00:03:26.300You also have to know how to put out fires.
00:03:27.900She says, though, that firefighters also need the intellectual, social, and emotional skills required to deliver medical emergency aid,
00:03:37.460support each other through traumatic experiences, and engage intimately with the communities that they serve.
00:03:42.200That is a key skill set for firefighters, intimate engagement, whatever that means.
00:03:53.080She says, and yet in my research on reducing gender bias and my work conducting training on general diversity and inclusion within fire departments,
00:04:01.420I can only imagine, wouldn't you love to sit in on one of her training sessions?
00:04:09.200She says, I find that when evaluating fit and competence, firefighters tend to default to a reductive set of traits.
00:04:17.260Physical strength evaluated through strict physical fitness, for example.
00:04:23.080Evaluated through strict fitness tests, that is.
00:04:25.840And these only serve to maintain white men's dominance in the fire services.
00:04:31.420Um, she goes on then to complain more about the lack of women in the fire service.
00:04:35.520And then she complains that there aren't enough black people as well.
00:10:44.680If we're going to list things besides just physical strength, and I certainly agree that firefighters need to have other things besides physical strength,
00:10:52.860although physical strength is clearly extremely important.
00:10:56.260But there are other things, too, that she didn't list that are not necessarily related to physical strength.
00:11:00.980How about fraternity, camaraderie, unity?
00:11:05.340Now, I've never been a firefighter, but I imagine that these things are important in a firehouse.
00:11:11.400And when it comes to fraternity and unity and camaraderie, then in those contexts, commonality, not necessarily diversity, is what facilitates that.
00:11:23.880So, if you've got people working full-time in a firehouse, and they've got this stressful job, and they're doing dangerous things,
00:11:31.540you want them to be unified, you want them to care about each other, to be on the same page, to get along, I think you would want all of that.
00:11:37.920And it's going to be easier to facilitate that and to engender that when you have commonality.
00:11:50.840So, even when you look at some of the intangible things, sometimes, if you want to put it this way, a lack of diversity can be beneficial even in those areas.
00:12:03.040Because the fact is, people relate and get along with, you know, men relate differently to men, they get along differently with men, than they do with women.
00:13:49.000If a man is falsely accused, would you say that it shouldn't be difficult for him, because the accusation is false, and thus he has nothing to hide?
00:13:57.660No, it's difficult precisely for that reason.
00:14:01.340Now, I know that, of course, Elba was not really trying to necessarily communicate a fully coherent thought here.
00:14:08.080He was actually just trying to keep the pitchfork mob from showing up at his doorstep by placating it with stuff like this.
00:14:17.400But that's not going to work, unfortunately.
00:14:19.440And that's the other mistake that people make when it comes to witch hunts and pitchfork mobs.
00:14:23.960They think that they can avoid being targeted by going along with it and by encouraging them.
00:14:35.980One other thing, just in general, just in general about this, if you don't have anything to hide cliche, because that logic is never, never good.
00:14:48.180It has never been employed to advance any good cause, ever.
00:14:53.440Anytime someone is saying, anytime someone is using this argument saying, well, if you don't have anything to hide, you know that whatever they're trying to justify by using that argument is terrible.
00:15:28.020Just because a person has certain things that they don't want out there in public view, things that they want to keep private, that doesn't mean that they're guilty of anything at all.
00:15:35.780It's like if a stranger walked up to you and said, or if a cop, if a cop walked up to you and said, I'm going to need to look through your phone.
00:15:44.640And you say no, and then they say, well, what?
00:15:48.800Well, I'm not doing anything illegal, but yeah, I have something to hide from you.
00:15:54.820I want to hide the contents of my phone from you, not because there's anything bad or illegal in there, but just because it's none of your business.
00:16:46.640So my son, he smacked his brother and then he put himself in timeout for doing it, which you really have to respect because the kid, I guess he kind of, he looked at the pros and cons.
00:16:57.820He weighed the risks and rewards and he decided that the reward of pummeling his brother was worth kind of the consequences.
00:17:06.820And then he faced those consequences like a man.
00:17:09.980So that's, so, so that makes me very proud.
00:17:13.480And I mentioned this on Twitter, um, just as a funny parenting anecdote, the fact that my son hit his brother and then put himself in timeout for it.
00:17:21.200So I mentioned on Twitter and people responded by, by laughing about it and so on, but there was one response that was just absolutely incredible.
00:17:30.060Um, a woman responded to my tweet with a 10 tweet thread, lecturing me on my parenting.
00:17:37.320And I want to read this to you because it's just marvelous.
00:18:38.980Use timeout carefully because punishment comes with all sorts of collateral challenging behavior and possible psychological damage.
00:18:45.300It can be very effective for acute challenging behavior like severe self-injury, but it isn't really a good idea to punish minor challenging behavior like sibling rivalry.
00:18:54.220Also, she's still going on, timeout is only effective as punishment, making the behavior happen less in the future, if time in is reinforcing.
00:19:04.860In that case, timeout is actually reinforcing his escape from kid work, and you are shooting yourself in the foot.
00:19:10.500He's getting what he wants and getting out of the task.
00:19:13.000In short, if I were providing parent coaching for you professionally, we would have a lot of work to do.
00:19:18.900That was like 10 or 11 tweets because of like 12 words that I said about my son.
00:19:35.620I thought at first maybe she's kind of being satirical and trying to be funny, but no, she's 100% serious.
00:19:42.540Heather is not only a parenting expert, but she also has ESP.
00:19:46.240Because you notice, I never said anything at all about spanking.
00:19:49.740I never said one way or another about that, but she looked into her crystal ball and she diagnosed my whole existence as a parent, which is very, very impressive.
00:20:00.700Now, I share this with you because, first of all, it's hilarious.
00:20:05.920But second, it is an extreme example of a very common phenomenon.
00:20:10.340It's a phenomenon known on the internet as the sancta mommy.
00:20:14.580And Heather is like the, she is like the alpha.
00:20:18.900She is the mommy of all sancta mommies.
00:20:22.000And sancta mommies are women who believe themselves to be parenting experts and also believe that everyone in the world is hungry for and in need of their advice.
00:20:32.340So that anytime you mention your kids or parenting or family or anything at all, even remotely related to raising children, they will parachute in like Navy SEALs and start offering corrections and criticisms and everything else.
00:20:45.400Now, women have to deal with this kind of thing much more often than men.
00:20:51.180Women are much more often the targets of sancta mommies like Heather.
00:20:56.100And they are judged often much more harshly for their perceived parenting lapses than men are.
00:21:02.660But women are also pretty good at sniffing out the sancta mommies.
00:21:07.000So, you know, every woman has other women in her circle who are like this.
00:21:13.560And so she knows not to bring up certain subjects around that woman because then she's going to have to endure a lecture about it.
00:21:21.380But it's because of these sorts of people.
00:21:24.620And it's not just, you know, I say sancta mommies.