lightcastle

We are the stories we tell, or so I am often inclined to think.

In honor of Women's History Month in the USA, Aphra Behn collects stories of women's history that don't get told nearly often enough.

Neal Gabler and Bill Moyers discuss how the stories we tell about politicians in the US makes us disappointed in the reality. "Movies are clean; democracy is a mess."

The American Civil War was one of the first wars documented by the new technology of photography. The Atlantic has gathers the places, the people, and finally the 3-D stereographs from the war.

Explaining scientific concepts in clear language is much harder than most people think. Could you answer the question What is flame? in a way an 11 year old would understand while still being scientifically accurate?

And finally, (mostly unrelated) Nathan Fillion excels at goofy sincerity.

Here there be Monsters.

The Binding of Isaac sounds like one messed-up game.

Arguments against the idea that religious views upholding male superiority, male-only leadership in religious posts and female subservience within the religion are simply a pretense for a pre-existing misogyny.

This puppy is deeply suspicious of broccoli.

I knew there was a rather long tradition of doing so, but had never heard of Junias before.

Junias is a character in some translations of the Bible.

More specifically, he’s a character invented by translators and inserted into the Bible. He’s a made-up person with a made-up name.

Junias never existed. And Junias’ name never existed.

But despite that, you can read the non-existent name of this non-existent person right there in the Bible — provided you have the right Bible. Or, rather, provided you have the wrong one.

Seems the problem was that in that part of the Bible, Paul was greeting important people.

In the long list of people Paul greets at the end of his letter to the Romans, he gives special notice to the husband and wife evangelical team of Andronicus and Junia (Rom. 16:6-7), whom he calls “my kindred” (suggeneis mou). … The supreme accolade comes when he calls them “outstanding among the emissaries.”

[...]

But sometime in the Middle Ages, apparently before the ninth century, it was decided that a woman apostle was unthinkable. This offended the male monopoly of church offices and honors that had grown up by that time, so Junia had to be erased from history. It took only a little smudging to do this. Paul uses her Greek name, Iounia, in the accusative case, Iounian. A mere change in accent markings (a circumflex over the last vowel) would make it the accusative form of a hypothetical male name, Iounias. But there is one problem here. “Junias” is only a hypothetical name — it never occurs in all the ancient literature and inscriptions — whereas Iounia is a common name, occurring hundreds of times.

Michael Kaufman, one of the founders of the White Ribbon campaign writes on the 20th anniversary of this movement for awareness of violence against women.

I consider myself fairly informed about this, but I didn't know that today - Nov 25 - is the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. I didn't even know that the campaign goes from today to Dec 6, Canada's National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. (I always thought it was only that day.)

I also had no idea it had reached such important status in Australia and New Zealand.

And I had never heard this oath: I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath.

And yes, I do so swear.

That line from the various reports of the WFC 2011 Creeper is the one that has stuck in my head because it is just so very odd.

As always, silence is too often the enemy in these things, so I'm linking to that roundup. I also apologize for all of Montreal that this guy is in any way connected to the city I reside in.

I am kind of swamped at work (have been for a while) so not much to write here. It is the 100th anniversary of the day, though, and we humans do like out symbolic numbers. Sadly, the roman numeral for 100 seems to lack punch.

I routinely ignore Ross Douthat, but I really like this list of types of sex in response to his column that only monogamous, marital (or on the way to marital) sex makes women happy.

I thought it would take a lot longer for an actual arrest, which is why I hadn't gotten around to posting about the rape/sexual assault charges. Like many people, I think the charges are being politicized - we should be so lucky that Interpol treats rape charges this seriously and with such priority as the normal course of events (Top of the most-wanted list? Really?). That said, I am a both/and kind of guy - the charges are being politicized, but that doesn't meant the charges shouldn't be taken seriously or trivialized.

It's been pretty depressing to watch the Assange supporters jump right into rape-trivializing in various ways though. I've seen the "Assange is our modern Jesus" thing in a local paper. (He is being persecuted by the Empire and his followers will continue his message.) There has been a lot of the "OMG, she's a radical feminist - CLEARLY it was a set up!" I've been told Sweden has a law making it a 2-year prison sentence for sex without a condom, as well as a law called "sex by surprise". (That term was used by Assange's lawyer. I'd like to think it was a translation error, since apparently the term is used in Sweden as slang for rape, just as it is here.) I've seen horror expressed that a man can be arrested on a woman's say so in Sweden. (One article saying it was worse than Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Um, buddy, the cops can arrest you on one person's say so in just about any country in the world. Convicting you is another story, but they sure as hell can arrest you.) There have been the "Assange is a great man, so even if he did do it, he shouldn't turn himself in" statements, which are a little too Polanski-esque for comfort.

Is he guilty? I don't know. The kind of power-tripping assault he's accused of certainly matches what I've seen of his public character and my personal experience with technophile radicals, especially tech/hacker ones, who tend to be pretty contemptuous of women. So I find them very plausible, but that's not a legal judgment. At the same time, I have a healthy distrust of cops and the legal system.

While losing their charismatic front man would hurt Wikileaks' place as the primary outlet for such material, I suspect they will continue without him and I fully expect other groups to adopt the model Wikileaks has been so effective with, or take other approaches to combating government secrecy.

I always wonder if the fact my gmail gets "Phone India" adds means my account was hacked.

A review of Scott Pilgrim that goes to the issue that is so often the problem in the stories we tell in this culture: "Boys are defined by what they do. Girls are defined by who they go out with."

Which leads to a reminder that there is more than one way to think about things, and that your way may just be a default you picked up. (Not that that makes it wrong.) Do blocks have names, or do streets?

Speaking of assumptions, a sex worker talks about her experience with male sexuality and the fact that just about everyone is messed up about sex, so maybe we should all be more sympathetic to one another.

The more men I talked to, the more sympathetic I felt. I was approaching the biggest epiphany of my life: men had as much anxiety and shame around sex as women did. We were all in this together, and any ideology that couldn’t admit as much was doomed to fail.

.
Therefore, some advice on how not to be an asshole while you're having sex with someone.

I may have to check this blog out.

Yeah.

Clarisse Thorn wrote an article last week asking Why Do We Demonize Men Who Are Honest About Their Sexual Needs?, in which she argues that the toxic construction of male sexuality has resulted in it being pathologized. She uses the word "creep" as sort of the male equivalent of the way "slut" is used with women - a means to police and control their sexuality.

There are some good points in it, and I like the basic three points she ends with:
1) Accept male desire, and accept men's word when they talk about it.
2) Male sexuality should be approached from the concept of pleasure rather than accomplishment.
3) Let's all discourage sexuality that's actually predatory or non-consensual.

I'm sure you will all be shocked entirely none that those resonate with me.

But while I do think those are fine aims, I kind of agree with Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon when she argues that creep is still a useful word.

I think part of it is that I just don't think male desire is that demonized, to be honest. Certainly not by the people who are supporting better and more positive sex for all, anyway. Male sexuality as predicated on entitlement and subordination of women's desire is, and I don't see why it shouldn't be. (As a comment early on the Pandagon thread notes, the problem is a society that equates desire with entitlement to have that desire fulfilled.)

Ultimately, I find most of what people describe as "creepy" has everything to do with not respecting boundaries. A problem hardly limited to men. (Men are encouraged to be creepy, however.) This may be a case of I have a hammer and so I only see nails, but most examples people give seem to fall into exactly that, a refusal to accept the boundaries the other person sets up.

This is why, btw, just about everyone is capable of creepy behaviour at some point. Lord knows I've been accused of being creepy. One apologizes, and backs off. Creeps double down and insist they aren't at fault and continue the behaviour because they feel entitled to the response they want.

I have to go and see if I can finally get TekSavvy to get my internet to work, so I don't have time to discuss this at length, but Pandagon has launched a rather interesting debate on censorship. (The linked post actually spins off the debate in the comments of this post about the John Stagliano trial.

Amanda comes down firmly on the "do not censor" side of things, and that is certainly my gut reaction. At the same time, I'm not a free speech absolutist. I do think there can be legal penalties for certain kinds of speech. I've always been less worried about hate speech laws than some. (As with all laws, it depends how they are written and how they are enforced.)

At the same time, as a Canadian, I know very well that obscenity laws in this country were used to target queer literature (or indeed anything remotely out of 'mainstream porn') far more often than anything else. As an American, I was raised with a visceral distrust of censorship and an idealized notion that free speech - specifically political and artistic speech - is crucial to the health of a democracy.

I'm leaving aside the "is porn bad for you" argument for the moment and basically assuming the argument that a particular type of porn amounts to hatespeech against women. That makes it, specifically, a political statement, and then what does one think of censoring that?

Again, my gut says no, but I'm far from solid in this stance. Could perhaps opening things to civil legislation (thus making it not criminal but subject to redress) be an option? Are the unintended consequences too great?

I don't actually know and can't sort through it now, but am always interested in hearing what intelligent people have to say.

Brought on by a discussion on another blog, I've been thinking about narrative viewpoint and whether I'm just viewing this from a lens of too much male privilege.

Do you assume that in a story you are *meant* to empathize/identify with the main character/protagonist. Please note that I am not saying you *will*. Do you go into a story and when it becomes clear the story is about some central character, assume that you are meant to be identifying with this character somewhat? Or do you think authors/filmmakers do not intend this to be the case?

I am sure many of you have seen this on Facebook.

While you SCREAM at your woman, there's a man wishing he could talk softly in her ear. While you HUMILIATE, OFFEND and INSULT her, there's a man flirting with her and reminding her how wonderful she is. While you HURT your woman, there's a man wishing he could make love to her. While you make your woman CRY there's a man stealing smiles from her... Post this on your wall if you're against Domestic Violence.

Unsurprisingly, many people have pointed out the deep fail that is inherent here. This has nothing to do with a moral argument, or any acknowledgment of the women involved as thinking, feeling human beings with agency of their own. It is simply, "if you don't treat your cow well, then someone will come along and take your cow and then you will be sad".

So yeah. Fail.

Except that I've grown cynical in my time. I may view this as fail, but I think we've established by now that my instincts on people and how they should behave are terrible exemplars for what to do in the real world. In the real world, you are effective by appealing to people in terms that reinforce their frame about the world, not ones that challenge them. That's one of the reasons advertising is so reactionary... it works like that. Don't try and sell toys to girls by saying they can be anything, just reinforce the current frame of them being princesses.

So this may actually be vastly more effective than pointing out that women are complete human beings who have their own rights. It's casting out the idea that reinforcing your dominance by beating "your woman" will backfire and you will lose the marker of your dominant status. Telling people like this that beating your partner is bad doesn't get through, because it is saying "give up your dominant status marker without any reward".

It is like a recent discussion I saw on Yes Means Yes concerning rapists. Someone came on and explained repeatedly that convincing men they shouldn't rape because it is wrong isn't going to work on it's own. You have to convince them they shouldn't rape, and that other men won't back them up but will instead kick the living shit out of them. If the language they understand is violence and dominance, then express it all in those terms.

Part of me doesn't believe this, of course. I would like to think an appeal to morality would work. But after years of watching politics and personal interaction, I am less optimistic than I once was. You need to tell people a story that gets the behaviour you want by making it seem like it makes sense in their terms. Yes, it is unethical and grotesque, but then it seems to get people what they want in relationships and probably will in this scenario as well.

Yes it reinforces the frame of "Woman=property/reward", which is repugnant. In some ways it is like the people who argue against torture by saying it is ineffective. We lost the moral argument some time ago, so using their own frame is all we have left.

A while ago, there was a discussion in a few places about women as property in the libertarian philosophy and the idea that women were more free when they were property which seems sort of relevant to the discussion.

I don't have the mental energy these days for a big, huge, IWD post.

Instead, I will link to this delightful rant by someone I never read before.

It being the internet, go read a writer on women's issues you have never read before. That seems a good suggestion.

The woman who once upon a time graced the USD $1 coin for her contribution to women's rights would have been 190 today.

This is a simply brutal takedown of Obama's leadership style (or lack thereof) and the problems it is causing.

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Plants want to live too. The whole "I am vegetarian because I respect life" thing never resonated for me. (The health reasons, the environmental reasons, the protest against the cruelty of factory farming reasons... these I have no trouble grokking.)

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Hey, HP computers are racist! (More specifically, it seems the face tracking camera may not pick up black faces well.

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Ethecofem has two questions:
1) Do you identify as a feminist?

2) Has your relationship been affected by misogyny?

Both from a while ago.

Tami writes some thought provoking stuff on what to do when allies fail.
Part 1:
Part 2:

Basically. Listen and have compassion - which pretty much applies to most relationships.

Mr Brorby demonstrates how to apologize.

I don't think I ever linked to this post about the "Terrible Bargain" many women feel they strike with the men in their lives.

Well worth a read.

And as long as we're on the subject, here is a manifesto for radical masculinity by Sinclair Sexsmith.

Well, it isn't really a manifesto. It is, however, a comment on the prescriptive nature of the standard gender roles and how that screws up men. It's also about the never-ending quest to find out what butch means and what masculinity can be without the misogyny.

So I have studied butch. I was not born with swagger: I learned it.I have studied butch. I was not born with swagger: I learned it. I earned it. I was not born knowing how to use a cock or tie a tie or match my belt to my shoes or court a girl or refrain from chivalry when it's not welcome or to contain something big and chaotic.I earned it. I was not born knowing how to use a cock or tie a tie or match my belt to my shoes or court a girl or refrain from chivalry when it's not welcome or to contain something big and chaotic.

Part 2 is here.

Placing the responsibility for education back on the other is a fine derailing tactic with a long history.

So, since I am dripping with white, heterosexual, cis-male, able-bodied privilege (I'm sure I've left some out), I'm going to keep trying to get some of this to stick.

(I promise to post giant spider pictures or something else fun later, though. ^_^)

For those willing to do some 101 reading, I'll point to the excellent Schrödinger’s Rapist post by Starling and the Rape Culture 101 post at Shakesville.

Both of those should have trigger warnings, btw. (Also, the comments are not 101, but well worth it.)

However, I am going to take another tack concerning the whole "approaching a woman on public transit".

I understand that using the word "rapist" makes men uncomfortable and defensive. Of course, that's part of the point. Nonetheless, I am going to take a different tack to try and make the point and remove rape and sexual politics from the equation entirely.

I ask my readership a simple question.

Do you feel that you have the right to be left alone if you don't want to talk to someone? More generally, do you have the right to set your own boundaries for personal interaction? Finally, does someone have the right to impose themselves on you until you have sufficiently proven to their satisfaction that you really don't want them there?

As some of you no doubt know, there's this comic strip called xkcd. It's a comic about geeks and romance and math and such. Very popular in some parts, I am led to believe. *smile*

The author has often been praised for his comic working as a kind of "Feminism 101 for Geeks", since he clearly believes that women can and should be geeky and smart as well and he even wrote one of the better illustrations of what's so damn creepy about the NiceGuy(tm). (At least, many interpreted it as him getting that that was creepy. A fair number of his readers thought he was lamenting that the girl still ends up with the "jerk". I say the roll-over shows him to be saying it's bad, though.)

He wrote a comic recently called "Creepy". Some people mentioned it made them think of me. I took this as intriguing.

It's clearly a comic about Munroe's common theme - shy geeks missing opportunities and such. It got a fair amount of criticism however, because of how it is constructed and the Broken Aesop which comes across as "If only you talked to the woman on the train who is ignoring you, you might find out she secretly wants you." Also with added, "women communicate through subtle cues that are mysterious and expect you to basically mind read." thrown in.)

That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that guys bothering women on public transportation and getting in their space wasn't such a problem. It would be fine if the whole "Women are mysterious creatures who don't actually communicate what they want" idea wasn't pervasive, along with the idea that any woman out in public is free for you to hit on.

It's obviously not what he aimed for, but sometimes you screw up and hit a false note.

Note that I am not saying that Munroe is a sexist or a terrible person. (I realize that a lot of his defenders are doing the "But he's a geek hero! I like him! He speaks to me! Stop being mean! He didn't mean it!" thing. In groups always tend to circle the wagons.) To me this is an obvious misstep by him, because it never occurred to him to see the other side of the coin. It is only because he isn't a sexist asshat that people are pointing out how it's a bit disappointing.

As I said elsewhere, I think Munroe is a shy geek who has a lot of these classic shy geek habits and expectations. He's aware of them and tries to break out of the deep sexism that permeates geek (and indeed North American) culture, but sometimes missteps. It's the very fact he tries that makes him endearing and worth critiquing.

The fact he could have tweaked the strip so minimally and avoided that subtext is also unfortunate. For instance, this comic has the same message, handled more deftly.

Some well-thought out criticism of the strip is and here.

The critique has provoked the classic "You are all overreacting" defense, of course. Shadesong critiques the critique here, although she misreads Sweet Machine concerning "Skullcrusher Mountain". (SM was noting how well Coulton gets the point across in the song that this sort of behaviour is bad.)

I am curious how people read the strip and the view that it has an unfortunate Broken Aesop. Do you feel it is unfair to criticize someone for a message they didn't intend but happened to reinforce anyway? (Say through its casting choices.) Is analyzing "just a comic strip" or any pop culture taking things too seriously?

Please jump right in. I am as curious to have a discussion about the nature of discussing these things as about the strip itself.

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February 2015

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Page generated May. 21st, 2025 08:53 am

Entries tagged with feminism

Culture, History, Science, and Narrative

Assorted thoughts at the end of the day. (And a puppy battling broccoli)

Editing Women out of the Bible

White Ribbon Day

Lemmy from Motorhead taught him how to control strippers with his mind

Happy International Women's Day C (also, a list about sex)

Assange has been arrested

Late night randomness - sex, assumptions, Scott Pilgrim

sigh

Creepy Sexuality?

Why not censor porn?

Sharing a Narrative Viewpoint

The "Guard Your Cow" approach to Domestic Violence Prevention

International Woman's Day

Happy Birthday Susan B. Anthony!!

Some random links for Xmas eve

Allies and apologies

On Men and Women

Boundary-setting

On reading xkcd text and subtext