Entry 646: Watching Mrs. Doubtfire

The good news is that I'm probably getting a raise. I don't want to jinx it, but I'd put it at about 90% in my favor. It's not to the amount I asked for, but it's close enough to make me happy (assuming I get it). With the way tech is going at the moment just having a job -- let alone getting a raise -- is something to feel lucky about, and I do feel lucky. But at the same time, it's not like I cashed a lottery ticket. I spent years and years cultivating skills and gaining knowledge that not a lot of people have (even in tech), and then even more years making myself valuable to my company. I feel like if I really got lucky, I'd be a multimillionaire tech bro right now -- the kind of guy whom everybody immediately thinks is really douche-y, but then can't help but like once they get to know him. That's my truly lucky path in life.

I think about that a lot: What even is luck? What do people deserve in life, and do we assess that? I don't have any answers. And my train of thought almost always leads me to free will, and the question: Are we mostly responsible for our own lives, or was all of history preordained the instant the universe began (or something in between those two extremes)? And that's when I hit a wall because not only is that question impossible to answer, it quickly becomes not that interesting to ponder. There's just nowhere to go with it. I feel the same way about the "Are we in a simulation?" question. It's cool to think about once, and then it's like Okay, let's say we are, then what?

I mentioned good news above, so you probably ascertained bad news is coming also. It's ultimately pretty minor bad news, thankfully. I started feeling kinda sick this evening with Covid-like symptoms, but I'm testing negative. Also, I'm kinda stressed out because we're supposedly building a screened-in deck in place of our non-screened-in deck, and we're having some issues with the contractor to whom we've already paid a non-trivially deposit. I think it will all get resolved, and we will get our mosquito-resistant asylum, but I'm not going to breath totally easily until it actually happens.

Anyway...

We watched Mrs. Doubtfire today with the kids. It kinda holds up. It's sorta funny, but it's actually much more reliant on schmaltz than it is on jokes -- and that's not really a criticism. It's a genuinely heartfelt take on parenthood and divorce, and Sally Field is kinda brilliant in it, to be honest. She has to be enough of a hard-ass to deny her ex-husband custody to their kids but not a villain. The movie doesn't work if she's the antagonist. There's really no bad guys in it -- even kinda snooty Pierce Bosnan is a decent enough chap. Yeah, he calls Robin Williams a loser, but he puts up with Mrs. Doubtfire's straight-up insults throughout the entire movie, and then he's surprisingly sporting at the very end when Williams very nearly kills him (literally).

There are definitely some cringe scenes, though. In fact, I bet if I google "Mrs. Doubtfire" right now, I would find at least a few links talking about how transphobic it is. I don't think the premise is transphobic, per se, but it does play transgenderism for a few cheap laughs (and the joke is always that it's weird and creepy). The thing is, at the time the movie was released, I think it was viewed as socially progressive because it features an obviously gay couple (the brother and his partner). But, you know, things often look very different in retrospect. Needless to say, we didn't have everything figured out in 1993.

I mean, we don't have everything figured out today. A lot of this stuff is still very confusing. I'm amazed at how often the new progressive, social-justice thing to do is the exact opposite of what I would expect it to be. I ran into a situation like this recently. I had to write a little mini bio for this thing I'm doing, and in the instructions it asked to include your pronouns. No problem -- it's a bio, after all, so just about every sentence is going to include my pronouns. (He lives in DC with his wife and two kids.) So, they're included. Done. Didn't think twice about it.

But then the bios are posted, and I see that everybody else -- literally everybody else -- has their pronouns explicitly stated after their names in parenthesis. John Doe (he/his) grew up in The Bay Area... So, now, it looks like I intentionally didn't do it, like, to be different, or as some sort of political statement. But that's not the case. I just thought it was implied. I didn't know pronouns were an explicit part of the bio format (and I didn't read the sample bios, which I clearly should have done). I emailed the guy who's in charge of the bios and explained this all to him and told him he could add my pronouns if he wants, but that was a few days ago, and I haven't heard back from him, and last I checked, everything was still the same on the site.

I don't love having my bio look different from everybody else's -- I do wish I had just known and followed the format -- but ultimately I guess I don't care that much one way or the other. Getting back to my point about the new progressive, social-justice thing to do being the opposite of what I would expect, I would have thought that having a bunch of obviously cisgender men list their pronouns would have been not cool. It's like we're trying to get in on oppression we've never experienced. It kinda makes me feel like a poseur, to be honest. I've never been misgendered in my entire life. I've never experienced that hurt/embarrassment, so it doesn't seem appropriate for me to even imply that that's something that could happen to me, because it hasn't and it won't.*

*For what it's worth, I've also had women in my field tell me they hate giving their pronouns, as a matter of course, because they are already self-conscious about constantly being a minority at work due to their gender, and so they don't like constantly highlighting it. 

I guess it's about allyship, but that's a fraught, confusing concept in and of itself, especially when it's something that's clearly just symbolic. It's kinda like: Hey, you absorb all the slings and arrows; I'll change my signature line. I'm not sure how I would feel about that if I was the former person in that scenario.

Ultimately, the conclusion I've come to is that you'll never get it right because what's right is different to different people, even among those who are in the affected group. No matter what you do, somebody you're supposed to "listen to" will tell you you are doing it wrong (and that's okay). With that in mind, I say we should all just live and let live and have a lot of compassion and kindness for those who don't live the exact way we do. And maybe most people feel the same, and so I shouldn't worry that my bio is different.

Until next time...