How Not To Sell Me Your Fancy HVAC System

We have to replace our furnace/ac.  The  AC is dead as a doornail, both are over 20 or 25 yrs old and horribly inefficient. So we’ve been getting quotes. Got two that came in at $6500 and $6800 for 3 ton 100,000 BTU 95% efficient 14.5 SEER variable flow and all that jazz. Third dude came today and did a long presentation after having measured all sorts of shit and went on about importance of proper installation, bla bla, explained all sorts of bla-di-bla about the equipment, how their employees are carefully screened and drug tested and they don’t allow any convicts to work for them because in prison they teach convicts plumbing and HVAC and here’s a picture of brown dudes in prison uniforms studying to come rape and kill your wife in your own home under the guise of installing your new furnace and ac, and you can get a heat pump too to further reduce costs, and bla bla more tech stuff, and voila! four options for your consideration, good, better, best, wow, ranging from $11k to $16k.

And I said, “WTF?”

But wait, don’t answer yet, there are rebates, and we can take this and that off, and discounts, and I can come down on price, and so on, and now the four options range from just under $9k to $11k or something like that.

And I said, “dude, you might want to rethink that one part of your sales pitch where you subtly scare me about the brown prison dudes coming into my house.”

And he said, “well, yes, but Ashton Kutcher’s ex-girlfriend was killed by an ex-con, and there are white guys in that photo too.”

I do not think we will be buying the fancy expensive heat pump furnace from this dude with the laminated pictures of scary brown men in prison uniforms studying earnestly to come rape and kill me in my own home.

The Differential Impacts of Sexist Gender Role Expectations

Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following:
Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400′s [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school guidance counselor strongly discouraged me, and told me “those are really more men’s kind of jobs.” So I gave up thinking about vet school, even though I had the ability.
Male, same age: When I was in high school, I wanted to learn to type. Probably because I just wanted to take what I thought was an easy class, but I kept asking over and over to be allowed to take a typing class. My guidance counselor wouldn’t let me register for typing. He told me “you’re going to college, you don’t need typing. You’ll have a secretary to do your typing for you.” And then all through college I had to pay people to type my term papers for me, and spend hundreds of dollars on that. My first job out of college, I walk into the office and my boss sits me in front of a computer and says “you’ll have to type [complex documents in his industry] on this.” Just last week, my current boss saw me pecking away with two fingers and said “I can’t believe you can’t type.”
Sexist gender role expectations are not innocent, and not without effect, even if everybody grows up to have lives that they are more or less happy with. Both of these people have what you would call a nice life. But one of them had her whole life course dramatically changed because of a guidance counselor’s sexist beliefs about what jobs belonged to which gender, and another had to spend cash he didn’t really have to spare in college, and spends time he doesn’t have to spare now on the job, because of another guidance counselor’s sexist beliefs about who should learn to type and who would have the typing done for them.
The differential effects of sexism often mean that men are less predisposed to be aware of them – having someone tell you “you don’t need to worry about typing” is not quite as dramatic and life-altering as having them tell you “vet school is for the men, little lady”. Men do have a lot of privilege to lose in moving to a more equitable system of gender relations, but they also have some things to gain. One of my commenters – I think it was SKM – posted a link on another thread to Men’s Lives by Michael Kimmel. It’s an interesting looking collection of essays on the intersection of race, class, and gender, focusing on men’s lives, of course, as the title indicates. It would be something useful for all the d00dly Zuskateers (is that an oxymoron?) to read and ponder.

This Just In: Scientists Discover True Nature of Feminists!

Jun. 17, 2010 3:34 AM ET
SB COMMUNITY DEEMS FEMINISTS IRRELEVANT NOBODY MEAN GIRLS, OMNIPOTENT PRIVILEGED HELLIONS
Douchey McDoucherson, ScienceBlogs Writers
ANYWHERE (SB)
Just days after a remarkable dustup in the science blogosphere, ScienceBlogs community members gathered to render judgment on feminist science bloggers.

Work-Life Balance 3: Less Navel-Gazing, More Scholarly And Institutional Structure Analysis!

First post in this series can be found here.
Second post in this series can be found here.
In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of…gasp!…being too nice!
I believe this is the first time this has ever happened.

Work-Life Balance 2: On Stepping Up To The Plate

First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride’s post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.

Why Are You So Angry?

Thegoodman really, really wants to know.

If you do not consider yourself a failure, that is great. Why then are you so angry about this situation? If it has worked out well for you, what is driving your passionate hatred for our patriarch society?
Like many gender discussions/arguments, your approach has made me feel guilty for being a man. This doesn’t accomplish anything positive since I soon get defensive because I cannot help it that I am a man and I shouldn’t feel guilty about just as you shouldn’t feel guilty for being a woman.

This is hilarious in so many ways. Let’s recap. I explained how petulant whiny white d00ds make the same boring complaint over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, believing themselves to be the first clever souls ever to have come up with it, and then listed several calm responses I often used, each of which, even the pissy one, were intended to engage the petulant whiners in some reflective thinking. Then I described what was going on in my mind while I was spoon-feeding Diversity 101 to the petulant whiners, even though we all know I never allowed myself to say any of those angry thoughts out loud. Because part of my job was, in fact, the spoon-feeding. We may debate whether the spoon-feeding does much good at all, but in any case, I was paid to spoon-feed.
So, my dear Zuskateers. While I’ve been away, occupied with allergies, migraines, and the Morris Arboretum plant sale, you have apparently taken on Zuska’s Outreach Project for D00dly D00ds. I stand in amazement at your handiwork. Through over 250 comments now you have explained, reasoned, provided links, illustrated points, discussed. And Thegoodman, who has trotted out every tired douchey trope we’ve all encountered eighty bazillion times before he showed his sorry self on this blog, is puzzled by the presence of anger. Oh, he occasionally will acknowledge that you are passionate about this subject, in a most condescending fashion – it’s a sweet way of saying “I see you are all emotional about this, and so I can’t expect you to be rational, or draw upon facts, the way I do, but that’s okay, I excuse you, and admire your feminine passion.” Calling what he’s seeing “passion” has two effects: it dismisses the arguments being made as non-logical, non-intellectual, and it downgrades the seething anger many of us are carrying around from dealing with douchey d00ds all our lives to just a quaint little “passion”, something sweetly feminine.
I have news for you, Thegoodman. I am not passionate about discrimination and inequity. I am fucking angry.
So many things in that epic thread caught my attention but I’ll just focus on a few things here.

CNN Reports Overweight Decapitated Female Torsos Unhealthy, Unstylish

Okay, the actual story is this:

if you are an overweight woman you:
• May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums
• Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs
• Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant
• Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it

And the story goes on to outline a whole host of reasons, some discriminatory, some actual problems caused by physical realities, why the above might be so. But before you get to any of that, you are greeted with the following:

just so you can be sure to remember that the world is staring at and judging you when you are overweight, young lady! No, we don’t need to see your head or even your whole body. Just the boobs and crotch – the pieces that define women’s worth. White women only need apply for our decapitated torso shot, please, even though the problems of access to adequate medical care and weight-related health issue are just as critical and maybe even more so for brown women.
CNN is basically re-reporting a story from Health.com, which is primarily aimed at women. That may explain why the story focuses on the problems being overweight causes for women, as if overweight men didn’t experience any issues with obtaining adequate health care. But what I find really interesting is comparing the photo that Health.com chose to illustrate their story, as compared to CNN. It’s this:

First of all, the photo takes up a lot less real estate on the page than CNN’s photo does. It sits beside the story, instead of blaring across the top of the page as something you have to scroll past before you can get to the story. And finally, CNN’s photo says to the female reader “this is how the world sees all you fat bitches” whereas Health.com’s photo says something more like “you are taking control of your health”.
CNN, I wish you had shoes, because I really need to puke on them right now.

Bra-Burners and Feminist Activists: A Wee Primer

Inquiring minds want to know: what’s a feminist activist, and how should she dress?
My last post has raised a lot of discussion for people about the nature of feminism and feminists. There are questions about litmus tests and whether Zuska applies them. I thought it best to take a moment or too to assuage some of your curiosity and anxiety, in the form of a series of multiple-choice questions or statements. Alas, there is no answer sheet, except the one provided by your own pre-existing (mis)conceptions and biases. Enjoy.

Maternal Sentimentality and “The Box”

Not that it matters much with this dreadful film, but if you’re worried about spoilers, don’t read this post till you’ve seen the movie. You’ve been warned. Proceed past the jump at your own risk. Movie trailer can be found here.

D00ds – Step AWAY From Your Caves!

Every manly man of means these days has gotta have a man-cave, right? Every man gotta be a caveman, right?

Wrong. D00ds, step away from your caves! You must read The Caveman Mystique, and if you cannot, as a self-respecting caveman, be bothered to read a whole freakin’ book, at least read this post over at The World’s Fair. Fab interview with Caveman Mystique author Martha McCaughey.
Maybe if you read the book in a techno-geeky way, say, on Kindle, you could preserve your caveman status even as you are deconstructing it????
Image from Flickr, posted by VonMurr http://www.flickr.com/photos/20193184@N00/920433587