Miss Cellaneous

The internet’s not broken.

So then why are there so many attempts to regulate it? Under the guises of piracy, privacy, pornography, predators, indecency, and security, not to mention censorship, tyranny, and civilization, governments from the U.S. to France to Germany to China to Iran to Canada — as well as the European Union and the United Nations — are trying to exert control over the internet.

Why? Is it not working? Is it presenting some new danger to society? Is it fundamentally operating any differently today than it was five or ten years ago? No, no, and no.

So why are governments so eager to claim authority over it? Why would legacy corporations, industries, and institutions egg them on? Because the net is working better than ever. Because they finally recognize how powerful it is and how disruptive it is to their power.

I once had a very depressing conversation with some guys I’m (still) good friends with, all intelligent, highly-educated, very liberal types, who expressed a milder form of this: although none of them saw it as a dealbreaker, all three of them said that they ideally wanted to find a wife (an equally intelligent and highly-educated wife, natch) who would stay home with their children. […] It wasn’t about holding women back, it was just about their personal preference for the things that would allow them to have the kind of family and career they’d always wanted.

But here’s the thing about personal preference: when you’re a successful straight man, the sexism that underpins our society is designed to benefit you. Maybe some people get off on holding women down for the sheer joy of spitefulness, but a huge amount of sexism is utilitarian. So it’s hardly a coincidence that this thing that would make your life so much easier — that would allow you to have everything you want without having to make hard choices about how you prioritize your personal and professional life — would just happen to coincide with something that was historically and systemically an point of oppression for women.