I am inclined to disagree with you, mythago.
Yay disgusting yoghurt and oatmeal! May good things continue to happen.
A silk scarf, given to me by someone very dear to my heart. He bought it for me to give to me as a surprise, then left it in a shop in the town we'd been visiting together, had another friend retrieve it thence, and several months later was able to present it to me.
It's the perfect colours.
I miss him, and cherish the reminder of less fraught times together.
The assemblage of small tools I carry in my handbag: My Swiss army knife, multi-head pen-sized screwdriver, mini-Leatherman, yardstick inna can. Many are gifts from another very dear friend. who gifts me with tools. I like having on hand the tools I need in order to do things, and hate leaving many of them behind when I fly anywhere.
My black velvet coat with hot pink skulls screenprinted on it, and the hot pink satin lining. I look great in it, no matter what else I'm wearing.
The white glass bedside lamp I've had since I was two, moving it carefully from dwelling to dwelling. It's always shone on the books I read in bed.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
If you're going to have a spontaneous flash mob dancing silently with their iPods to honor the spirit of Jefferson, reenacting select scenes from The Crucible, or dressing up in black lace and playing Rock-Paper-Scissors until they declare one of them King of the Vampires, the sensible thing to do is to have some well-mannered spokesman for the group go act as liason to the mundanes, particularly the cops.
No, you're not legally required to do so, but it's sensible and polite, and the point of village greens and other areas open to the public 24/7 is that they're there for the enjoyment of all the public, not just you.
Yes, this is a sensible, polite thing to do. No argument there.
But ... but ...
Since when was it the job of law enforcement or security to enforce manners? Or, necessarily, sensible behaviour?
Me, I thought that officers of the peace worked to keep the peace that it may be enjoyed by all, and officers of the law to uphold the law. Security officers enforce the rules established to keep people and property safe from harm.
If an individual or group are not breaking the peace or the laws, if they're not harming people or property (other than their own), then their manners or lack thereof and the sensible or silly nature of their behaviour is not grounds for arrest. The burden of not escalating a situation does not sit on the shoulders of the public, unilaterally.
Being silly or even stupid, if silliness and stupidity harm nobody, should never be deemed a crime. And neither should dancing.
The role law enforcement is to protect the public. All of the public. Including the freaks and the dancers and the skateboarders. Including the people with prams and the dog walkers and the couples who are not dancing, LARPing, or skateboarding. If the needs of one member of the public impinge upon the needs of others, then the role of officers of the peace is to preserve the peace and enforce the rules.
I don't want to live in a society whose rules include "You can't ask why your apparently lawful activity is being treated as unlawful." Or where we're policed for dressing "strangely," dancing in public, or questioning those who would deny our rights to behave oddly in public (as long as our odd behaviour harms nobody and nothing).
And, dangnabbit, I guess if libertarians deserve to be arrested for dancing in public, then I'm one too. Just don't ask me to give up my socialized healthcare.
I am very late to this party, but my congratulations are none the less heartfelt and happy for that.
W00T!!!!ONE!11!
I adored every manipulative bone in her body.
See, I didn't. I couldn't get past feeling like the narrative was telling me I was supposed to like this self-important, manipulative, amoral person.
In S1, I could forgive her the amorality and the abuses of her friends, because she was sacrificing pretty much everything to finding out who killed her best friend. Even then, though, I couldn't get past how her friends just let her use them, over and over again. Without that compelling excuse, though, I couldn't stand watching her.
I'm trying to write a "u" poem, but I'm having a difficult time keeping it remotely clean.
A lot of dirty words contain "u" as their sole vowel.
Jakob @ 31
Are there *any* books that are (say) over a century old and still useful as scholarly works? I'd imagine citing Gibbon would get you into trouble with an ancient historian; similarly, I'd be very suspicious of anyone that used The Golden Bough for a discussion of the development of religon.* Most science texts will have been superseded.
Context is everything: We referred to Gibbon in my various Roman history courses not for his conclusions, but for his chronologies, which were just fine, and also because one of the themes in at least one of my courses was that the study of history is itself a product of the time and civilization in which the study takes place. I would say that if a scholar's research ends with Gibbon, he's not to be taken seriously. If it begins with Gibbon, and goes from there to the primary sources and more recent research, it may have some value.
Likewise, Frazer is a not-bad source for the stories and for a comparative look at certain myths; however, you can't just read The Golden Bough and stop there. Unless, you're analyzing Frazer's analysis, I suppose, perhaps. I'd say a serious look at the development of religion would not reference only Frazer, but it might reference Frazer among others. A book about the study of the development of religion might reference Frazer heavily.
Herbert Norris's Medieval Costume and Fashion". Norris's books are everywhere, they're wonderfully illustrated, and they generally contain few-to-no references to actual sources or artwork of the period.
David Goldfarb @ 346:
Likewise I made my first WP edits yesterday: some minor revisions and additions to the entry on "Redowa." I have resolved to think more seriously about the entry, which is still not what it could be.
If my Power Twin ever needs another way to spend time (*snrk* ... as if!) she could do some serious good to some of the historical dance entries. As it is, I have resolved to check the entries for whatever my danse de la semaine happens to be, and see if they match my understanding of the dance in question. This should keep me off the streets for a bit.
Diatryma @ 56,
You're most welcome. At the risk of excercising my penchant for geeky overhelpfulness, another way you can describe lines and dresses is by the specific cut and waistline. So you can say things like "I'm looking for something with a Basque waistline," (that's the kind of starting-at-the-waist-narrowing-to-a-point waist seen on some dresses from the 18th century, as well as in certain mid-Victorian-era dresses) "and a square neckline, and a very full skirt."
A good dressmaker should know what all these terms mean.
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, of course, I've chosen a sort of stereotypical, generic mid-18th-c. set of ideas, and expressed them very vaguely. Here's a nice resource for the entire century, with a good overview of the styles and silhouettes.
Diatryma @ 41, I haven't seen such a name -- in my experience, 18th-century costumes tend to be called simply by their time and place, or associated with whatever was going on at the time, so a mid-18th-century English gown, or a Marie-Antoinette-style shepherdess costume, or a Colonial-era shoe (this would probably imply that the shoe was a style worn by colonials in the Americas). Certainly the Costumer's Manifesto historical index doesn't give names to any part of the 18th century, as it does for the Regency, Victorian period, etc.
abi@14
It was the trilingual pun that had me ROTFL.
albatross @883
I'm not trying to make the situations equivalent--I'm pretty sure that it's easier to be an adult man in this society than an adult woman. But just as it's easy for me to miss stuff that doesn't apply to me, you may miss some stuff that doesn't apply to you.
See also "Patriarchy [or the system of male privilege that permeates and forms an underpinning of most, if not all, societies] hurts men too."
And not-quite-everyone?
I usually don't snark about spelling, having made my share of embarrassing goofs, and not always been rigorous about maintaining and consulting my demon words list. I hope nobody will be offended if I point out the following:
male privilege
straight privilege
white privilege
The -lege root comes from the Latin lex, legis, "law," not from a "ledge," the thing that sticks out from a wall, and from which the cat may tumble.
Thanks.
Greg London @ 682
turning the cold sholder from the beginning, even non-verbally, is probably as problematic as saying "gway" off the bat.
But why is this problematic? Why is it problematic for me or any other woman (or any other person) to want to be left alone when I'm alone someplace? If I want the person to go away, why shouldn't I signal "gway"? And why wouldn't my utter lack of interest in what the gorf was doing serve as signal enough?
Nicole: Gendered, and unfortunately normal, as was your male friend's reaction.
It took me a long, long time to really grok that "nice" is a gendered quality. Guys are generally not taught that they have to be nice above all else. (Please note, I'm not saying that guys can't be nice, or are taught to be nasty bastards. It's a matter of emphasis.)
Kate Harding recently posted an account of another, similiar gendered encouter—basically, she's outside a bar for a smoke, sans boyfriend, and some gorf sees this as a signal to try to chat her up. She tells him that she doesn't really want to talk to him, and he goes away. Kicker is that she feels grateful that the gorf actually respected her wishes.
Grateful. Because so frequently they don't.
And guys say things like "just trying to be nice," or "you looked lonely," or "I was just making conversation" to reassure themselves that they're not jerks. They don't seem to stop and ask themselves (pace Greg London, and others who seem to have done so, and come up with reasons I find fascinating, if bizarre) "Why have a assumed that this woman might be interested in me?" "Would I thus impose were this a man?" "Why do I feel I should 'be nice' to this woman? Is she asking me to?"
They don't, for the most part, seem to think that random lone men will be delighted and flattered by their "niceness."
And we, as women, are taught (by whom? hard to say ... I have no clear memory of anyone sitting me down and saying "Jennie, you need to be nice to people who pester you and don't respect your personal space or privacy. It's very important.") that, until the behaviour crosses the line from imposition to assault, we are supposed to be "nice," "pleasant," and "polite."
Of course, if the behaviour should cross the line, dollars will get you some inexpensive sweet of choice (I'm not keen on most doughnuts) that someone will ask us why we led the poor innocent fellow on, and why we got ourselves into that situation in the first place.
I'm glad you stayed in the dinette car. I do the same thing—look around, assess the risks, and say "dammit, I have every right to be here."
It'd be nice if we didn't have to do the risk assessment every darned time, though.
Greg London,
If you are feeling piled-on-to, please consider taking a voluntary time out? Your online behaviour at 181 is approaching churlishness. Whether you agree with someone's appeal to authority, making an ad hominem attack on their work without bothering to examine the work in question really doesn't further the discussion, and leaves nobody any wiser.
Everyone involved in that particular threadlet, I'd also like to repeat Ethan et al's request that we leave off discussing what Jo may or may not have meant when she's not here, please?
Discuss the rhetorical ploy, discuss what other authors are on record saying, discuss whether you feel that way, great, fine. Your emotional reality is valid, as is Jo's. The insides of our heads are not always rational places. I would really appreciate it if people would avoid trying to ascribe a set of less problematic or objectionable feelings to someone who has left the virtual room. Also with the debating the validity of those feelings, or trying to "fix" them. Please?
Paula Liebermann, for purposes of exploring the roots of dominant culture, we need to look at the victors, alas. We don't see a lot of vestigial Anatolian Pythagorean thought forming an ideology of western culture.
I wasn't aware that the numbers of infertile women were as high as one-sixth, but that doesn't seem to have affected the division of labour by sex across cultures and time, in any meaningful way. First of all, you can't tell if a woman's infertile until you've already raised her as a girlchild, and probably marked her as a woman in your society's gendered organization of these things. There have been castes of sexually inactive women (nuns, priestesses, vestal virgins, etc.) who have been removed from the mainstream, but their roles tended to be highly specialised, gendered in an entirely different way, and also dictated by the male-dominated cultures in which they operated.
I had thought I'd made an adequate sweeping generalization disclaimer, but clearly I didn't, so let me try again: when we're discussing the development of societal systems, we have to make sweeping generalizations. This means not mentioning the exceptions, which are many, and interesting, and could fill entire books, but generally didn't serve to change much about the outcomes.
That the Romans had access to silphium, which may have been effective at bringing on menstruation (its close cousin, asafetida, which is not extict, has approximately a 50 percent success rate in preventing conception in rats, for whatever that is worth, and Queen Anne's Lace is used still, and it does block the production of progesterone, which is very cool).
BUT, silphium's properties are first referred to as late as the seventh century B.C.E. and most of the gendered division of labour in the relevant civilizations had already been long established by then.
I should have made it clear, and I didn't because I was writing sloppily and in sweeping generalization, as well as conflating too many different ideas, that when we're talking about emerging behavioural patterns, we're talking pre-history here, mists-of-time stuff. But then I got all sloppy and talked history. Mea culpa.
But so far, when I've brought it up, I got one person who said they thought the results would be 50-50, but didn't engage any further, and one or two people who said something like "there is too much cultural discrimination for me to worry about that now."
Well, the story is in a fictional world with basically no cultural gender pressures. Now what does it look like?
Okay, Greg, I'll bite.
I didn't engage because I have no way of knowing what a world without systemic gender-based discrimination between the sexes would look like. None. Zero.
To go into all the ways in which society is gendered, I'd have to sum up for you over a century of feminist thought and theory, as filtered through my own years of research and thought. So this is going to be really, really sketchy, and you'd be far better off dipping into an elementary text in gender theory or women's studies, or maybe taking an intro course.
Someone else recommended Mead. I can recommend Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy. It's not the standard intro text, but I really admire her historical approach, and I think you'll get a lot more out of it than you would out of standard feminist texts.
Here are a few reasons that I personally have a difficult time hypothesizing how people would interact in a non-gender-coded society (such as has never existed in recorded human history):
1) The BIG BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE has always existed. Until very very recently, in historical terms, women's lives have been constrained by the near inevitability of childbirth. Women's work has, from time immemorial, tended to be the kind of work that is congruent with child rearing and nursing. Thus, it's socially advantageous for women to cultivate behaviours that at a minimum don't make it harder for them to do this work.
For less than a century, some women have been able to be sexually active without fear of pregnancy. That's not a lot of time to overturn the mores of millennia.
2) With male power comes male privilege. Groups in power generally do not, as groups, tend to share their power very well. Every change to "the way things are" comes at great effort, and, in most cases those in power dictate the terms of the victory. Each change—entry into the workforce, entry into specific professions, representation in government (both in the halls of government and at the polling stations)—takes a lot of energy, and requires women to prove that they can, to some extent, be like men, do things as well as men can, on terms that were created by men in their positions. So, yeah, I could become a lawyer, if I went to law school, and I'd be judged against male and female peers by my ability to practice law. But being as competent a lawyer as my male peers is not enough, because I'm also going to be judged as a woman, on my appearance, my sex appeal, my niceness. My mom is still going to expect me to do girl things, like take care of my grandmom with her. I'm still going to be the primary caregiver for my kids, probably. And this is going to affect my ability to practice law and to work the kinds of hours expected of young lawyers. The system works best for people with at-home spouses or unmarried people with no dependants—husbands or bachelors.
So, this is a modern example, but I'm trying to show how we build systems of access that favour people like us. It's no mystery why professions that have traditionally been female-dominated (so-called caring professions, such as teaching small children or nursing or social work) tend to deal less harshly with maternity leaves, or family obligations than more "high-powered" professions (unionization also has something to do with this, but that's a whole 'nother discussion).
3) This system of male privilege is so old and so entrenched as to be invisible. We're all steeped in it, to the extent that even the most feminist among us can get tripped up on our assumptions about what men are and do and what woman are and do.
The only way I can figure to find out what behavioural trends in a non-gender-coded society would look like would be to obtain a statistically significant number of infants, and rear them in a non-gendered environment. You'd have to have robots do this, since we all labour under gendered behavioural assumptions. Give them all sorts of toys to play with, but monitor their influences, so they're shown equal numbers of men and women doing the same activities: taking care of babies, driving dump trucks, flying airplanes, and baking cakes. Then observe.
For obvious reasons, (ethical considerations, lack of robot nursemaids, impracticability of raising 50 or so babies in a completely controlled environment and not having them go mad, to name a few) I'm not going to get to do this (and I don't really want to, I'm just curious about how such an experiment would turn out).
Since we can't perform an actual experiment, we're left with thought experiments, which is what you're trying to do. You predict that our hypothetical women raised in a non-sexist society would still show a tendency towards certain behaviours and preferences. I predict that they wouldn't. Your thought experiment subjects are all people who reflect your understanding of human behaviour; mine reflect my understanding. We are at an impasse.
I suspect that if you write a book based on your assumptions, I won't find it believable, and I will find the inherent gender essentialism really annoying. But so what? I'm only one reader. A lot of things in books get up my nose, and if you write a good story, I probably won't be too bothered by the gender stuff, because, like a lot of readers, I'm a sucker for story, and I'll dismiss the gender-essentialism as latent vestigial sexism in a society descended from ours. Or something.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2007 | 71 |
| 2006 | 63 |
| 2005 | 38 |
| 2004 | 3 |
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