The re-invented male －再発明されたオス－

When I woke up this morning and flicked through the BBC News web-site, as I often do, I came across an article with this headline:

“Female tech company founders invent male to beat sexism”

I spent a while trying to work out what the headline could possibly mean.  Had the women invented some sort of robot superhero which would battle sexism?  Would it search the world, looking for sexist males?  When it found some, would it beat them up?

I opened the article.  It was actually about two women who had started a tech company in America.  They didn’t “invent” a male, like you invent a new technology.  They had created a fictional male character.  They did this to gain more respect from other businesses.  According to the two women, other businesses responded more quickly and with more respect when they began signing their emails with a male name.  When they used their own, clearly female names, the tone of the response was different.

I wonder though if treating someone differently always means treating them worse.  For example, the women complained that when they talked via email using their real names a man called them “girls” in his response.  In other words, he was less formal in his answer than the women wanted him to be.  Perhaps in his own mind he was just being friendly. 

For a modern, re-invented man, relations with women can be very confusing.  We are told we have to treat women exactly the same as we treat men.  But common sense and experience tell us that if we follow this rule strictly, we will never get a girlfriend.

I have just reread the BBC article.  They have changed the confusing headline.  Too many males must have been panicking, like me.

Vocabulary:

to flick through – of a book, web-site etc., to search at speed or skim read

to come across – to find or encounter by chance

a headline – usually of a news article, the title or first line, designed to draw one’s attention

a founder – someone who establishes or begins an organisation, company etc.

to work something out – to find the answer to something; to solve

to beat someone up – to physically attack someone and badly hurt them

 

What happened when the foolish mouse met the cautious cat? －愚かなねずみと注意深いねこが出会ったら、どうなったか？－

Foolish behaviour is often punished.  But not always.  Perhaps a fool will never learn his lesson, and will remain foolish his whole life.

A student of mine was looking for something short to read in English, and I thought of James Thurber’s “Further fables for our time” (1956).  It has lots of short fables, in the style of Aesop.  The stories are funny but a little difficult to follow.  So I have picked an interesting one and edited it to make it easier.  I hope you can enjoy it.

The foolhardy mouse and the cautious cat

The cat was away, and the mice were playing all sorts of games.  Then the cat came back.

“The cat’s back,” whispered Father Mouse.

“Hide, all of you!” said Mother Mouse, and all of the mice except one hastily hid.

The exception was an eccentric mouse named Mervyn, who had once bitten a bulldog in the ear and gotten away with it.  Mervyn did not know that the bulldog was stuffed and so he lived in a fool’s paradise.

The day that the cat, whose name was Pouncetta, came back, she was astonished to come across Mervyn in the kitchen, nonchalantly nibbling crumbs.  She crept towards him and was astonished when he turned and spat a crumb in her eye and began insulting her.

“You’d make wonderful violin strings, if you had any guts,” he said impudently.

“Steady Pouncetta,” said Pouncetta to herself.  “There is more here than meets the eye.  This mouse is probably a martyr mouse.  He has swallowed poison in the hope that I will eat him and die, so that he can be a hero to hundreds of generations of his descendants.”

Pouncetta did not pounce, but turned and left the kitchen and went for a nap.

When Mervyn got back home, his family were surprised to see him alive and well.

“She never laid a paw on me,” Mervyn boasted.

After the family celebrations finished, Mervyn went to sleep and dreamed of knocking out a cat in a boxing match in the first round.

 

Vocabulary:

foolhardy – recklessly bold; not sufficiently cautious

an exception – one different from the rest

to get away with something – to do something without getting punished or harmed

stuffed – of a dead animal, preserved to look like it is still alive

a fool’s paradise – a false state of happiness when someone does not understand the real trouble or danger

nonchalantly – very casually; showing no concern

a crumb – a tiny piece of food, such as little pieces of bread which have fallen off

to creep – to walk very quietly in an attempt not to be noticed

impudently – without showing due respect for another person

“There is more here than meets the eye.” – There is something hidden or not immediately obvious

a martyr – someone killed for a higher purpose, such as promoting religion

to pounce – to jump on suddenly

 

Lost property and carrots －落とし物と人参－

“C-class narcotics;

Anti-biotics;

[I’ve got] holes in my pockets.

I lost it all.

All that I’d like is to know,

Just where do those lost things go,

hen they slip from my hand?”

From the Divine Comedy song, “Lost property”

There was an odd story from Canada this week involving a carrot and a diamond wedding ring.

11 years ago a Canadian woman lost her diamond ring while working on her farm.  Of course she searched for the valuable ring but couldn’t find it.  Then this week her daughter pulled up some carrots.  What did she find but one carrot which had grown right through the middle of the diamond ring.  This caused it to be brought to the surface and found after all those years in the ground.

It sounds like a fairy story, doesn’t it?  Perhaps the lady should have rubbed the ring and made three wishes.  Or kissed the carrot and watched as it turned into a handsome prince.  Maybe if the carrot accepted her wedding ring on its “finger”, the woman should now be considered legally married to the vegetable.

I think she just cleaned the ring and ate the carrot.

But I love the idea of a treasured possession somehow, magically, coming back.  In the song “Lost property”, the singer lists a great many things he has lost over the course of his life, from a tennis racket to a sheepskin jacket.  Then one day in a dream he finds everything he has ever lost gathered together into a huge pile, and he cries tears of joy.

What a lovely thought.  I’m going to eat more carrots in future.

Vocabulary:

C-class narcotics – In Britain, illegal drugs are divided into different classes.  C-class narcotics are considered less dangerous than A-class or B-class ones, but are still illegal

anti-biotics – drugs taken to kill harmful bacteria

to slip from one’s hand – to fall out of one’s hand; to be lost

odd - strange

a fairy story – a traditional children’s story involving magic

a possession – something owned; something which belongs to someone

Hands that do dishes －食器洗いをする手－

“Hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green – Fairy Liquid!”

An advertising jingle for a popular brand of washing up liquid

Do you pay much attention to adverts you see on tv?  Do they influence your behaviour, or perhaps even make you think about your life in a different way?

Presumably they must have some effect on people.  If they didn’t influence us, then companies would be wasting huge amounts of money creating clever thirty-second films trying to associate their products with things like success, or sexiness, or beauty.

And what if adverts are even more powerful than you had realised?  What if your young daughter were damaged by seeing the following advert?

A mother and father watch as their two children play on the floor.  The naughty children get too excited and spill food and drink all over the floor.  Oops!  Mummy sighs as she knows she will have to clean up.  But everything works out in the end when Mummy uses an amazing new cleaning product that gets rid of the mess in no time at all.  Daddy looks up from his newspaper and is really impressed.

Did you find anything wrong with this advert?  It may now be banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority for promoting gender stereotypes.  It suggests that cleaning up is a woman’s responsibility, since the father did nothing to help.

So are adverts made by groups of evil men, plotting ways to keep women under their control?  Are they deliberately using their adverts to shape society into what they want it to be?

Or are they just trying to make some money?  Maybe they don’t care who does the cleaning, as long as they buy the company’s cleaning product.  Perhaps the reason they show a woman doing the cleaning is that their market research shows that women use cleaning products more than men.  In other words, they are reflecting the way society is, rather than trying to shape it.

Either way, I don’t think that advertising is really such a powerful tool for shaping society.  I grew up watching adverts like the Fairy Liquid ad.  It always showed a beautiful woman washing dishes and smiling, pleased that the special product wouldn’t damage her lovely soft hands.  And yet washing the dishes has become my responsibility.  Maybe I should complain to my wife.  Years of sexist adverts have damaged me and I am now incapable of doing the washing up.  I am also too worried about maintaining my lovely soft hands.

Vocabulary:

a jingle – a very short tune with words, made to be easy to remember

an advert/ an ad – an advertisement or commercial; information designed to help sell a product

to associate A with B – to make people see a connection between A and B

naughty – especially of children, badly behaved or difficult to control

to get rid of – of something unwanted such as rubbish or a stain, to removen no time at all – very quickly

to be banned – to be prohibited; not to be allowed

a gender stereotype – a simple and fixed idea about how men and women are, or behave etc.

to plot – to plan, especially of something secret or harmful

 

How Britain was revealed as a nation of habitual criminals －イギリスが常習犯の国だと、どうやって明らかになったか－

 

Back when we had an empire, Britain used to ship its criminals off to distant lands like Australia.  Or we would just hang them.  So you would think that this left behind a nation of very law-abiding citizens. 

But it is not so, according to a recent survey carried out by BTTV.  They asked 2,000 adults about their attitudes to crime, and asked them about their own activities.  The survey found that 98 per cent of Britons described themselves as law-abiding.  But a more detailed examination of their behaviour found that they were committing an average of 32 crimes every year.  Are tea drinking, queue forming Britons really committing so much crime? 

Yes, but when you read the laws these people are breaking, perhaps it is surprising that they commit only 32 crimes a year. 

The most common law that the people surveyed admitted to breaking was drinking alcohol before they turned 18.  Yeah, I did that one too. 

Next was drivers who admitted swearing at, or gesturing to, other road users.  I don’t think I ever did that.  But it’s easy to break this law.  Drivers often try to be polite and gesture for a pedestrian to cross the road in front of them.  But you are not supposed to, in case another driver doesn’t stop for them. 

The third most commonly admitted crime was eating or drinking while driving.  That’s just stupid.  Australia is too good for people who break this law.  Send them to Birmingham instead. 

Next was the crime of vacuuming on a weekday before 8am or after 6pm.  Really?  That’s a crime in the UK?  I hope it isn’t a crime in Tokyo.  My wife would be committing about 250 crimes a year just from this one law. 

Well, you get the idea.  There are a lot of laws, and we all tend to break the minor ones from time to time.  I’m more worried about the fact that of the 2,000 people surveyed, only 98 per cent of people said that they were law-abiding.  What did the other forty people say then?  “Me?  I’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.  Hey, that’s a nice briefcase you’ve got, mate!” 

Just to finish off, let’s play a game.  I’ll write down three actions.  Guess which ones are against the law in the UK.  I’ll give the answers after the vocabulary descriptions below. 

1 – Being drunk in a pub 

2 – A parent taking their child out of school without getting the school’s permission 

3 – Singing “Happy birthday” in a restaurant

 

Vocabulary:

to ship someone or something off – to send someone or something away by ship

to hang someone – to execute someone, using a rope

law-abiding – of a person or people, tending to obey or follow the law

a survey – a questionnaire; a series of questions asked of many people for research purposes

to form a queue – to make an orderly line to wait for something in turn

to turn (18) – to reach one’s (18^th) birthday

to swear at someone – to use coarse language to show anger at someone

 

Answers:

1, 2, and 3 are all against the law in the UK