My company publishes a Q&A of inquiries they receive from staff members and today's had a question from someone about maternity benefits.
Why are non-exempt employees not
offered 100 percent pay for maternity leave? The [redacted co. name] Salary Protection Disability Plan considers maternity
to be a disability like any other illness/injury. [Redacted co. name] offers
this plan to financially protect you and your family if you are sick or injured
and cannot work. It is designed to replace a portion of your income while
you are recovering. The company paid plan benefit for non-exempt employees
is 60 percent of base earnings following the waiting period.
Yes, that's correct. My company, which is a $BigNameCo in health care, says that maternity is "like any other illness or injury". This is probably news to people who think that pregnancy and childbirth is a normal part of a woman's lifecycle, like growing taller or developing body hair. Well now you know better. It's an illness or injury, official.
There's a movie coming out about the Runaways. (It's called, with typical Hollywood panache, The Runaways.) I have mixed feelings about them. They're the same age as me, and started playing rock music at 14, in LA, which is good, and probably had a chance to meet Jimmy Page when they were prime Jimmy Page-fodder, which makes me jealous and hate them.
I've been keeping an eye out for the film, even though it's about 30 years too late to be relevant (I guess like me in Jimmy Page-fodder terms) and apparently it's about to burst upon our screens shortly, directed by no other than Floria Sigismondi, with the under-age girls played by Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, among others. I don't know who plays Kim Fowley, but it's probably the Zombie Jonathan King. Their meteoric rise to mild buzz status and their equally rapid fall into drugs, infighting, confusion and disarray is chronicled by the movie, as movies are wont to do with rock.
But wait! What is this the producer is saying about why he chose Sigismondi to direct the film? Art Linson, of Fight Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High says, "We felt from the beginning that this is really a tale of two young girls" — Cherie and Joan — "getting in way over their heads in a world they knew very little about, a man’s world, and there’s a price to pay for that," he said. "We thought: It’s got to come from the heart of another woman." (From the NYTimes article here.)
He thinks only 'another woman' can understand this premise.
It's like 1940 out here in Hollywood sometimes.
There are fourteen gazillion eight jillion and six biopics on male wannabee rock stars. (I counted.) In 96.375% of them, the boys want to be stars and get in over their heads, get abused by their managers, end up with a drug habit, in confusion and disarray, go through the Dark Night of the Soul and emerge as sober individuals. (In the remaining 3. 625%, they die at 28 from the drugs.)
Even It Might Get Loud has a Dark Night of the Soul section, for old time's sake, even though everyone in it is an established star who by definition pushed through and made it.
In pretty much all of those movies the boys got in over their heads in a world they knew little about. In not one of those movies (I checked very carefully) does anyone say that they "got into a man's world" and "there's a price to pay for that". Nor did the premise require the director to have a vagina, or for that matter any other variety of wedding tackle.
But now we know. Girls, don't ever attempt to break into any man's worlds. There's a price to pay for that!
From No, Not You, a list of sexual assault prevention tips that really do work.
1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior. 2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone! 3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them! 4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited. 5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM! 6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry. Do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room. 7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public. 8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them. 9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake! 10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do. And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.
The writer says, "As I just did a college RA training yesterday, re-reading this made me laugh. I mean seriously, the “tips” they give potential victims are so condescending. It’s fun to turn the tables."
If you think they're kidding, try this page from the government which lists the usual, less guaranteed to work, tips. Or this one, from a police department.
I work in a National Unreachable Wilderness Area and today it was on fire. The two lane highway to the buildings was closed as it often is (the cycle of life in So Cal is: torrential rain, mudslides, fire, all of which close the road). Being medical personnel we got a pass up to our buildings, and spent the day with the smell of smoke in the air and some vague concern that the fire would escape and get near our building. Arson, they say – the last two fires nearby were considered arson too.
I didn't know John Paul Jones was the commander of Zeppelin. At least not until I read No Fear of the Future's piece on the history of Zeppelin pulps. He says the 1930s comics were developed to make Zeppelins sexy, and the Commander of the Navy who led the stories was called JPJ. History of Zeppelin comics here. I suspect he's making it all up, but how would I know? Anyway, Zeppelin pulps sound like something we should have had, even if we didn't.
Just like a Jaguar you're pleasing to behold. (Yes, I know Marc said he was talking about the car.)
My poster arrived yesterday from Print Mafia (motto: Cut Paste Destroy, in Ransom Note font). It was in a cardboard tube which Mr. Postie threw over the garden gate, where it rolled to the lowest point, i.e. the place where the run off pools when the sprinklers go on. I discovered it there while I was trying to work out why the sprinklers hadn't sprinkled that morning. I still don't know, but I have to assume they didn't fire because it would have ruined my $30 poster. Oddly, it's not numbered. (It is signed.) I shouldn't say that, should I, or it'll never be worth millions. Nice poster. Now I have five Dead Weather posters to frame.
Got my download of The Dead Weather live at Pomona. It's out on the internets if you want it. If you can't find it, give me a shout in comments. There's that amazing bonus of them playing I Just Want To Make Love to You, buried like an ichneumon fly larva inside of No Hassle Night. Baby Ruthless makes it sound like something a Morlock might sing to an Eloi shortly before dinner. Jack White doesn't help, screeching out a guitar line like the damned screaming for relief. Which reminds me. I'm making plans to marry Baby Ruthless. For all of you with your finger hovering over the 1-800-DOB-IN-A-STALKER speed dial, don't panic. I'm not planning to marry Alison Mosshart. I'm sure she's a lovely lady, but I've never met her. I did spend several hours in Baby Ruthless' company recently, though, and she's definitely my type.
The last person I had this crush on was Darth Maul, and I think they're probably similar characters. Murderous, single-minded, pretty. You might assume that Darth Maul was less likely to get beaten upbyhisboyfriend than the Dead Weather singer, but that's not the case; he ended being cut in two and dumped down a mineshaft by his Jedi squeeze. All in all much like the men BR sings about. Maul had a few physical advantages – horns, for instance, (most probably) physically male – but there are other things to consider in a marriage. I could go shopping with BR, for instance. And I bet she can cook.
I told a friend of mine of my wedding plans and she said she'd beat me to it. She plans to take Baby Ruthless out skeet shooting, horseback riding, handpicking holes in t shirts and portrait painting. She'll make a wedding ring out of spent bullet casings. I said I will take her on a midnight picnic under an oak tree in the waning moonlight where we'll drink red wine and talk about imaginary pasts. We'll take Polaroids of the band and crew and pressure treat them and line the bus with dripping, malleable portraits. We'll go shopping for new boots and sharp metal jewelry. We'll tease the boys until they run away.
Mind you, neither of us have anything in the poetry line on this guy, or girl, who says, "I want Alison Mosshart and Robert Plant to go on a cross-country road trip together in a 1966 VW bug with lots of drugs and Blind Willie Johnson cassettes, stopping in the Utah Salt Flats to spell out poems with rocks and driving 125mph through snowstorms in North Dakota. I want them to stop in Ann Arbor and find a mystic guru who tells them to stop having so much in common. I want the car to run out of gas where Sun Ra once fired his trombonist and I want Robert Plant and Alison Mosshart to make out on that spot. Everything about [The Dead Weather's] set is swathed in lubricate and entrails, and Mosshart hits every downbeat with jolts and lurches." He has a nice photo of her too.
I wonder if my friend will notice if I rip off the excellent idea about spent brass? There's no point telling me to get a life. This is my life.
I'm posting this here as an antidote of sorts to yesterday's post on male bonding in rock music with special reference to misogyny. There isn't much original thought of mine in it, but since the Susan Fast's book can be hard to get hold of, here goes.
I mentioned that Susan Fast, who wrote In the Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music, was "Zeppelin friendly". In her book she spends a lot of time going over, and in many cases rejecting, the anthropological scholarship that foregrounds the 'male gaze' and also claims rock music as masculinist. There is a chapter on the subject, Whole Lotta Love. In it she describes the experience of women listening to Led Zeppelin.
She submitted a survey to an internet fan group, For Badgeholders Only, and so has a lot of real life descriptions to draw on. One thing I found of tremendous interest was the results of the question about which member of the group the fan identified with. Of the women who answered, 30 identify most closely with Plant, 24 with Page and 15 had no preference. Of the men who answered who had a preference, there were 116 for Page, 25 for Plant, 24 for Jones and 25 for Bonham. I can't be bothered to type that into any statistical software but I'm pretty sure that's a real difference between the sexes and not a distribution you could get by chance. It's certainly the most statistically significant thing I've ever seen anyone set down on the subject, most of which seems to be derived from testosterone-soaked anecdotes. (Apart from the ones derived from estrogen-soaked anecdotes.)
She starts the chapter by describing the long reaction shot of the woman in the crowd in Since I've Been Loving You, in the Led Zeppelin movie, The Song Remains the Same (above). Why, she asks, if rock has always been coded as male, and Led Zeppelin has been described as misogynist, is one of the most memorable shots of TSRTS a female - a non-hysterical one - who appears to be concentrating on the music and musicianship?
To describe it, she recaps a whole busload of male reviewers who have said that Led Zeppelin is unfriendly to women - as I did yesterday - and then goes back to the image of the woman in the audience. Clearly the concert-goer was a female Zeppelin fan in 1973. There are other women in the audience too. The critics quoted are wrong. Fast describes her own experience with the music, which was basically thinking that Immigrant Song was well hard. She's a professor of music, so I think she uses a different term, but I know what she means. Her fantasies about the band (at 14) mostly consisted of seeing herself as a being a beautiful, accomplished musician, Plant's equal – and him noticing her. "Appropriating the power of those performers for oneself was as important for some as was the sexual freedom they suggested …and for some reason I thought that this was in the realm of possibilities, certainly not that it would be impossible because I was a woman." "I listened to their music with pathological exclusivity because it was such a powerful, liberating, intellectual, sexual and spiritual experience for me."
Of her questionnaire on FBO she says, "Most of the fans – male and female – who answered the questions on my survey relate similarly powerful experiences with the music." She goes through the comments in detail. The comments she relates don't differ much from the types of comment I see every day on internet fan groups. Women do like Led Zeppelin. It's an unavoidable fact. Her own experiences with the music sound like mine. I loved it because it was heavy; it didn't scare me, and I wanted to be Jimmy Page's equal so he would notice me. Same thing.
She refers back to gender and the so-called homosocial environment. She relates Frith and McRobbie's statement that "these shows are about male sexual performance and Weinstein's that this music culture is "masculinist" and that it is about male bonding." But Fast says, "female responses…reveal that they are also a source of erotic pleasure for women…I received no indication…that this kind of iconography was ever off-putting or frightening to women, even in the 1970s, as Frith and McRobbie claimed."
So, no real conclusions, just a rejection (based on the evidence of real fans on a message board) of the rock critics' view of Led Zeppelin as female-unfriendly. This chapter in her book is plainly "true" - the female fans aren't making it up - but Fast presents no alternative theory as to why women are so happy to be part of what has been so heavily hyped - not least in my post yesterday - as a male-bonding ritual. If I knew anything about anthropology, I might be tempted to remark that no alternative theory is forthcoming because the original theory about homosocial bonding is a load of crap made up as a just-so story to explain what the originators thought they saw (a sea of female-fearing boys) that wasn't actually true. Susan Fast's questionnaire puts that boner to rest. If I can call it that.
I suppose a good place to start a new theory would be to ask why the originators of the male-bonding theory thought they saw what they said they saw.
I sometimes mention a product on this blog, and I give a URL to Amazon or similar sites. Just to reassure you, I don't get paid to advertise anything here and I don't get any money from your clicks. Everything I say here is because I feel like saying it.
