Posts by dyan campbell
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he NHL is not the Canadian sporting body!
Um, okay. I thought "national" in NHL meant "canadian" but don't follow sports, here or in Canada. And I'm not sure if anything I did look up about those people you named indicated to me that Canadians liked what they did. I am pretty sure if a public figure from any walk of like hit a woman or killed a child their career would be over but I may be mistaken.
I never suggested bullying didn't happen to men.
Im not sure the parallel between middle aged women at a cocktail party and the hockey viewing public in Canada is quite... comprehensible to me.
Nor did I read in any of the crap I looked up anything that suggested that the Canadian public supported either the first player's tacky outburst or the second player's violent act. But I am quite open to correction on that point, if you can be bothered to find it and post it. A poll perhaps?
It seems a massive waste of time to bother looking this stuff up... but if we are going to be comparing the public perception of violent sporting figures with each other in their respective countries:
Soulan Pownceby might be a better example of public tolerance for bullying than the reaction of other partygoers to a gaggle of outrageously drunk women behaving tackily at a suburban NZ party.
A convicted child killer has been selected in New Zealand's boxing team for the Commonwealth Games.
Soulan Pownceby, 29, is rated one of the Kiwi's main hopes for a boxing medal in Melbourne.
In 1995 Pownceby was sentenced to four years jail for the brutal killing of his five-month daughter Jeanette.
Arthur Tunstall, the driving force behind Australian amateur boxing for half a century, said Pownceby had done his time and was now a free agent again.
"If the New Zealand people pick him their side we have to accept their decision," he said.
New Zealand amatuer boxing boss Keith Walker said Pownceby had been dealt with by the judicial system and was free to leave the country.
"He is deeply remorseful for what happened," he said. "He has done his time so who are we to stand in judgement of him?
"Soul has made a fresh start and kept his nose clean, and I don't see any reason why he would change that now."
Games Minister Justin Madden and Melbourne 2006 chairman Ron Walker said they had no authority over team selection.
"It's a matter for the authority to advise us of their selection and once they're selected, and all the approvals are given, we are very happy for them to compete," Mr Walker said. -
Umm....did Paul tell you this? or did someone he went to school with tell you. hehe.
No, I met him in Canada and didn't meet his parents for years. When I did his Dad had a display case full of sporting trophies and photographs, and boxes of clippings from local papers back in the day. He'd played rugby and been a track and field star. They had made him captain of teams in school and... rugby places... and he had gone on to play suburban (suburbs?) until he realised he was never going to weigh much more than Tyra Banks, and no matter how fast he could run playing rugby was going to result in increasingly gruesome injuries from bigger players. That, and he had (since childhood) felt a lack of kinship with his team-mates, because he thought they were racists who sometimes said disrespectful things about his Mum. That, and he did not like drunks any more than I did.
Unlike his Dad, Paul was aware a) his glory days were back in childhood and b) his wife would not be very interested, and would much rather hear tales of his childhood that involved real events, people or animals and not pointless games that had been played years before we'd met.
See, secretly, you like Jocks!!
Well, this is all quite ancient history... but in the days when jocks would ask me out they were less attractive, as in they attracted my attention my desire a lot, lot less than they did other women. Or rather girls, if we go back the nearly 40 years it's been since high school. I found them less cute than the awkward boys.
A guy I liked usually had a particular regard in the French sense of the word, which is to say the look that comes out of their eyes. I saw a blank stare in the eyes of of guys who didn't interest me. They would invite me on dates, without ever having made me feel they were pleased to know me or even that they had a very clear idea who I was.
I would think to myself, I could be anyone, I could undergo a complete personality transformation and they would be none the wiser, they have not noticed me or evinced a shred of interest in a conversation with me, and they have an idea or concept of who or what I might be... which is a little disturbing...
I found that very unappealing. I only ever said "yes" to dates I wanted to go on. Actually, that made me quite socially unusual, back in the day... I knew a lot of women that felt somehow obliged to go on a date because the guy had asked nicely. Go figure.
Men I considered "jocks" - people who had played sports professionally or won sports scholarships to big US universities and later morphed into lawyers, stock-brokers, property deveopers, right up into my 20s seemed truly not of my species.
This is not to say I didn't kind of like some of them in a roundabout way, but I no more wanted to date them than I wanted to date men a generation older than me who also seemed to think I might be interested.
But Paul noticed lots of things about me, what I might like and what I would find interesting. Plus he was kind, honest, brave and funny in a style I admire, that has very little to do with physical characteristics.
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You guys realise I started with with a description of how a witnessed a group of women behave here and you have started talking about people who play a game I don't follow for teams that were invented after I left Canada ?
But here goes anyway:
The guy who said vile things about his ex-girlfriends and his teammates and...the reaction from the Canadian sporting body:
Within hours, the NHL suspended him indefinitely for "conduct detrimental to the league or the game of hockey".
And the guy that injured somebody:
On February 16, 2004, during a Vancouver-Colorado game, Moore injured Canucks team captain Markus Näslund by elbowing him in the head while Näslund was reaching for a puck through center ice. No penalty was called on the play, but Näslund suffered a concussion and a bone chip in his elbow as a result of the hit, and missed three games. Moore's hit on Näslund drew much criticism from the Canucks and their fans, but the NHL ruled that the hit was not illegal and did not fine or suspend Moore. Canucks head coach Marc Crawford and general manager Brian Burke publicly criticized the non-call by the referees on the incident. Vancouver players indicated that they would get even with Moore, with left winger Brad May stating that he would put a bounty on Moore's head.
During the next game between the Canucks and Avalanche held in Denver, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL executive vice-president Colin Campbell attended the game, which ended in a tie and saw no major incidents break out.
However, on March 8, 2004, during another rematch between the Avalanche and Canucks, things went differently. In the first period, Moore fought Vancouver player Matt Cooke in a fairly even brawl, and served the 5-minute penalty for fighting. The Avalanche would go on to build up a large lead in a fight-filled game. Late in the third period, Todd Bertuzzi was sent onto the ice. After failing to instigate Moore to fight, Bertuzzi skated after him and punched Moore in the head from behind and falling upon him along with several other players from both teams. Moore's head was driven into the ice during the fall, causing three fractured neck vertebrae, facial cuts and a concussion. Moore was knocked out, and lay motionless for ten minutes before being carried off on a stretcher.And the reaction from the Canadian sporting body...
Bertuzzi was immediately suspended indefinitely by the NHL. The suspension also barred him from playing in any international tournaments or leagues during the 2004–05 NHL lockout.
and
On March 10, 2004, Bertuzzi scheduled a press conference where he wept and apologized to Moore and his family, as well as to Burke, Canucks owner John McCaw, Jr., the Canucks organization, his teammates, and the fans.
Bertuzzi was suspended indefinitely by the NHL, and lost approximately $850,000 in salary and endorsements. The Vancouver Canucks were also fined $250,000, on March 11, 2004, for "...failure to prevent the atmosphere that may have led to [the incident]."
.And all of this just serves to illustrate my point that bullying is met with censure in Canada, not that it doesn't happen.
And in the context of middle aged, female, massively intoxicated publishing types... well in my country their bitchiness is required to be more subtle and they do not stand around egging each other on in groups. Perhaps not because they don't want to, and very probably because since early childhood some boy they liked would have expressed disapproval.
Actually I'm saying Canadian women do not embrace the sisterhood and mutter among themselves because they are so shallow they won't stoop to look what our culture brands "ugly".
I was witness to the Canadian brand of bitchy (much younger women, but that may be irrelevant) where one woman presented another woman with a bag of piping hot macadamia chocolate chip cookies from a local bakery. They exchanged effusive greeting, thanks and air kisses (I worked in a law firm with the recipient, and her friend was just dropping by the office) .
After the cookie-giver left I said "gee that was nice of her" and the rest of the women in the office laughed uproariously and said "no, it wasn't... she's trying to make Martina fat". Which I have to say really escaped my notice, and is exactly the sort of thing that made people say I was odd or clueless. But I have to say, that kind of bullying is a lot less noticeable to me. I bravely and selflessly volunteered to eat the cookies.
But what women and their ways have to do with hockey players on the ice escapes me... really different situations.
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Dyan, as a counter, I give you Sean Avery, born in Ontario.
Kyle, this illustrates my point. The guy said something coarse cruel about his ex-girlfriends and bitchy about his teammates:
"I'm just going to say one thing. I'm really happy to be back in Calgary; I love Canada. I just want to comment on how it's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don't know what that's about, but enjoy the game tonight. ”
and the retribution was swift:
Within hours, the NHL suspended him indefinitely for "conduct detrimental to the league or the game of hockey". His comments were met with near-unanimous condemnation by the Stars organization, fellow players and fans alike. Stars owner Tom Hicks said that the team would have suspended Avery had the NHL not acted first.
Just as I said... bullying in Canada is met with sharp censure and the bully is made to feel pretty crappy and unpopular... and would be found "ugly" by the opposite sex, no matter what their appearance. Which was kind of my point.
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Being physically strong is a big advantage in childhood"
-not wrong dyan!
I was hefty _ _ and_ _strong as a kid, and it meant I kept my place in the family pecking order (I'm eldest) until I left home, and was never bullied at school, despite wearing very heavy glasses and being - odd.I was pretty small... usually the smallest or second smallest person in class, but fortunately grew to the reasonably normal height of 5'6. But being raised with older brothers was a bit like being raised by wolves, and I was not scared of much, least of other children. I was an avid skateboarder and in retrospect I can't believe I wasn't killed before I was 10. Children are not known for their common sense and I was no exception.
LOL. You need a hunky FBI agent to knock those mathematical angles off.
Hmm, well I've been happily settled down with my dear Paul for 27 years, so this is all distant history to me, but I never liked hunky guys. My type was the arty, sensitive milk-drinking boy next door. I avoided jocks and hunks like the plague. I was quite shocked to find (8 years into the relationship) that Paul had in fact been his school's biggest jock, a fact he hid from me, quite rightly guessing I would have rejected him as not my type .
I like mathematical concepts and grew up around a lot of conversations with that kind of drift... but I was not really that good at math in school. I was never offered a scholarship in math, excelling instead in English and Literature, two subjects I heartily disliked because they seemed so pointless and arbitrary.
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Ha, that's exactly what I was thinking of when Dyan was saying that there wasn't as much bullying in Canadia!
I didn't say there wasn't much bullying in Canada, but that it was a social convention that it be couched in much, much more subtle forms than saying nasty things within earshot of the intended victim.
This sort of behaviour is pretty world-wide, but what was different in my culture is the censure of the opposite sex, and the reluctance to appear petty, cruel or insecure in front of people. The reluctance is motivated by not wishing to appear ugly. It's shallow motivation, but powerful all the same.
Many years ago I heard a guy in Canada say something very similar about another guy (though not within earshot) and, describing him as "someone who had a fire on his face that somebody must have put out with a pitchfork" was rounded on by girls who were within earshot, and he was made to feel pretty small about his comment.
So I'm not saying bullying doesn't exist in Canda. What I am saying is that openly agressive bullying is rejected as unacceptable and unattractive - often by the opposite sex. Here, a woman can behave in an agressive or cruel way and her attractiveness is not diminished, nor would she be ashamed to be seen behaving that way in public.
It's like hitting kids. People in Canada hit kids all the time, maybe not as much as here, but certainly more than in Scandinavian countries. They just wouldn't do it openly like they do here, because they would be too ashamed to behave that way in public. Here I have seen tiny kids smacked viciously for all sorts of things, and the parents seem positively self-righteous rather than ashamed.
So it's not that the impulse or even the behaviour is different; what is different is the culture's perception of the person engaged in that behaviour. In Canada an adult who hits a child will shock witnesses, just as an adult who bullies another adult will shock witnesses.
So if someone is going to be bitchy in Canada, they tend not to surround themselves by their own sex and hold forth to an admiring gallery of harpies, for fear of appearing like a group of harpies. They try to be more subtle with it, and you do not see clusters of women talking about other women in such openly hostile ways. Not past the age of 8 or 10, anyway.
Canadians behave in ways that are very different from NZers too. My friend Tracey visited here, and spotted a Mongrel Mob member - patched, tattooed and mean looking - giving his little boy (about 4) a huge candy bar and giant bottle of Coke outside a TAB, just as it was opening. Tracey marched over to them, angrily shaking a finger at the man's face, saying "what kind of breakfast is that for your little boy? Do you want to make this child sick? Do you want his teeth to rot out of his head before the permanent ones grow in? What kind of father are you anyway!?!" I'd lived here for a while, so I was desperately trying to pull her away, going "Tracey, Tracey, we don't yell at men here..." and she was going "I'm not finished... this guy can not seriously think it's okay to leave this kid out here with all this crap and let him make himself sick..." The mongrel mob guy was just laughing, fortunately. But in NZ it would not be normal or acceptable to go up to a person and criticise what they were doing with their kid, under pretty much any circumstances. In Canada her behaviour would have been quite normal.
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How the hell did you score 27, dyan? There must have been some dimension you really hammered.
I think it's the numbers thing, mostly. I like numbers, recognise patterns quickly. I like to do things with a specific, precise order of events - mainly to compare progress with former attempts. I notice thing like whether a number is prime, an integer and I enjoy subjects other people find dull or tedious. I have a freakish memory, especially for strings of numbers - or at least I did before my second head injury (which altered my personality quite a bit, actually).
I got a nearly perfect grade in logic at university, because the mathematical nature of the arguments that are required in any defense of a position were second nature to me and I understood that any skill in essay writing that might be useful in metaphysics and epistemology would be useless in logic.
I have always liked factual books - essays by anyone from Bertrand Russell to Maxim Gorky, George Orwell to George Eliot, history, mathematical books, books on neuroscience, economics - these all appeal to me much more than fiction.
Small talk may bore me but people interest me, and I genuinely like just about everyone I meet, unless they give me specific reasons not to. I like people who are dismissed as odd, foreign or crazy and often find them interesting because they can give me insights into experiences I've never had.
I was told (more than once) that I was difficult to flirt with, though I never meant to be difficult. Once, I guy I was crazy about came over (in a crowded room) and said, urgently, "we need to talk" to which I replied, promptly and confidently, 'no we don't." I was crazy about the guy, I was pretty sure I would have remembered if we had needed to talk.
Year later, a mutual friend (male) explained to me that had actually been an attempt to engage in some serious discussion of a possible relationship, which was news to me but apparently would have been obvious to anyone else. So I was more literal and naive in that respect than people assumed, because of my apparently outgoing nature.
The social and physical confidence is perhaps different from most who scored higher on this test, and this was the influence of older brothers; I had a very tough, physically challenging and male influenced childhood when growing up.
Being physically strong is a big advantage in childhood, and the kind of confidence it gives a person just becomes part of your identity. I was never very shy or diffident, and really identified with the French writer Gabrielle Colette who described her childhood and personality in terms very similar to my own, if 100 years earlier. She said she did not understand shy children who hung back, and would herself run onto a field yelling "I'M PLAYING!" like she was shouting "FIRE!". That was what I was like too.
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it stretches the bounds of my practically limitless credulity for you to assert that Canada is a land without such bitchiness.
It's not that Canadian society is without bitchiness or bullying, but it is censured very sharply and very early. Bullies are punished by their peers - there is a sharp "grow up" for every disgraceful display like the one I witnessed at an Auckland party. By adulthood the urge to be a bitch - and I include men in this - is tempered by the admittedly shallow cultural expectation that you at least appear confident, unthreatened and gracious, otherwise you are obviously a sad loser.
So I'm not saying nastiness doesn't exist, but what I am saying is it would not have been expressed in that form past the age of 8 or 10, and the censure would most likely have come from the opposite sex. Actually it's quite well depicted in the Tina Fey film Mean Girls where the heroine finally stoops to the other girls' level, only to have the cute boy she loves recoil in disgust, saying "I thought you weren't like that." Here, I have heard people express pride in how bitchy their partners are, as if their rudeness or conceit is somehow a measure of their importance.
However much animosity there might be between people in Canada, to appear as unsubtly cruel and obviously threatened would be very, very uncool. Peers - even in grade school - would express disapproval. The Valentine's Day Box is feared by every bully, as children vote with their Valentines.
The kind of slight Canadian women are known for is like the time I crossed paths with Barbara Amiel, the wife of disgraced publisher Conrad Black. I was working as the receptionist for a big publishing firm (back in the late 70s) and Barbara Amiel, who'd met me many times, waved her hand at me saying "You... you... I can never remember your name..."
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I think this is what I was getting at. There are still forms of human interaction that appall me -- workplace warfare more than most -- but I can avoid those.
I still wouldn't place myself on the autistic spectrum, but my path through life suggests a degree of some sort of difference, possibly neurological in origin.This quote of Russell's echos my own experience... but I scored 27 on the test.
I'm comfortable in social interactions, like meeting new people, don't mind public speaking, find chit chat easy, whether I dislike it or not.
I have been given public relations, political lobbying and media spokesperson roles in some jobs. My level of confidence - physical and social - has been very, very high all my life.
I can't really be sure if I'm boring or interesting, though I certainly have elicited emphatic pronouncements at both ends of the scale from people. I'm not sure if people find me polite or not, but like Russell I'm strongly motivated to make whomever I'm with comfortable. This doesn't extend to agreeing with everything said - a robust debate seems friendly to me, but I have been told by people in the past that to disagree with their position was the same as being socially difficult. So I am not sure how I rate.
Small talk irritates me as it irritates pretty much everyone on earth, but I like taking to taxi drivers, hair dressers, bus drivers... anyone really. I'm a bit sympathetic to people who are employed in what are considered low-status positions and they are usually very responsive to any attempt at genuine conversation. I am equally sympathetic to people who are considered socially awkward, and often awkward people are the ones whose company I most enjoy. Often they seem more interesting and less shallow than the charming.
I am genuinely interested in what people have to say. I have had some amazing conversations with taxi drivers of every ethnicity possible - we no sooner become engrossed in a fascinating conversation about WWII warfare, the Bhopal disaster or the clamp and run technique in surgery and I arrive at my destination.
A person doesn't have to be intelligent or even sane for me to like them and enjoy meeting them, and in more than one job I have been given the crazy, the difficult and the emotionally unravelled to deal with, as they tend to like me. I am fairly small and non-threatening.
I've never felt like I actually had any peers as such. I don't really think of myself as a type, though I've been told I look like more people than you could possibly ever imagine - many of whom don't remotely resemble each other, men, women, other species. I remind everyone of someone or something. So much t's a bit disconcerting sometimes.
I am strongly attracted to the socially awkward and prefer their company to the mean-spirited. I've witnessed some fairly shocking social nastiness in supposedly respectable social circles, and felt nothing beyond revulsion.
I once witnessed a bunch of drunk editor types (trashy womens' magazines) bully another woman by talking about her "bad skin" and "Manuel Noriega face" and "Pineapple complexion" within earshot of her at a party. I was astonished, and wished to be back in Canada where that kind of crap would have been strongly discouraged in grade school by disgusted peers who'd have said "grow up" or "stop being such bitches" by the time they were 8 or 10 years old. Single sex schools can have an appalling long term effects on social interactions, sometimes.
But as far as the Aspergers' Spectrum goes... I don't know where I'd be on that. I get told I'm weird here in NZ a lot more than I did in Canada, but those may be cultural differences. Not sure.
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Happy Birthday to your Mum, Russell, and I'm glad to hear your sister is responding well to chemo.
Your Mum's traits of kindness and a lack of malice are well and truly evident in you. An ability to listen coupled with a sense of decency and compassion make you better than almost anyone at your line of work. I have been a fan for decades... time goes fast. But happy birthday to your Mum and best wishes to anyone in your clan.
70 sounds younger than it used to. My sister (I think you met her) turned 64 this year and as I speed through my 50s I'm increasingly conscious of how life telescopes up to nothing as you get older.
My Grandfather (on my Dad's side) was both my oldest grandparent and the only grandparent alive when I was born,. He was born in 1876 - or 1878. Either way, when he was born the Bronte sisters' father was still alive and Darwin was still publishing. I bet I'm the only person here whose grandfather's christening was attended by people born in the 1700s.