible thing is that many men reading this won’t see that as unquestionably better.)

So don’t tell me these novels are universal. They’re not. They’re boy books. By boys about boys. And I’m a girl. Was a girl. I can’t tell you the effect Lord of the Flies had on me. First of all, I had to change sex to even be a part of the world. Read that sentence again. Then I saw myself as seven parts Simon, two parts Ralph, and one part Piggy. And I saw my options: insanity or death. Quite the education.

But even when the theme is universal, we get boy books. Consider Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Duddy wants to buy some land. As a person, I can identify with that. Unlike much of the previously-mentioned novels, this is not a boy thing. But still, Duddy is a boy. Very much a boy. So there’s not much else I can identify with.

However, also unlike the previously-mentioned novels, this one has a few female characters in it. Actually, so does A Separate Peace: one is Leper’s mother and she is just that – Leper’s mother; the other is Hazel Brewster – the ‘town belle’, a mere object to be observed and perhaps used by the boys. Yvette, in Duddy Kravitz, is seen, by both Richler and Duddy, as either sexual or secretarial. Am I supposed to identify with that?

Consider Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Now I can really identify with saving books, with perpetuating the intellectual heritage of civilization. But the five men Montag meets at the end who are doing just that are just that – five men. So are the thousands of others: “Each man had a book he wanted to remember…” Where am I? What was I supposed to be wanting? (Another television wall – recall Mildred, Montag’s wife.)

I’m so thankful for Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. For Scout. She’s one of the two main kid characters. She’s a girl. A spunky girl. A girl who runs, and thinks, and feels. There I am!

(But, alas, she doesn’t have a mom. She has a father and a brother; if she had a mom, if there were an adult woman like her, like her dad, that would even it up a bit – Scout wouldn’t be the female minority in her world. But that would be too much, I guess. Equal representation is going too far.)

And I’m thankful for Laurence’s The Stone Angel. It’s about a woman. An old woman. A feisty, sarcastic old woman who embraces her inner bitch. I wanna be Hagar when I grow old.

But what do I want to be when I grow up? There’s this huge void between Scout and Hagar. Why? What the hell happens to girls when they turn thirteen? I’m an adolescent, was an adolescent, presumably discovering and creating my identity. If I stay within the boundaries of the familiar, the apparently possible, I – Where are the girl books? Where are the books set at girls’ boarding schools? Where are the books about ‘girls only’ islands?

And what would happen if boys read them – what would happen if adolescent boys experienced Gilman’s Herland and Tepper’s The Gate to Woman’s Country instead of Golding’s Lord of the Flies? (and Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, and Newman’s A Share of the World and McCarthy’s The Group and…)

Maybe, eventually, instead of boys and girls, we could have kids, and then people; kids, and people, would read kids’ books, and people’s books.