#Ferguson
I hope you all got the chance to read Ezekiel Kweku’s piece from yesterday on Michael Brown and the events in Ferguson, but if you didn’t, why, here it is again.
In case you loved that Mary Beard profile in The New Yorker as much as I did (you didn’t, no one loves as much as I do), please consider reading her piece on rape in the LRB from 2000, which is fabulous, and also contains the following turn of phrase:
I have to admit that I have long been suspicious of any argument that starts with a chimp and ends with a human being; and I may, for this reason alone, be an unsuitably prejudiced commentator on any study in evolutionary biology.
If you would like to spend $3.99 to read an incredible story by Leslie Jamison about 52 Blue (the lonely whale), I can firmly recommend it. To be fair, her publicist sent me a PDF, so I didn’t even have to spend the $3.99, but I WOULD HAVE:
The whale that Joe George and Velma Ronquille heard was an anomaly: His sound patterns were recognizable as those of a blue whale, but his frequency was unheard of. It was absolutely unprecedented. So they paid attention. They kept tracking him for years, every migration season, as he made his way south from Alaska to Mexico. His path wasn’t unusual, only his song—and the fact that they never detected any other whales around him. He always seemed to be alone.
a) this is the last “Ask Polly”
b) it’s really good
c) i lied for drama, there will be more “Ask Polly,” but at The Cut
It has been a real shit week for women in gaming.
Thank you for your kind notes about my sick toddler! We spent much of yesterday at the ER explaining the merits of eating a Popsicle over getting an IV. Also, our NEW babysitter has morning sickness. If you are keeping count, this makes 4 sitters in the last 2.5 years that have become pregnant while working for us.
THEORY: my husband is impregnating them all in turn and gaslighting the FUCK out of me.
MORE PLAUSIBLE THEORY: this is the logical end result of getting most of your babysitters from the same apartment complex housing newlywed LDS couples fresh out of BYU.
On the role of humor in sex work activism:
I don’t mean to dismiss the incredibly serious writing and activism that sex worker do on digital platforms, in the streets, and in their communities. It is abundant and important and my gratitude for it cannot be adequately expressed here. It is work that is performed with earnestness that I, in my self-consciousness and desire not to seem to want anything especially badly—even basic decency in my workplace—eschew in favor of humorous outrage and tongue-in-cheek dismissals of our opponents because, like many sex workers, I feel vulnerable to anti-sex work critique from antis and figure that if I can laugh at myself first, their judgment isn’t as painful.
Oh. I definitely thought he was dead. There’s a lot more here, too, though. OR?
I would emigrate and never look back.
My new favorite exterminator:
“Though he got the job done, Birkett was saddened at the death of so many wasps. ‘It was a work of art and they had worked so hard, but she looked at it and said, ‘No, no, no – you’ve got to get rid of it.’ If they did that in three-and-a-half months, that’s amazing, isn’t it? They’re just little things.'”
They had worked so hard. They’re just little things.
They need a harder exterminator, the Ahab of exterminators.
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in [the wasp nest]. He piled upon the [wasp’s thorax] the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Strangely, this quote also applies to that video game article, if you replace Ahab with emotionally-stunted man-monsters, and wasps with women.
I don’t think you need to replace Ahab with an emotionally-stunted man-monster. He’s already a Man refusing to let go of having once been denied something he wanted, and being willing to destroy the entire world in order to get revenge.
Birkett is amazing.
Exterminator must be a tough job. You have to not fear/respect the wasps (or whatever) enough not to run screaming when you’re called in to deal with an infestation…but that also means your life’s work entails ridding the planet of little creepy crawlies you’re actually rather fond of.
This seems like a no-good situation 🙁
I feel like there’s a Broadway musical in here somewhere.
I am thinking of a song much like Electric Love on Bob’s Burgers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGUVwdZXgQo
This seems to happen in a lot of industries – loggers tend to love being in forests and nature, and yet their job is to raze the earth. The geologists that I know are huge nature lovers, but the most lucrative jobs are with oil and mining companies. You get into a field because you love something so much you want to learn more about it, and then someone hires you to use your knowledge to get rid of it.
this made me cry. I love those wasps, I love Birkett, I love this story.
I instantly fell in love.
I would feel the same way if they were bee-bees are such little cuties! Wasps to mean mean You Stung My Little Sister and She Cried So You Must All Die and they are creepy looking and nasty. EXTERMINATE.
They had worked so hard. They’re just little things.
I’d like this embroidered on a sampler, below a wasp rampant.
I would pay cash money to see this sampler.
The wasps. THE WASPS. No no no no no no no. Forever unclean.
“In that nest there must have been up to 700 queen wasps.”
NOPE NOPE NOPE
“I will have 700 mistresses here, and no master!”
— from the wasp Elizabeth, source: wasp IMDB
Sounds like wasp utopia, tho
*runs away into the distance, screaming nonstop*
D: D: D:
I will come back for other things and perhaps coherent comments, but the wasps…
D: D: D:
Nothing reminds me that we live in a world that is shitty to anyone not white, cis, abled and male than the fucking temper tantrums perpetrated by men over women wanting to be fairly represented in their own fucking hobbies.
Maybe it’s stupid and pointless but I’m so sick and tired of this. I play games. I like them. They’re fun. But it’s less fun when I can’t ever 100% relax because there’s a better than average chance that some shitty misogyny will be thrown at me.
Yeah, that constant feeling of “what now” or “what’s the next shitty thing going to be” is exhausting! I’m not much of a gamer (unless Animal Crossing and Super Mario World count), but it’s the same thing as a comics fan. If some shitty misogyny isn’t currently happening, just give it a few weeks.
They only don’t count if you’re invested in a definition of “gaming” that excludes computer games which are played equally or predominantly by women!
I attended a really great talk last year by this woman who studies the erasure of women in the history of game design… Basically, “gaming” started out as a wholesome family activity and was mostly dominated by women. Then Nintendo came in and started marketing games as “boys-only” and the menfolk took over. Fascinating and infuriating!
Good article on Polygon last year about that whole topic – the development of marketing and the idea of teenage boys as the target market.
Thank you for posting this; this is so interesting! I sometimes play games but have never identified as a gamer, so it’s fascinating (and disappointing, of course) to see how women have been so intentionally excluded from that identity–how easily a diverse range of games with a strong contingent of female players aren’t seen as “real” video games, erasing women’s participation and upholding the idea that “gamer” = young man.
That’s the history of a ton of the tech world: coding, software design, and computing were all originally done mostly by women.
Insecure straight dudes trying to compensate for the fact that an English peeress invented their profession and all of their code is descended from code written by a Hungarian figure skater. I don’t know exactly how the world was conned into believing that computer science is coded as masculine, but I suspect there’s a bestselling popular history-of-science book to be written on the subject.
I’ve never heard of the author and have no idea how good this is, but this sounds like it’s about exactly that: http://www.amazon.com/Recoding-Gender-Changing-Pa…
Ooh, thanks!
Honestly, it’s a lot of the history of the world in general.
The refrain of “Women didn’t play games until 2005!” is so, so baffling to me. Especially since I suspect that the people making this claim are much younger than I am. In the 80s, I can think of very few girls around my age (born in 81) that didn’t have a Nintendo. And we all played them! Not everyone continued to play games through adolescence, but there were no shortage of female Goldeneye competitors when I was in college. I played Tony Hawk and Parappa and later Super Mario Sunshine with my female roommates. My mom played every single Zelda game that was released prior to her passing away. This argument is so tired.
I remember when Myst killed video games, all the way back in 1993. *creaks back in rocking chair, takes swig of moonshine*
My first experience really getting into a game was playing King’s Quest V with another ten-year-old girl on weekends. We both got really obsessed with trying to figure out the completely nonsensical puzzles. Also spent a ton of time playing SimCity, Myst, and other similar sim games. At some point, though, DOOM became the dominant model for PC gaming, and the fifteen year old boy the popular conception of a “gamer”, and I stopped playing, only to return a few years ago (ethusiastically). But it was part of my childhood too, god damn it!
All of that plus the whole computer vs. console gaming struggle hadn’t really been settled. Roberta Williams was a force to be reckoned with when you’re talking about adventure gaming. If anyone wants to reboot the Laura Bow mystery series I would 100% buy an expensive console just to play the heck out of any and all of those games.
I lived a videogame-less existence at home (it Detracts from Schoolwork and I was expected to Do Well In School), but the boy next door had a crush on me and a Nintendo.
God, I miss kicking his butt at Duck Hunt.
This past week has made me want to leave gaming behind and never return. As it is, I’ve stopped going to pretty much all news sites and forums, since the whole culture depresses me too goddamn much. Is this really an interest that I share with these horrible human beings? As much as I enjoy reading serious writing about videogames, and think that they should get the same critical treatment that other media do, god damn it they are just videogames and why the hell are you threatening to rape and kill people over them?
I’m also amazed at people who think that getting rid of misogyny in games will somehow ruin them. I’m playing The Witcher 2 right now, and it’s absolutely gorgeous and the plot actually quite compelling, so I’m enjoying it. But there’s so much needless misogyny, and it rips me out of the game every time I encounter it. I just want to be able to enjoy this like everyone else, but it’s so obvious the game was made with only dudes in mind. 🙁
I don’t think you need to go to the “they’re just videogames!” well if you don’t want to. It’s fine to stand by your enjoyment of serious writing about videogames! The question really is not “At what point is something too trivial to justify rape and death threats to strangers online?” The question is “Is it really EVER okay to threaten to rape and kill strangers online, if you care VERY passionately about the topic of conversation?”
No. The answer is no.
(I’m reminded now of Guardians of the Galaxy. “But what if I want it a lot more than he does?”)
That’s a really good point, actually. This shit is NEVER okay.
I’m actually reminded of some of the responses to the most recent Tropes Vs Women video, which shows a lot of really really depressing clips where sexualized women are beaten, killed, threatened with rape, etc. A lot of dudes have responded by saying “The clips are taken out of context!” Soooo…in what context is a prostitute’s body being “humorously” ripped to shreds acceptable, then?
Ooo, also. If anyone is looking for new games, the assholes who are harassing Quinn and Sarkeesian made a very handy chart of COMPANIES YOU SHOULD NOT SUPPORT. (Content warning for dickbaggery.) They seriously listed some good stuff there, and you should check out a lot of the stuff they hate! It’s really cute seeing how excited Tim Schafer and the Bioware folks are to be included in the hate, because they must be doing SOMETHING right!
oh god oh god oh god OH GOD
Everything about Mary Beard is perfect, especially that essay. The ratio of utter contempt to rigorous disembowelment of a stupid argument and its premises to making a serious and legitimate point to replace it so that no one will ever need to talk about it again is awe-inspiring. Also regularly inspiring.(WHEN WILL MARY BEARD BE GIVING LESSONS IN AWESOME?)
I was REALLY hoping that was just a picture of wild rice.
I spent way too long on the homepage trying to figure out wtf it was before clicking through.
see y’all in the next thread
Has Mallory seen Vanity Fair France’s interview with her girlfriend, Kristen Stewart?
Top quotes:
– “I put on my nope mitts.”
– “true regret can never eat at me.”
– “my true personal life, as much as people think they know about it, they don’t know dick shit”
And a really great thing she said about Juliette Binoche: Instead of saying, “Oh, I’m fucking starving,” which is what I would say, she would be like, “I have this deep hunger within my—within the depths of my…” You know what I mean? She wouldn’t say something as simple as I’m hungry. She is not hungry. She has a deep need.
More Mary Beard-love! http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/the-nicest-pers…
Oh my GAWD Polly’s first Cut column is ON POINT. Post-formal-education friendships are so hard. Any NH Toasties out there?!
This one really really really hit me hard too. Not in NH, but I’ll advertise if I visit! While we’re on this train, anyone in the Raleigh/Durham area I haven’t already talked to?
Durham! Hi!
Oh gosh hi hello, how are you! I need to set up another meetup in Durham soon, we had one once and it was lovely but it was just three people and I KNOW there are more of us here.
Greensboro, but I’m in chapel hill all the time so… kinda close!
I’ll be there in a few months! (On a permanent basis. Not just “In a few months, I’ll be visiting that area”)
Southern ME, like barely not NH right here.
I’m originally from Manchester, but I live in New York now. I go back to visit lots, though!
Yeah, I’m kind of stunned by how on point that column was and I definitely needed to hear a lot of that advice. I feel like it’s especially hard to make friends with new people when you have really socially progressive viewpoints that you can’t shut up about or compromise on (not that I’m talking about myself here, noooope). I know it’s good to branch out and spend time with people who don’t have the same views, but I have a really hard time accepting what I view as shitty opinions. Does anyone have any advice on that that doesn’t include just never talking about those issues? It can get really lonely when every time you start becoming friends with a new person, they up and say something really awful and racist or homophobic. :/
While I’m here, heeeyyyyy does anyone here live in Pittsburgh who would want to be my cranky feminist friend? I’ll cook for you.
Here! I won’t be around much in the next week or so, but maybe someone can orchestrate a meetup in September?
Hi, yes that would be lovely!! 😀 Do you know if there are any more of us?
There are definitely more of us but I’ve never met anyone else. I’ll look out for a meetup discussion in open thread!
I feel your pain! Unfortunately, I don’t really have advice to deal with it besides just not talking about those issues. I have some casual friends who have wildly opposing political viewpoints from me and I’ve accepted that I’m never going to be super close with them, but we can still have a good time sharing things we do have in common. It works better if you have active interests in common (i.e., with these particular people, we like to hike and snorkel together) so there’s less sitting-around-and-talking time in which arguments could arise.
I enjoyed the Ask Polly article a lot but I was surprised she didn’t mention the tactic that’s worked well for me- just straight up telling people that you don’t have many friends and would like to make more. Yes, it’s awkward and makes you feel like a 5 year old, but I’ve found that people tend to respond really well to it. It works both with current friends (telling them you want more friends, do they know anyone they think you’ll get along with?) and with new people (basically asking them if they want to be friends). I’ve met several good friends, including my current boyfriend, with this approach.
Next time you come to Maine, hit me up and we’ll grab a coffee!
I haven’t been able to spend much time in the comments and open threads since I got a new job, but I still totally want to join a meetup sometime. (ME too. We have chatted but it’s been a while.)
Can we have an open thread just for finding fellow Toasties in our own city? Has anyone organised a Chicago meetup?
Nicole, I think your second theory is more plausible, but your first would make a killer screenplay.
I will miss Ask Polly at The Awl but will be happy to read her over at The Cut.
I would watch that movie. I hope it’s a really classic drama involving lots of swanning around wearing very sharp clothes, and helicopter shots of Utah (I’m just assuming Utah is scenic, I’ve never been), and at least one epic scene where someone is hiding and the other person is not aware that they are hiding and everybody is holding their breath.
Oh I pictured it as a bad horror movie… She was the babysitter but HE made her into a babyINCUBATOR!!!
May I propose a third theory? Your toddler is so awesome that couples that might wait a few years must try to replicate your child NOW.
Also, I NEED my bestie to see that Ask Polly, but I don’t think it would go over terribly well in the sending, since I am already firmly in the “I’m trying not to be a dick and say I told you so” camp…
Another showstopper: “My mom’s a bitch.” When you hear that, take your belongings and scram. If you have to, emigrate, since it’s the potential equivalent of finding 5,000 wasps in a spare bedroom.
IThere’s a thing going around on tumblr: http://mattanapkin.tumblr.com/post/95656257523/se…
“Whenever anyone says “my relationship with my father is complicated”… it isn’t. One of you is an asshole.”
(And then the tag is “seriously, call your family this weekend”)
And I think “NOOOOOOO, framing relationships with difficult people as complicated is how mature people signal that they’re mature! Don’t teach good people to display the above showstopper! Keep those decent human shibboleths in place!”
Amen. Sometimes “complicated” the most polite term one can use to describe an abusive parent to friends.
The summer we spent in our previous apartment, we kept finding dead wasps on the bedroom windowsill and all over the floor. It was very unsettling, like I was in a horror movie, or the victim of an exciting new plague. (Still: better than live wasps.) We finally determined that there was a nest of them between our bedroom and the exterior wall of the house. We called the landlord and he said, “I will patch up the hole on the exterior wall to close them off.” I had to explain multiple times that doing so would close off their passage to OUTSIDE, which meant they would have no choice but to come INSIDE, aka OUR BEDROOM, aka THE LAST PLACE I WANT A BUNCH OF CONFUSED, ANGRY WASPS. He exterminated them properly, but we were not reassured by his lackadaisical landlording and moved out at the end of our lease.
One of the other people in my co-op took a close-them-off approach to the wasps nest that was inside the front door of the building. Or I guess is inside the front door of the building. But he got the holes on both sides, because doors are small, so that’s OK.
The randoms globs of fun-tak do look a bit weird, though.
“The wasps are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!”
One summer when I was in high school, some bees built a nest in the exhaust vent for the dryer, and kept getting into the kitchen and dying there. I felt so bad for the little guys. Fortunately my anaphylactically allergic sister was out of town most of that time, cause the rest of us all got stung more than a couple times before we decided it was worth doing something about. Poor bees, they thought they had found a nice warm spot and it turned out to be a death trap for them. 🙁
The author is dead and so is Tony Soprano.
There used to be a wasps nest in the air conditioner in my bedroom. It was supposedly sorted out before I took the room, but every now and then I’d find a dead wasp in the window sill. A while ago, the house was painted, and the painters found the enormous, (thankfully) abandoned nest still there, and took it down. It looked terrifying. Not like the one in that picture though.
The Room o’ Wasps- NO, No to 700 Queen Wasps. Burn down the house.
Burn down the neighborhood
You couldn’t pay me to read a story about a lonely whale. Just the idea that he’s out there makes me feel heartsore.
How do you even Take to the Sea when you’re already a whale?
Yeah I am really not OK with even thinking about the loneliest whale.
No kidding. That poor, lonely creature searching, searching, searching….Gah, now I’m weepy. Heartsore, indeed.
Hahahaha a room they didn’t go into for months hahahahahahaha having a house so big you don’t go into rooms hahahahahahah *sobs*
So I guess the upside to living in this cramped Bronx apartment is that I can stand in the middle and survey every inch of space with a 360 degree turn, a vigil against any sort of wasp takeover. Sigh.
Checking empty rooms in my house right now, just to BE SURE (kids are away in college)
Nooo, Tony is definitely not dead. He’s going to keep on going, constantly looking over his shoulder for assassins/the specter of mid-century masculinity, because that is the life he’s chosen.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding among gamers and techies as to how writing about a humanities topic/literary criticism/monograph works, like Anita Sarkeesian’s presentations. Gamers seem to want her to evenly present counterexamples at the same rate as her examples (as if that would even be possible) as if it’s some sort of clinical trial or she’s trying to prove some sort of physics hypothesis. I have seen any number of comments to the effect of “She decided her conclusion before hand and is choosing examples that support it!” Yes. That is exactly how it is supposed to work. At no point during my history classes was I ever required to write rebuttals TO MY OWN WORK.
I am encouraged by the support she is getting from actual devs and names in the industry, but holy shit people are awful. If the response to pointing out how often women are fridged as backstory in video games leads you to threaten to rape and murder the author, then MAYBE YOU ARE PROVING HER POINT ABOUT HOW NORMALIZED THIS SHIT IS.
Welll…yes and no. I mean, my degree is in lit crit (I left that field for the internet because I CAN SWEAR MORE), and I was definitely trained to anticipate the objections people are going to have to my thesis and deal with them. So you do a lot of, “Now, one might suggest that This Thing is true, as in fact argued by this person on the grounds of this entirely other variety of criticism, but let me assure you that This Thing really doesn’t undermine my thesis, as it is false or beside the point or a different way of getting at the very same thing.” So you don’t have to refute your work, but even in the humanities, you are supposed to pay attention to alternate ideas.
I haven’t watched Sarkeesian’s series, because I don’t give a shit about video games and only use my tablet to read books like a big fucking nerd, but I betcha she actually does do that. It’s just that her counterexamples probably (I betcha) are followed by “and here’s why that’s not actually comparable at all and/or misses the point in full.” Which, I’m not in STEM, but isn’t that what you also do in those fields? “Here’s competing data, and here is why it is not methodologically sound and/or doesn’t impact what I’m saying the way you might think it does.”
Absolutely. And she does do that! But people seem to have bought into this “fair and balanced” idea in which she is somehow required to give full and equal airtime to examples that directly counter her argument in the interest of “fairness” and “not being biased,” which, no.
I figured she did! And, yeah, you deal with competing theories to get them out of the way. You’re not supposed to spend literally half of your time explaining why other people disagree. It’s *your time,* and if they feel their objections were not fully dealt with, they can write their own paper.
The problem with these dudes is that they’ve attempted to counter-argue, but they are A) wrong and 2) not very smart, so it hasn’t gone so well for them. They can’t figure out why that might be (see #2, above), but are pretty sure it’s because CHEATER CHEATER PUMPKIN-EATER.
It’s been really fascinating watching the rise of videogame truthers in response to these harassment campaigns, the result of the cognitive dissonance of “I like this thing, I am not bad, therefore this thing is not bad, therefore everyone who likes this thing is not bad. Harassment is bad, but the people in my community are not bad, therefore the people in my community are not committing harassment.”
I can understand why they would accuse targets of harassment of exaggerating the level of abuse they get, but it’s so weird to watch them twist around the truth when the abuse is right out there in the open. I can’t understand the mindset that decides that women posting their own private information and creating hundreds of burner accounts a day to harass themselves with is a more plausible explanation than some members of their community taking this perceived attack on themselves way too seriously.
Lewis’ Law: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”
Yup, the thing about the rape and murder responses proving her point is something that comes up every time Anita Sarkeesian posts new work on the internet – and yet, people STILL DON’T FUCKING GET IT. It just makes it even more obvious that misogynerds are not trying to listen and have a discussion at all, they’re just interested in making her shut up at all costs w/o realizing how bad it makes them look. They must figure that eventually the rape and death threats will wear her out, and then they’ll have won.
The sad thing is, these tactics can and do work. Many women/feminists actually do cut themselves off of the internet in fear of their lives. That level of sexual harassment is exhausting and terrifying. One part of me hopes Anita Sarkeesian doesn’t stop, but part of me does – because then she could probably lead a safer, more comfortable life. My head and heart hurt.
Oh hey guys just gonna go check out the comments on an article about Zoe Quinn.
I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from doing this. I need some sort of shock collar that zaps me every time I click the comments button on a video game site.
Thankfully the one they linked to seems to have a pretty aggressively moderated comments section.
Yeah, the Badass Digest ones are comparatively well-behaved.
Compare this to the tweets that Anita Sarkeesian collected and shared yesterday, which…hooooooly shit. *Moves to mountain cabin in internet dead zone.*
HOLY SHIIIIIIIIT! Holy fucking shit. I never saw the disturbing images in the Jezebel comments, but I imagine they’re like what I just saw. Damn.
“Wow that’s some gross looking oatmeal,” she said as she clicked on the morning links post.
D:
what is that oatmeal doing on a bed? weird.
You know, I saw it, I thought “Huh,” and then my brain evidently hit its emergency NOPE switch to shut down any thought of what the image was. I just… switched off and didn’t think about it, la de da.
Until just now.
The most beautiful, loving, poetic souls in the world know that the most beautiful, lovable people in the world are the ones who are a little tarnished, a little scratched. If you want true love in your life, you will stop trying to be a brilliant silver chalice, and you’ll aim to be a misshapen pewter cup instead. Something ordinary, that you can pick up and feel and rub between your hands. Something regular and dented and scratched.
This whole advice column was amazing and I especially loved the above passage because it confirmed something I already believed – all the best lessons in life are laid out for you in the Indiana Jones movies.
Being the holy grail is a pretty sweet gig, BUT I think the option of turning nazis into dust is pretty great too.
“But it’s hard to self-identify as “a gamer” when there’s also a large swathe of that community apparently committed to presenting us all as a bunch of hateful sociopaths. It’s like being a moderate Muslim in the middle of the continuing ISIS takeover and oppression of Iraq.”
…Excuse me?
Yeah…maaaaaaybe not so much on that one quote.
I KNOW RIGHT. I saw a link to that yesterday and had EXACTLY that reaction. Yes, please do go on to explain how exactly this gamer identifies with a) either being an ordinary Iraqi citizen who has lived through the Coalition invasion and is now in the middle of a civil war or is b) a Muslim citizen somewhere else in the world who is somehow complicit in what ISIS is doing (since it’s not clear where this “moderate Muslim” is supposed to be located, but neither of those sounds particularly like being a gamer.) I would be fascinated to see you developing that metaphor in a non-racist and non-Islamophobic direction.
I don’t think it was well-chosen, but I’m not sure I feel that extremely about it. He was obviously trying to say “It is like when you identify as something that has horrifying people as its most high-profile vocal adherents, and part of you is all *but not me! I’m not like that!* and part of you is like *screw this forever,* but you really can’t divorce yourself from the larger group because it is you, too.”
The problem is that I strongly suspect he’s just *guessing* that’s how moderate Muslims feel about ISIL — probably based on how he knows moderate US Christians feel about toxic Christian fundamentalism. Only instead of using the group he had some experience with as his example, he dodged, feeling like if he brought Christianity into it, his argument would be derailed by people with intense feelings about Christianity. He assumed Islam would be somehow more theoretical or distant to his audience, which is — not a good assumption.
tl;dr Metaphors where you substitute other groups of people for your own group are hella difficult, and maybe don’t even try unless you’re pretty sure you have a lot of experience with both groups.
I think the other problem with it is who you assume your most “high profile vocal adherents” are. I’m not Muslim and I don’t live in a Muslim-majority country, but the “most high-profile adherents” where I live are my friends and colleagues, the students I work with, the excellent Muslim feminists I follow on Twitter, the cheerful guy who runs the supermarket at the end of the road and so on. If you assume that ISIS are the “most high-profile adherents of Islam”, that’s saying way more about your subject position than it is about Islam.
I don’t know about that. My friends, neighbors, and colleagues might be the people I know best who are Republicans, say (okay, I don’t have any friends who are Republicans, but those other two for sure), but it would be silly to claim they are the most “high profile vocal” Republicans in the world. That means something quite specific. Now, I for sure think there’s some fucked-up bias in who gains a high profile over whom in our cultural conversation, and whose attempts to be “vocal” succeed and whose are simply drowned out. It is a function of our cultural desire to see Muslims a certain way that *makes* ISIL more high-profile than the Muslimahs you follow on Twitter, and that sucks. But the fact is, that’s where we stand.
Then I don’t think we share the same culture! If you want people who are high-profile, vocal adherents of Islam with a public platform, then for me that would be people like Yasmin Alibhai-Brown or Baronness Warsi or Mo Farah or various other people whose names would be nationally recognised. Which is my point: maybe ISIS is the “most high-profile vocal adherent of Islam” to whoever wrote that article, but they’re not the most high-profile to me as a white English person who lives in a area of the country with a fairly big Muslim population. So it’s a ludicrous and clumsy assumption that his or her strawfigure “moderate Muslim” would see it that way.
Nicole, how do you not know how not to hire the young ladies because they will get pregnant just to spite you? It’s like you don’t even read the internet!
Thanks for re-linking Kweku’s piece. I missed it yesterday.
How many male HBO auteurs does it take to change a lightbulb?
Moreover, the art of closure forbids merely telling the audience in words that there is loss, since words can create the illusion of safety and control. Chase’s art seeks a silent level of knowing more profound than words. He believes we already know if we open up to that deeper part of us.
How many male HBO auteurs does it take to change a lightbulb?
Ads scenes of graphic violence and female nudity to make show seem gritty and realistic despite being about dragons and ice zombies/backwoods Lovecraftian monster worshippers.
It’s actually been a really shit (more shit than usual, it’s usually pretty awful) TWO weeks for women in gaming. And last night it escalated AGAIN, when motherfucking douchenozzle Adadm Baldwin started tweeting those nude pics of Zoe Quinn AND her address. I am still so, so angry.
What the actual fuck? Adam Baldwin the…actor? And apparent POS?
– the ‘apparent’
Yep, the actor, and man well into middle age.
Total POS.
The apparent actor and POS.
AAAAARGH ADAM BALDWIN
I periodically go to his Twitter page to see if it’s as bad as I remember, and it’s always WORSE than I remember.
He’s my perpetual reminder, every time I start thinking, well, maybe *some* libertarians aren’t so bad….
No, they’re all that bad.
I think I know the only libertarian who isn’t that bad, ever, but she’s my friend who lives in Texas so I can’t even point to her publicly to say “See? NOT awful!”
Jesus H. Christ. >:(
Huh. I guess there never will be a Firefly reunion.
I keep wondering why the hell Jos Whedon gave this man a career.
He’s arguably well-suited to the character he played.
Mostly. Jayne did have a few better moments.
Pre-twitter, there was less of a visible and incontrovertible evidence base for this shit? I can only hope.
THAT BLANKET MUST NOTTA BEEN SO BELOVED IF IT WAS FORGOTTEN LONG ENOUGH FOR A THREE FOOT WASP NEST TO GROW ON IT.
And:
Though he got the job done, Birkett was saddened at the death of so many wasps. “It was a work of art and they had worked so hard, but she looked at it and said, ‘No, no, no – you’ve got to get rid of it.’ If they did that in three-and-a-half months, that’s amazing, isn’t it? They’re just little things.”
Aww. But also, NO.
BRB, staring at this forever
and breathing through a paper bag for the rest of the day.
JOINING YOU OMG THAT GIF
That GIF is AMAZEBALLS.
Just in case anyone hasn’t seen the original video (with music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZy2I8csVQU. It’s in my emergency “this day sucks and I need something amusing” folder.
I got dressed up like a spaceman
May we all be as good at finding delight in our shitty jobs as the wasp guy.
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT. Someone wrote a book claiming that Studies Show less psychological trauma *in childhood rape survivors* than in adults?
Fuuuuuck this fucking thing in particular. I’m shutting down the computer and going to…I don’t know. Get coffee? Have my car inspected? Set something on fire? TBD.
yeah I read that and felt an actual, literal wave of nausea for a few minutes there
Also, that’s an intriguing lack of data on male rape victims he’s got going there. I guess we can extrapolate that since rape doesn’t compromise men’s reproductive fitness it’s NBD, right? If he *did* have any data, I’m vv sure it would reflect that obvious logical reality.
More Mary Beard, on Women’s public speech in the West, and the policing thereof. This is the article/speech that prompted the profile.
(This is one of my favorite essays ever by anyone)
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-publi…
Ask Polly’s final Awl column had me sobbing by the end. My ex was less heinous than this douchwad, but the surprise break-up, the not showing up emotionally (which I didn’t realize until it was over, of course) and the beautiful image of transferring from a cartoon world to reality, where I am allowed to be good enough as I am – ow, my feels.
I didn’t mind the look of the wasp nest and agree with the fellow who had to get rid of it that it was impressive. I’m not saying I’m too keen on having wasps everywhere, but I think they build pretty nests. Still, I’m slightly baffled that it seems like the wasp guy thought that leaving it where it was could ever be an option. Did he really expect them to say “Yes, you know, maybe we’ll just leave it there. We can put a new bed right beside it when the grown children come to visit. The buzzing is quite soothing.”?
That was weirdly adorable. “Well, I guess they wanted it gone, so… *shrug.*” You kinda get the feeling if *he* had that many spare rooms, he would set one or two aside for his little artist friends.
Clearly it’s the most interesting art piece in that new-money stuccoed atrocity. They could glass off the door, no problem, and then they’d finally be able to quiet that nagging worry that they’re not special, that there’s nothing remotely interesting about them.
On the evidence of the last few weeks, what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity.
One of the things I’ve noticed in the videogame twitter threads is how aggressively this subset of people identifies with the media they consume. One guy had a comment about how sometimes he thinks he’s too lonely and isolated from the rest of the world but then he remembers that’s what anime is for as his pinnned tweet, and the prevalence of anime avatars among the assholes who spam threads about Zoe or Fem Freq is starting to become its own meme.
Well that article was actually one of the few vaguely optimistic things to come out of this whole debacle. I look forward to the death of “gamer culture” with great anticipation.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure there’s folks out there who think that the jokes about “anime avatars” are just as bad a form of intolerance/harassment as the death threats against women.
I will celebrate the death of gamer culture. I will burn it to ashes and scatter it to the four winds. I will build over its fallen monuments and erase its name from our history books.
Anyway, yeah, a lot of them were saying BUT ZOE IS HARASSING JONTRON ISN’T THAT JUST AS BAD like are there naked pictures & pornographic cartoons of JonTron everywhere? Is his personal phone number available? Was he forced to flee his home in fear of his life? They don’t have any sense of scale because they’re so personally invested in the topic.
When I read about the collapse of the TV show “Game Jam”, I thought it was really nice of all the other participants to support Quinn, buuuutt I didn’t think to check into what kind of shit she’d face if another unkind portrayal of her got into the outside world. I like the other guys better now! I appreciate what they did!
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/31/5568362/game-jam…
That wasp photo is bringing back unwanted memories of termite season in New Orleans. Every year the termites go buckwild at night and have a termite disco in any available light, and one night they happened to do so outside of my window. Except my window was old and rotten and didn’t shut completely, so by the time I got home from my evening’s ghost tours, my bed underneath the window was covered in mating termites.
We didn’t have termite-specific bug spray so I sprayed my sheets down with Raid and threw them in the wash, sealed my window with Combat Roach Gel (highly recommended for all kinds of pests!), and took a cab to some other house, anywhere else.
I am feeling a little. . . chastised? no, humbled by all the “gaming is shit for women” comments because I just posted yesterday about how exciting this summer has been for women in games. Conversations are being had. Stances are being taken. Visibility is being fought for, in many different quarters. Not like this has never happened before, but I feel like there are increasing numbers of male geek celebrities taking up Anita Sarkeesian’s cause and other ones, and that ignorant comments about creating female characters have been receiving loud and public derision, and I feel like these events are going to make a difference as the supposed “vocal minority” of angry male gamers realizes they are not going to get the levels of support or silence that they are used to. I feel optimistic. But yes, it has been shit. And exhausting and frequently scary for the women who are central to some of these debates.
When the house I grew up in succumbed to termites they would come in at night to scout out new things to chew on and buzz the lamp I sat next to relentlessly. Thinking I was clever, I turned it off in order to watch SNL in peace. A few flew at the TV screen, but most saw its light reflected off my big fat face and thought, “Forsooth! The moon!” and LANDED ALL OVER ME. It didn’t end well, for them or for me.
And then you removed your face and got a new one, yes? One without termites on?
Exactly. Termite-free and much cuter.
There are a couple of comments about Zoe Quin in this thread, so I thought I would finally go and play Depression Quest something other Toasties have been recommending for a while.
If anyone else had it on their to-do list, do it! I cried. Damn is that a powerful game.
A warning, though, it cuts very close to the bone. So if you have experience with depression and/or depression-related feelings, you might want to make sure you’re in a safe space, and feeling ok, you might want to take some breaks and/or give it a miss altogether.
*Finds herself at a crossroads. Looks left, and sees a room full of Internet Gamer Dudes. Looks right, and sees the Wasp Nest Bedroom.*
Hmmmm.
*Sits and thinks very seriously for a moment.*
Well, there aren’t so many wasps…
I know lots of women play and make video games (hell, I helped make a video game) but I can’t shake the belief that they’re a misandrist plot to handicap middle-class dudes during crucial career development years.
I might just be like, “Oh, we don’t open that door,” and tiptoe away from the wasp room forever.
Having a secret wasp room is basically a security system.
If you kids don’t behave, I’ll make you stay in the wasp room!
“It’s odd that a medium unique in its ability to put its players in the shoes of others has created people so closed-minded.”
What if there was a video game specifically for gamer-bros where they roleplayed as a woman? Just a normal woman (with a different combo of sexuality, ethnicity and race each time) going about her day, dealing with sexism and harassment at home, at the workplace, and on the street? I can’t figure out how to motivate this particularly terrible brand of straight cis men to WANT to see everyday life from the POV of a woman, but c’mon…if they like games so much, maybe that’d be an effective way to show them how terrible they’re being.
Like this?
We spent much of yesterday at the ER explaining the merits of eating a Popsicle over getting an IV.
Oh dear, she is sick, isn’t she? Poor little bundle. As someone who spent a gorgeous week of August on the popsicle-and-IV regimen, I send you double-triple-quadruple sympathy. (Confidential to Nicole’s little sweetpea: Pssssst. if you have a choice, take the popsicles. Popsicles are better.)
I discovered the Toast several months ago and visit the website daily. I owe a huge debt to its articles in forming my views on gender, sexuality, race, and privilege. Women’s studies never interested me in the past, but the current state of American politics and lawmaking has made me feel an urgent need to identify as a feminist and support women’s rights.
Previously, I did not identify as a feminist due to, what I believed, a lack of feminists’ grounding claims in scientific evidence. Discussion and texts in my graduate classes were largely made up of a refusal to root feminist theory in science, specifically evolutionary biology. I feel this is a huge disservice to the cause, and a viewpoint I believed had gone out of favor.
I normally commend the Toast for its rationality in arguing against misogyny, a word that is often overused and misused. However, with the recent New Yorker article on Mary Beard and the consequent adoration of her in the comments section of this website, I am left feeling conflicted about the reality of the modern feminism movement.
Reading Mary’s beliefs about rape and women’s roles in Western society disturbed me. Also, I found her to be elitist and classist in her responses to her detractors. I understand this is one woman among many feminists, but I do not look up to her. I would greatly appreciate it if the fellow commenters would inform me: Do contemporary feminists believe that rape is only a display of power and has nothing to do with sex? I hope the commenters will take my question seriously (I do not have an education in current gender theory, but I am trying to learn).
I love the Toast, and I appreciate the open and accepting forum it provides its readers.
I’ve never been very good at picking up on classism; would you like to share some examples so we can be on the same page?
Some feminists do believe that rape is almost entirely about power. Some believe it’s all about feeling entitled to sex. Some (like me) believe that it’s not really studied enough to draw conclusions, my heavens, why on Earth is the data so poor? We are a lot of people; we have a variety of opinions on the topic.
I used to adore the shit out of human evolutionary biology, but then I noticed how it spent a lot of time punching down; confirming that the way things are now, in Western society: that is how humans work, so it’s OK that things are unfair. For instance, evolutionary biology’s discussion of rape as a strategy for producing offspring seems awfully grounded in the liberal arts theories about the formation of cultures during the 19th century; there are lovely parallels between rape as a drive to form, well, Rome, and the pillaging of continents to form the British Empire. Also, probably, justifying raping wives. And servants of all genders.
I think human evolutionary biology is something I want to circle back to studying some day, but I’d like to explore a lot of my personal prejudices and beliefs first, so that there’s less baggage for the next round of people who are interested. (Let’s all laugh at how likely that is. Hah! Hah!)
Ok, since you seem sincere I’ll respond. I’m a biologist, and although I’m an ecologist not a behavioural biologist, I have done behavioural research that has ended up in peer reviewed papers so while I’m not an expert I’m at least somewhat informed.
Leaving aside your question about the role of sex and power in rape, my main concern with evolutionary psychology is that there isn’t enough science in it. It’s not a coincidence that evo psych papers tend to be published in psychology journals, not biological ones, as it allows them to make statements like “When one is considering any feature of living things, whether evolution applies is never a question” which is wrong. Some of my research was looking at a particular behavioural trait and trying to determine whether or not it was selected for by evolution. In actual biology, the bar is actually fairly high for a behaviour to be considered adaptive! Usually, you have to prove that 1) the trait varies between individuals, 2) the variation is heritable, and 3) the variation confers an evolutionary advantage. It’s a lot of work and rigorous thinking to prove those things, so in my experience evo psychologists usually don’t bother and use thought experiments and armchair “science” and “everyone knows” to fill in the gaps.
To my knowledge, evolutionary psychology has only shown that #1 is correct for rape in humans, in that some men rape and others do not. For #2, they’d have to show that the children of rapists become rapists when controlling for other factors like upbringing. For #3, they’d have to show that rapists have more children than not-rapists, or that rape increases their own or their children’s survival. Beyond anecdata about Ghengis Khan, I’ve never seen this shown either. Evo psychologists assume that because rapists are having more sex they are having more children and I can think of several reasons that could possibly not be true (maybe it’s more advantageous to have children in a relationship where both parents contribute to raising a child and neither are traumatized by its very exsistence, maybe the taboo against rape in almost every culture means that rapists get killed or thrown out of the group, etc.)
In short, evo pysch has fairly little actual science, and if someone is going to claim “science” to support offensive, misogynistic viewpoints, they damn well have at least as strong science as I needed to support my fairly boring exploration of “do these little fish bite each other and why?”
Eeeee, neutral theory! It’s such a fucking pain in the ass! I love it so!
“Maybe this population has this trait because the parts of the population without this trait got crushed by a landslide! Or maybe there was a dry year and the plants near the spring all had this trait because that’s where they landed! It could also be that the things with this trait are objectively better at this environment! Who knows! The past is a mystery!”
I’m probably way too late to the party, but I just want to say that I agree with the previous two comments so much and they are so much more eloquent than I can be about this subject.
To fcv, I think you are trying to be nice and understanding and anything you said that I found horrifying has to be me grossly misinterpreting you, right? Could you maybe clarify what you mean when you say that Mary’s beliefs about rape and women’s roles in Western society disturb you? I’m going to be really upfront in saying I skimmed the relevant articles and maybe didn’t get to all of them, but from what I could gather Mary doesn’t like rape even if her own experience wasn’t terribly traumatizing and also she thinks men should stop silencing women’s speech. That all seems pretty straightforward to me and I’m not saying every self-identified feminist has to idolize her, but I find it well, disturbing, if you disagree with those points.
Look, I’m a biomedical engineer, which means I’ve studied some biology but I don’t necessary define myself as a scientist since I’m very goal/solution oriented. As a self-described scientist, why do you think feminism needs scientific evidence to be valid? Why does evolutionary biology need to validate feminism’s claims? What would contemporary feminism gain from a more scientific grounding that you feel it is lacking? It is just a matter of accessibility and you would feel more at home? I too read The Toast daily and I find almost all of the non-scientific arguments well reasoned and I don’t need a bunch of peer-reviewed articles cited to find them valid. (Full disclosure: I come here to escape graduate school hell so I may be overcompensating in the opposite direction.)
I have absolutely no experience with rape and so I probably shouldn’t have opinions about it much less talk about it, but what the hell? LeastBittern summed that whole argument up really well, and I’ll just add that I don’t think rape as a display of male power means it has nothing to do with sex. In my own personal opinion, which may not be shared by literally any other feminist, rape is mostly about sexual entitlement and is often a display of power. Did anyone else read any of those summary articles about that horrifying Reddit thread about the rapists telling their stories? What I took away from that whole incident is that the rapist wants to have sex and the other person doesn’t but the rapist doesn’t stop because what, he wasn’t going to have sex? They see the other person as an object they are entitled to or even if they see them as a person they rationalize what they are doing by pretending they can’t control themselves or the other person is actually consenting. I think that disregard for the other person’s bodily autonomy, the prioritizing of their sexual desire over everything else is a display of power. They want sex and use power and violence to get it when other means fail. I don’t know if I’m making any sense? I know there are feminists who think it is solely a display of power and argue rape isn’t sex at all because sex has to be consensual. I don’t agree with that argument but I agree with the intention behind it which is to dismantle rape culture and spread information about consent and to hold rapists accountable for their actions and punish them. I don’t criticize people who maybe make flawed arguments in pursuit of positive change, by you are more than welcome to.
(Sorry about another comment. Apparently I wrote too much and there was a limit? Also, sorry for writing too much.)
I want to agree a million percent with LeastBittern and MilesofMountain about the problem with evo psyches where they continually punch down and make very unscientific arguments. As a lover of biology I feel very alienated when old white dudes say everything right now is really sexist and racist because of biology because of course 21st century Western society is the same as all human societies ever with the same cultural norms and taboos and if people do something sexist and racist it is only because biology bred it into them. I realize I’m coming off as really dismissive and that isn’t my intention, but this shit hit a nerve. See, I watch a lot of nature programs and I’m probably reading too much into this but it has really informed my views about rape. In the documentaries I’ve seen, animals don’t really rape each other that much. I’m not saying it never happens because of course it does, but it doesn’t seem to be the main way they reproduce. I know I’ve probably seen a small sample size and it’s limited to vertebrates and from what I understand bugs rape each other all the time, but I watched this program about ducks and it mentioned how they are one of the few bird species with forced copulation. That made me realize how all the other animals I watched didn’t have forced copulation. It was always female sexual selection and either the male had to bring a gift or make a nice place to live or fight the other males and then the lady agreed. There was a program about snow monkeys with a consensual sex scene and an attempted rape. In the consensual scene the lady monkey called the male down to a nice clearing in the woods and made him hang out and hold hands before sex and after they had to hang out again for a little while. In the attempted rape scene a male from outside the group attacked one of the females and luckily she got free and all the group males chased the outsider off and probably would have killed him if he wasn’t a better swimmer.
In light of MilesofMountain pointing out the problem with trying to use evolutionary biology to show rape as a viable strategy for producing offspring, I’ll make a pseudoscientific argument about how it isn’t a good strategy. Human infants are very feeble and dependent compared to other animal young and they really benefit from having two humans that like each other and get along who mutually provide food and support during their formative years. A rapist who doesn’t pair bound and just goes around spreading his genes obviously isn’t providing that additional support to his offspring, who with only one parent are disadvantaged compared to the offspring with two parents. Plus infanticide is totally a thing that animals (and humans if we want to be harshly honest) do all the time. So the rapist forces the female to have sex and she gets pregnant and bears the offspring. What part of that equation forces her to raise the offspring and provide for it and bond with it rather than abandoning it in the woods? Wouldn’t an infant with two parents that are really invested in its survival have a better chance, evolutionarily speaking, than an infant with one parent that maybe doesn’t care that much if it lives or dies?
Also, about the elitist/classist thing, that is because she mocked some guy for not having as good an education as she has right? I’m trying to think of anything else you could be referring to. On the one hand yes, it is sort of gross to basically call a detractor stupid and poor, but on the other hand when someone is attacking you professionally I think it is totally fair to question their qualifications. Plus, if I’m thinking of the right incident you are referring to that guy just attacked her personal appearance on her television show without actually engaging with the actual content, and that is a pretty poor argument.
I think the causes of human death in non-agricultural societies goes “1.) Infanitcide, 2.) murder, 3.) other things.” And let’s be honest, the “two people to care for an infant” thing is probably also a relic of western society and the focus on a nuclear family; parents will aver, babies require like seven caretakers.
I think Pear made a really good point about Beard’s response to her critic; even if the critic is wrong, it’s not OK to apply blanket criticisms to an entire group/culture to hurt the feelings of one member of that culture. That’s what he did to her, it’s not right to do it back.
Okay honestly, my comment looked so much shorter when I typed it out, for real. Sorry about that.
Yeah, I have to say typing out that shitty thought experiment made me really uncomfortable with how heteronormative/nuclear family defending I was being (maybe I missed my calling as an evopsych after all!). What I was trying to get at is that hey science dudes, female sexual selection is totally a thing you can’t deny, especially with regard to mammals that need extended attention from their mothers after birth to survive. So if the female is forced to have offspring with a mate she doesn’t find desirable or it is the wrong season to be mating and having babies then she will totally just abandon those babies and try again at a better time with a mate she likes better. Maybe a better thing to say about non-agricultural societies (because agricultural societies never kill their babies ever and are totally more civilized and better evolved and I’m sorry for being a mean joker and how do you make the tone sound nicer?) is that if it is a good time for the group and they don’t have a bunch of immediate threats pressing down and there is plenty of food then sure they’ll probably help take care of that new grub for a while before it is old enough to contribute but if it’s winter and there aren’t enough tubers and deer than fuck that grub. So I’m like science dudes, rape doesn’t really help with that whole expending of resources problem and if anything would make the female less willing to put in the effort and I doubt the group is going out its way to pick up the slack. Plus, as MilesofMountain pointed out there is the whole problem with shunning and/or killing rapists. If snow monkeys know that behavior is not cool dude and they act pretty forcefully in response then what, humans are less progressive about gender norms somehow?
I’m going to be totally upfront about how ill-informed I probably am on this topic and also totally completely wrong, but I actually think all misogyny comes down to female sexual selection. Women (cisgender of course, I am not trying to come off as some horrible white feminist monster I’m so sorry) can have babies and men can’t. And this is so unfair and hard and men hate it, even if they can’t express it or don’t consciously think it. So theoretically all women can have babies whenever they want and men have to be physically fit or a good provider or have some other beneficial characteristic and that is so hard and women don’t have to do that. Plus, even if you somehow convince a woman to have sex how do you even know that grub is yours, unless you capture the female and lock her up and don’t let anyone else near her (hi Victorians!). I think that is why transgender women are subjected to such a high degree of violence (oh my god I’m so ignorant about these things why am I still talking and being offensive and I’m so sorry). So a man does all this stuff to show how he is a good mate in order to have sex and then he finds out that the sex partner wasn’t even capable of having babies and he was tricked and that is horrible and he is livid and that sex partner has to pay! Then there are the assholes like that politician that said if abortion is allowed then men should just get to rape whoever they want and all I can think is wow, way to take the subtext of society and just put it all right out there. On a lighter note, I think it is really entertaining to respond to all misogyny by saying sincerely that yeah, it really sucks men can’t have babies and I’m really sorry life is so unfair.
Also, I totally posted my huge block text before the discussion moved on and yes, Pear said what I thought was the problem in such an elegant and nice way. I totally did not know that Oxbridge was a thing and was thinking that isn’t the name of anything until I got it and now I love it! Thank you for introducing me to that word! I also really love her point about calling out elites on their elitist bullshit but also being careful about not going after females and attacking them with special vigor for activities their male counterparts do all the fucking time and totally get a pass on.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts on the subject I brought up and I especially appreciate @Pear’s description of, what I believe to be, Mary Beard’s problematic responses to her critics. This topic may be dead in the water, but I would like to ask commenters for recommendations of contemporary feminist critics or theorists–academics or otherwise–or specific essays, blogs, or blog posts on current feminist issues.
I suppose my question was prompted by my personal interactions with women who identify as feminists–white, middle- and upper-middle class cisgender women who are either hetero- or homosexual and who value women and sisterhood above gender equality. This is very frustrating for me, as I strongly believe in an egalitarian approach to gender politics and also believe that certain feminist theory excludes certain genders and POC (and, as I said in my first post, certain theories actively fight against contemporary scientific theories).
I am trying to play catch-up for a lack of formal education in women’s studies, and any new writing on the subject will enlighten me! Thanks again!
With regard to your first point I hope other commenters can help you out because I don’t have any rigorous academic resources to give you and the only essays I read are the ones posted at this website. I’m more of a tumblr feminist (which I know, I’m so sorry that makes me the fucking worst and I don’t write anything I mostly just like reading the righteous gif-sets) and I also don’t have any gender studies education, I just do this for fun when I should be working on my manuscript but come on, that thing sucks. I’m mostly into media criticism about how TV and movies need to have better diversity and representation because images fucking matter people.
With regard to your second point, on the one hand I totally understand your frustration with white feminism that seeks to only serve well off white ladies to get ahead and doesn’t really care about lgtb+ issues (maybe they care about the l a little) and certainly doesn’t care about POC and gender minorities. So yes of course, make you feminism as diverse and inclusive as possible. Don’t all the cool cats use the term intersectional these days, or is The Toast even more evolved and I’m behind the times again? And I also understand your point about your frustration with sisterhood over say activism and progressive policy changes. I sometimes wonder why my mother’s and grandmother’s generations marched in the streets and got shit done and my generation is totally fine coasting along on their accomplishments without trying to build on them or even allowing some of the progress to be rolled back. I mean, we still don’t have an ERA for gender and sexuality and that is totally fucked up. But on the other hand the personal is political and sometimes women just want safe spaces to share their experiences and be heard and validated as human beings and sometimes it is helpful just to shut up and listen. Like I understand you don’t like those articles about Mary Beard, but in the first one she was just pointing out how men silence women not just for what they say but for daring to speak at all and maybe we could all stop doing that please? I agree with you and everyone else that pointed out her argument would be stronger if she didn’t do some similar shady shit to her critics.
Um also, this is just my personal opinion and I literally speak for no one else, but egalitarianism is a huge fucking red flag and a word I used to think was totally innocent but have come to realize is super problematic. It tends to be used by white guys to derail conversations and prevent progress. “I’m egalitarian, man. We’re all just people. We’re all the same. Why do you have to keep talking about women when we want everyone to be equal?” Because we are talking about a problem that only women have to face and men do not and we would like to solve this problem in particular that hurts this specific group and nothing will happen if we don’t call it out and act on it. “Why do you have to keep talking about race and making everything a racial problem? We’re all people and all the same. Why don’t you just want everyone to be equal?” Because this is a problem that only people of one race face and other races do not have this problem. We are talking about this problem that hurts this specific group and we want to help this group in particular with this problem.
I know you probably did not mean that at all in what you wrote, but I and at least some other feminists could misconstrue that intent. And as for less inclusive feminist theory, have you maybe been exposed to radical feminists? I know The Toast poked that wasps’ nest (I’m so witty, I know) a few weeks back and I don’t want to be mean to anyone since I know there are radical feminists that frequent here, but yeah, they can be pretty exclusionary. The worst parts of that movement (not all, I know many are fine and lovely people) are really mean to transgender women including real life harassment and influencing exclusionary legislative policy. Plus, the thing that pisses me off the most is that they are super mean to sex workers and always shamming them and trying to abolish sex work and comparing all sex work to sexual slavery which is just, no. I mean, if you want to critique the whole capitalist system and bring it down and dance on the ashes, that’s great let’s do that, but otherwise don’t ever criticize anyone for their profession and don’t shame them or try to put them out of work.
I find Mary Beard very annoying, but then, I tend not to be a fan of anyone who goes blah blah blah on A Point Of View on Sunday mornings. I also tend to find Oxbridge people and Classicists pretty annoying. These are much, much better reasons for finding Mary Beard annoying than that she doesn’t take evopsych seriously. Nobody takes evopsych seriously.
But anyway, if you are basing your knowledge of “the feminist movement” on what a privately-educated posh white Englishwoman writes, you should definitely expand your reading base.
Okay first, I agree so much with shitting on evopsyches, let’s do that more please for it warms my cold heart. Second, yes to maybe being wary of posh white feminists and I totally get how that is annoying.
However, can I ask like a general discussion question? Is the problem you (and maybe fcv too, I still don’t know what they don’t like about those articles other than the elitism) have with Mary Beard the elite classicist thing? To give some backstory, I’m a biomedical engineer, which is pretty interdisciplinary to start with, and my current project is anti-HIV microbicides which is super interdisciplinary and takes bits from so many different fields. So my attitude has always been very accepting of other fields and I want everyone to become an expert in one specific thing and then we all get together and share our knowledge to solve a problem and also all the different unique perspectives really help to come up with new and innovative solutions and teamwork yay! But from what I understand almost nobody else shares this opinion. Like the fine arts people and the humanities people fucking hate the liberal sciences and vice versa and they all fight when someone out of their narrow specific field has an opinion about anything at all related to their field, right? I mean, I know a lot of that is probably related to fighting over funding and attention and people in academia have big egos and don’t like to be contradicted. It is just something I have noticed very recently and it really confuses me. I mean, I read Jared Diamond as a teenager and I think he is fun in a pop science way and a pretty approachable writer and I learned some things about history I didn’t necessarily know before so I like his books even as I acknowledge it isn’t like they are above reproach. But apparently anthropologists and historians fucking hate his guts like a lot. That attitude is just baffling to me because I totally understand if you criticize his interpretation of the data he presents or if you don’t agree with his theories (I mean, I don’t agree with them all either), but I don’t understand the outrage that a biologist, oh my god and not even a real one but someone that studies fucking birds or something stupid like that, dares to have an opinion about history and anthropology and then writes and publishes it, how dare he?! I mean, what is that? Is it professional jealousy? Are academics really that territorial? As someone with limited contact with fine arts and liberal arts and sciences (I mean, I read from a lot of different fields, it is just the people I’m not around much) I would very much like to hear opinions from people in those fields about those conflicts. Also, if you all get along great and I’m totally off-base I would love to hear about that as well!
Getting way back to the original point that fcv made, is that what made them mad? That a classicist said something mean about biology?
What the FUCK does it say about this week that those crazy motherfucking wasps building a commune inside a home (700 QUEENS OH HELL NO) is the LEAST upsetting thing??
nooooooo!!!!!
pigeons have a cruel sense of humour.
A FB friend posted today to say that he “needs a facebook filter to not see any people posting about Zoe Quinn,” and somebody else posted that he’s tired of hearing about “that goddamned Anita Sarkeesian.”
And by FB friend, I mean “someone I used to be acquainted with on social media.”
Ugh, what good points. That is fucked up. Thank you for sharing; it's hard for me to get a grip on rules and shibboleths of my own culture, much less other cultures – I so appreciate it when people just tell me what's going on.