I don't think I've told anyone this before.....

....Beyond a few psychology classmates and my family, anyway.

Have you ever wondered about female to male prejudice? We all know how men supposedly treat women across the board unfairly, but how many stop to think about the reverse? What is it that we women do to men that is stereotyping them? Do we assume they have shortcomings just because they are men?

I play a game called Second Life. I have two avatars. One is a female, and one is a male. I created the male character because I wanted to study these questions. I started out by asking men I knew in my personal life these questions. The answers convinced me that there was something to this idea. They invariably told me yes, but it was tough to get them to elaborate. So I figured that the closest I would ever get to being able to pass myself off as a male would be in Second Life. I actually found that it's still incredibly hard to do. I talk (type/use language) like a woman. I behave like a woman. So I got a male buddy of mine in the game to coach me. Once I got the basics down, I started off on my own to explore.

I discovered that men tend to avoid friendships with other men in the game unless it's over some kind of shared passion....competition, motorcycles, etc. Then when I finally got some women to talk to me, it all started becoming obvious quickly. Invariably, I was assumed to have no fashion sense, not be able to cook, etc. Just imagine the worst male stereotype you can, and that is exactly what I was assumed to be. I said hello to one woman, and she immediately fired off a ridiculously over-compensating put-down to keep me from hitting on her. I guess. She informed me that I must really enjoy blondes a lot, since that's what her avatar was, and she informed me in no-uncertain terms that she wasn't blonde in real life. She then proceeded to verbally bitch slap me into perceived submission, before stalking off and proclaiming to all within earshot that I was a complete jerk. All that from a simple 'hello' greeting.

So she was extreme, but the treatment I received from other women was quite interesting. I know it opened my eyes to subtle ways in which we treat men as inferior. I immediately apologized to my husband and now watch myself very carefully to avoid doing this. Men are not automatically incapable of taking care of children. They are not automatically on the prowl or incapable of cooking or dressing themselves.

All I can really say to my fellow women is 'SHAME!' This is not what women's liberation was supposed to do for us. Just as men haven't the right to treat us as inferior based upon our gender, we have just as little right to do the same to them.If we want to be treated equally, then shouldn't we do the same?

!!!

I learned the coolest thing today.

I was at the chiropractor due to a migraine. I woke up so miserable and unable to keep down even water. If you've ever had a migraine, you know what it was like. So I went in to get my head put on straight. We chatted briefly about different things, and he offered to set me up with certain clients of his for the next psychology paper I have to write. He said he'd hook me up with one of his bi-polar patients. I thought that was a weird offering, and said, "Oh, bi-polar disorder....yikes, I know people with that and think I get enough of that in my personal life." He laughed and said he meant he'd show me bi-polar disorder from the non-allopathic treatment view. (Non-traditional treatment)

After talking a bit more, I found out that many times bi-polar disorder is strictly structural. Nutrition doesn't come into play at all, which I would have thought. So I came home and decided to look up studies and information on this treatment method to see if there was efficacy or any credence to the idea given by the traditional medical establishment.

This DC (http://www.erinelster.com/ConditionsDetail.aspx?ConditionID=4) has been published in journals and has some good information on this. I'm so blown away - partly by the fact that I'd never really considered this before. I've apparently come close to the idea with another paper I've written on "Brain Gym' which is like cross-crawl. (I may have to describe that one later.) But I'd never really thought about the structural problem being implicated in bi-polar disorder, tourette's, depression...

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Maybe once I get all my neurons firing again (since the adjustment, I'm slowly becoming coherent again) then I can do a bit of research and it could be a topic for a paper in the future.

And maybe I can pass information along to those who are managing their disorder with medication...I know they hate it, and I know they'd love to get off of it.

Just flabbergasted....

It's 1 am...Can You Smell Your Pets?

Boy, I can! Well, really only one. We brought home a kitten and she's a doll. Even Eric likes her.

Problem is, she was fed something that apparently didn't agree with her, because it's 1 AM AND I'M CHASING HER AROUND THE HOUSE CLEANING UP DIARRHEA!

I'm giving this until Thursday. If I have to live in a house that smells like a litter pan, she's going back, because I won't do it. Normal dog smell is one thing, but cat crap is totally another.

Oh my god, even Pine-Sol isn't helping the smell in the room I have to sleep in tonight. I think I'm going to cry.

The Dark Knight

POSSIBLE SPOILERS OF THE DARK KNIGHT

So we took our son to The Dark Knight midnight showing. OK, really 12.05 am, but close enough.

This movie is a massive assault on the senses. I loved it. We even saw it at one of the older theaters in our city, so I can't imagine what it would have been like on IMAX.

The Rachel Dawes replacement wasn't a match for Katie Holmes, but everyone else was great. The new girl can act and all, but she looked like she'd lived an incredibly hard life....bags under her eyes, saggy jowls, etc. I know that's really critical, but I had a hard time looking at her and not wishing Miss Katie was still doing the role. Katie Holmes is a bit hard for me to hate, despite her poor taste in men.

Morgan Freeman and Micheal Caine as always are fantastic, and nearly any movie with either of them in it is worth watching just to watch them doing what they do so well.

My real reason for posting about this though is to laud Heath Ledger as Joker. I've read several reviews that pretty much tell Jack Nicholson to sit down and shut up because Heath's portrayal is the new standard by which all future performances will be judged. I thought it was a little much to say this, thinking that perhaps the reviews were due in part to his death earlier this year.

After seeing this movie, I'm convinced they were right. Ledger's performance was a little shy of the mark at the beginning of the movie, but as the character was developed, there was a depth and subtlety, lending themselves to the illusion of a very unstable anarchist. This Joker was scary, not silly.

However, one nitpick I definitely have about this movie is the 'social experiment' of the two boats Joker had rigged to explode. Each had the detonator for the other boat. Joker informed them the first one to push the button would live, and if neither pushed the button, both boats would be destroyed. Social psychology pretty much tells us what would happen in this circumstance. SOMEONE WOULD DIE. There is no way that a boat full of convicts and a boat full of civilians would refuse to kill each other. Even if they were sick of the corruption of Gotham, they would not be THAT noble.

It does make me sad to think that Heath Ledger will never reprise his role as Joker. It's my hope that the franchise will pay him respects by allowing the character to sit out for the next movie, and THEN find someone who can do the role justice Heath Ledger style.

White N Nerdy

Holy crap, I'm such a nerd.

I am starting a new class tonight in my bachelor's psychology program at Ottawa. It's History and Systems of Psychology. I was just looking through the book and got all kinds of excited. How nerdy is it to get excited over the history of psychology coming from ancient India and Buddha, from ancient Greek philosophers, from Rome and the Middle Ages? Of course, after that, I think the book gets rather boring, because then it's modern foundations of psychology, which I have thus far found uninteresting in previous classes. (The foundations, not current theories, mind you.)

And now I realize just what a nerd I am by reading what I've just written. Why can't I stop?!?