Sunday, December 29, 2013

Nannies

Infection Control nurses are rather an intrusive, oppressive type, but we need them to be.  Coming in when we are still contagious but don't feel bad is exactly the sort of thing responsible people think they should do, yet they shouldn't. Not in places where they will have a lot of contact with others, anyway. The infection control cheerfully enforces on employees what is good for us all, which we would not do independently. 

I reluctantly understand that. Yet it still bothers me to see the calendar in their department with a cute cartoon for December, of a man sitting in his underwear on an examining table, listening to a smiling woman with a stethoscope explaining to him "It's an app that notices when you gain weight, then locks your refrigerator, starts your treadmill, and ejects you from your chair."

Haha.

This is not humorous, this is horrifying. The assumption that others have at least partial ownership of your body is increasing.

Society used to not intervene much in domestic violence.  It was disapproved of and gossiped about, but there was a general reluctance to get involved.  Various sexual practices were sometimes officially punished, but people were likewise reluctant to notice what everyone knew. Even child victims were not always protected.  Everyone preferred to just have bad folks move away and have no more be said about it.  But you could, and some were, punished for beating the wife and kids, or having a homosexual lover.  No one would have dreamed of interfering with what you ate, though.

Cultures are different.  Things change.

1 comment:

james said...

Some conditions are lifestyle driven, and who pays the piper calls the tune. If the Almighty State is paying for your conditions, they set the new rules.

I wonder how long it will take before somebody notices that there are unfortunate and expensive consequences to sexual misconduct, and thinks to start re-instituting some old restrictions?