Likely, everyone is sick of hearing about The Virus and everything Virus-related. Just as I write this, it occurs to me that it has been on my personal radar since it hit China. I have so many contacts – friends, former students and former colleagues – back in China, that I was in frequent contact with during Chinese New Year – before it was a serious thought in the minds of most people in the rest of the world. Myself, I got hit with a brutal illness at the very end of December that lasted until the end of January, the cough even longer. At that time, everyone was talking about an unusually nasty flu season, but this was like no flu I had ever had. I’ve never had a cough accompany a flu before, and I’ve never had a fever and chills and debilitating weakness with a throat infection. But there was no testing in January, so who knows what the hell it was. But I caught it shortly after riding a Greyhound bus inbound from Seattle on its way to L.A. And there was one super sick dude on that bus who was coughing all over the rest of us on the bus…

Fast-forward 10 months. I’m safely harboured away in Canada on an island region of about a million people – we’ve had a total of about 200 cases since it all began. Pretty good. A significant number of those cases came from a single house party of drunken idiots, luckily in a small up-island community and not adjacent to the larger southern metropolis and thus pretty isolated. And this has been common around North America – drunken house parties and congregating in bars seems to be the number one way to get The Virus (also the number one way to get raped, if you’re female! And alcohol isn’t a dangerous drug…!) People are generally pretty hard-core about following protocols in my region. There is a large proportion of elderly people here, for one. Also, and this is significant, my province is taking direction from a smart, rational, and surprisingly well-liked female doctor. Leadership is key in managing crises, and it is always better to put a woman in charge. We are just better at strategy, planning, taking threats seriously, and reacting rationally and without brutality. And this is in evidence around the world and throughout time. Now if you want death, destruction and general mayhem, by all means, put a man in charge.

And speaking of men, just an anecdote. When I got out of quarantine following my arrival from the US, I immediately headed to the ferry terminal for my crossing to the islands. You are supposed to wear face masks on board and they are keeping car people in their cars and walk-on people have a limited run of the passenger area of the ferry. Sensible. Now, as I was watching people disembark from an arriving ferry, I heard the din of shrill male voices. Two men were having the following conversation:

Men truly tickle themselves at how smart they think they are. Constantly self-labelling as ‘rational’, ‘logical’, ‘free-thinking’, and you name it. I mean, there is a shit ton of research out there showing how men, without fail, overestimate their abilities, competence, intelligence (and conversely, how women without fail, unless afflicted with a personality disorder such as narcissistic or antisocial PDs, underestimate their intelligence and abilities). So it follows that they are also deluded about their thinking style. Mistaking selfishness and stubbornness for free-thinking is just one of many examples.

Anyhow, it was just a reminder that while Canada is more level-headed as a country than many, including the US, there are still men there and they are just as stupid and arrogant as they are anywhere else in the world.

***[I guess I’ll put this little side note here. We are still in a place where no one is entirely certain of the entire host of behaviours that can lead to you becoming infected with The Virus. I am a supporter of scientific methodology, and I stand by science as a tool, even when men misuse it. Some women see male abuse of science as a sign of a bad tool, but that is not true. Men abuse ALL tools. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or something like that. I think generally, wearing a mask in enclosed spaces around other people is a probably a good thing, as is washing your hands PROPERLY and regularly, and not putting your tongue down other people’s throats… So not following these basic protocols, is just kind of stupid and selfish – not free-thinking. We don’t have all pieces of the puzzle yet, but we’ll get there. Part of the problem is that some behaviours are required, but so many other behaviours that may be problematic are unregulated, so many people start to question authority and refuse to do anything.]***

But let’s get a little more local, and more to the topic of this post.

In my particular city, it has become mandatory to wear face masks on public buses, and there is limited seating. But there are people who are exempt from the mask thing. The transit authority has a blurb on their website outlining who doesn’t have to comply. It is very bizarre. Some of the people on the list include:

• Children under 5. Why don’t parents have to mask their toddlers? Kids tend to be disease super-spreaders as they touch everything and don’t tend to self-regulate coughing or where their drool or snot goes. I suppose this a breeder privilege thing…
• The mentally challenged. I don’t understand this one either. If a mentally retarded person can manage something so complex as riding a bus, then they can certainly figure out how to put a mask on.
• People with limited mobility. I’ve seen evidence of the first two on the bus, but I think most people who can’t really move either take a parabus option or just don’t travel by bus. If you can’t manage a mask, then taking a bus would be extraordinarily difficult.
• Emergency personnel responding to emergencies. Self-explanatory and hard to imagine – the bus isn’t typical transport for say, a paramedic on the job.

Now there is one other group of people who seem to be covered by the exemption, but they are not included in the list of the super-challenged. And in fact, I’ve seen more of these offenders than any others on the legit list. Wait for it… you know what I’m going to say!

MEN

Yeah, I’ve noticed an inordinate number of men – of any and all races – getting on the bus without a mask. Every time I ride the bus, there is at least one adult male without a mask. And these guys are mobile, not under 5, not emergency personnel, and not overtly retarded. And yet they saunter on and sit their in their scrotal privilege unmasked, while the rest of the Canadians use the only uncovered part of their faces to full effect, shooting them dirty looks (Canadians are super good at passive aggression!) And remember, like children, men tend to be super-spreaders of disease (which has been true throughout time).

Now, also in the transit regulations is a note that while mandatory, the mask rule is not enforceable. In other words, the bus drivers have not been tasked with getting into altercations with angry males who refuse to comply – because we all know that’s what would happen if you tried to encroach upon a free-thinking male’s sense of FREEDOM. I agree that bus drivers should not be put in more danger than they might already be in, having to deal with the large number of behaviourally unpredictable drug addicts we have here on the West Coast, but what is the point of a mandatory rule if it only applies to a minority of the population…?

♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢