Misogyny and other gender issues. - The Bear and Badger

Facewon

https://thebaffler.com/latest/women-on-the-verge-janakiram

This is an interesting read on abortion and its history and ways it's been advocated for and opposed.

Tempy

That’s yer attack helicopter story taken down at the request of the author. Statement to go up shortly it seems.

Handful of trans writers I follow are frustrated, some
are happy. Will be interesting to see what the shakeout is.

Facewon

I mean, do we know what angle the author was going for?

I gave up any pretence it was possibly interesting or nuanced when it was called "I identify as an attack helicopter" and the opening line was "I identify as an attack helicopter."

https://twitter.com/cultofdusty1/status/1217513835692732416?s=19

Meanwhile, let's joke about raping someone.

Good times.

tigersgogrrr

It's been very divisive. Many trans folk thought it was brilliant, many thought it was awful.

It was a brilliant story though, most seemed to agree.

Tempy

As others have said online, it’s not exactly uncommon for artists from marginalised groups to take terms or words that have been used against them and title transformative work that way.

I didn’t have time to read it as I am in Berlin with no roaming, but the handful of threads I have seen about it have been divisive, but the shock tactic of the title was purposeful. If it is indeed a trans writer using that trope
as a hook for their art then dismissing it seems a bit misguided? Transhumanism has plenty of overlaps with gender theory and query theory, if anything it feels like it‘a a title that’s long overdue use.

tigersgogrrr

The bit I read was really sharp. Top quality sci-fi that took the title and just ran with it.

Tempy

It’s still on the way back machine so i’ll get around to it, but I feel like dismissing it off the title alone is doing the idea of using they title for a story a disservice. It kinda depends on who this Isabell Fall person actually is, and what they say i their statement, but a lot of the criticism does seem to fall
into that weird category of people who only like fiction when it is a sop to their world view.

At the end of the day It’s not like trans people are a famously complex and non-uniform group of people with many difficult and hard to parse feelings about their own bodies and identities that made lead them to write something that people disagree with.

Facewon

Fair.

You're right about dismissing too easily, however, I don't know that going for the obvious line and riffing is the way to go this time.

I dunno.

Point taken about SF and transhumanism etc,.

My mind was just, we're in a world where that joke and/or variants have been spouted so many times, and there's been so little nuance to it, that I immediately went to: do I want to read probable crap to discover its not.

mistercrayon

The irony is that the lack of nuance is what causes a problem. People go from 0 to cancelled down to a single slight or association or entire works of art are trashed on one element of something considered problematic.

It’s as if the mere variation to some magical correct view to anything causes too many problems but how does this translate into real life where there are even fewer opportunities to be considered and thoughtful. On the contrary view I think in real life I bet transpeople make this joke all the time in a droll way. I make jokes about Indian people all the time and I think it’s interesting how we can accept these tones in life sometimes but our ability to breeze through them online is much harder - as if our tolerance decreases the less real something is.

Diluted Dante

What if I made jokes about Indian people to you?

Paul the sparky

I'd be offended on his behalf.

mistercrayon

Diluted Dante wrote:

What if I made jokes about Indian people to you?

You know i think you are correct that I would dislike this. But it is an interesting phenomena. Perhaps if this happened in real life I would know that you are a nice person so I’d accept it for what it is.

I had an interesting encounter with a person at work who compared my skin to someone who was tanned (ha ha you’re tan isn’t as dark as this guy...) but seem a nice person and I’ve chatted to them a large number of times. I found it awkward but I didn’t want to be angry at them.

Tempy

Facewon wrote:

Fair.

You're right about dismissing too easily, however, I don't know that going for the obvious line and riffing is the way to go this time.

I dunno.

Point taken about SF and transhumanism etc,.

My mind was just, we're in a world where that joke and/or variants have been spouted so many times, and there's been so little nuance to it, that I immediately went to: do I want to read probable crap to discover its not.

Also fair, but Clarkesworld also isn’t some two bit operation - it’s a widely respected and award winning publication.

kneecap

Diluted Dante wrote:

What if I made jokes about Indian people to you?

As long as they are about bobs and vagene they're on topic.

cockbeard

As long as they're funny they're ok

Creating taboos isn't an answer, in fact it serves to further ghettoise anyone who falls under that taboo, and increase distrust and lack of understanding amongst those who previously perpetuated the hurtful stereotypes. It's a weird one though, no doubt about that. For me I think an answer is simply more exposure to sex and nudity in our formative years. Taboo laeds to repression, confusion, and strange choices made (and sometimes regretted) later down the line

Diluted Dante

mistercrayon wrote:

I had an interesting encounter with a person at work who compared my skin to someone who was tanned (ha ha you’re tan isn’t as dark as this guy...) but seem a nice person and I’ve chatted to them a large number of times. I found it awkward but I didn’t want to be angry at them.

I watched Wanda Sykes newest stand up, and she has a bit about what not to do to black people, and this was one of the things that was mentioned.

I'm absolutely confident the guy at work intended no malice, but it's an example of the insidious nature of racism. Not all racists are skinheads marching down the street with tattoo's about killing non whites. The less overt racism is still harmful, and you can apply that to any discrimination.

GurtTractor

As long as this stuff can be talked about openly with consideration and thoughtfulness then we're making progress. I do think making things taboo and the shutting down of discussion can be harmful.

Facewon

Tempy wrote:

Also fair, but Clarkesworld also isn’t some two bit operation - it’s a widely respected and award winning publication.

With a website designed by deviantart apparently.

Facewon

GurtTractor wrote:

As long as this stuff can be talked about openly with consideration and thoughtfulness then we're making progress. I do think making things taboo and the shutting down of discussion can be harmful.

I mean, I'm on a slight tangent here, and I know you're saying that in good faith, but man, "race realist/nazi/quillete" fucks have co-opted that reasoning so much red flags and sirens go off.

If we don't talk about how black folks have lower iqs then the racists win! FML.

Diluted Dante

You mean this Face?

Facewon

Lol yes.

GurtTractor

Facewon wrote:

As long as this stuff can be talked about openly with consideration and thoughtfulness then we're making progress. I do think making things taboo and the shutting down of discussion can be harmful.

I mean, I'm on a slight tangent here, and I know you're saying that in good faith, but man, "race realist/nazi/quillete" fucks have co-opted that reasoning so much red flags and sirens go off. If we don't talk about how black folks have lower iqs then the racists win! FML.

My point is that I don't think that there should be anything that is absolutely and completely off the table for discussion. Of course that means that awful people will say awful things to promote being awful sometimes, but the counter solution to that is to either talk about it or acknowledge then dismiss it.

Take your example of low IQs, this is how a discussion should probably go when that subject is brought up:

"Hello, I would like to talk about my thesis that black people have lower IQs than other people"

"Oh, ok.. Why do you want to discuss this / why would that be important / why is this relevant to anything???"

"....."

"Fuck off dickhead"

It's a very short exchange but it's still a discussion of sorts, the subject has been engaged with as much as is really necessary; if we are going by the principle that all people should be treated equally and have equality then those questions or others should root out the clear bias or racism very quickly and render further discussion pointless if we don't agree on the fundamentals.

The alternative to reasonable discussion is to close off, shut down, no platform. This is something that happens a lot and is potentially quite dangerous. Just to be clear I think the actual isms and phobias and hate and acts of hate are more clearly more dangerous, but to shut down or taboo something is not a solution and will actually feed back into the problem.

I've thought about this stuff quite a lot, not so much the specific issues like transphobia or racism, but more the general standard of discourse and how that affects progress. I've more thoughts but I'll save them for now, it's something I've been thinking of including in a thread which I'll try and get round to doing soon.

cockbeard

It seems the only way to me nowadays, let them speak because they crave popularity, then let them call themselves a cunt

Facewon

https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/25/bettina-arndt-awarded-australia-day-honour-for-services-to-gender-equity?CMP=twt_a-world_b-gdnworld&__twitter_impression=true

"The journalist, author and sex therapist was made a Member of the Order of Australia on Sunday – the third-highest rank under Australia’s civic honours system.

In 2018, Arndt was criticised by sex abuse survivors for conducting a 17-minute interview with convicted paedophile Nicolaas Bester in which she described the behaviour of female students as “sexually provocative”."

Facewon

https://twitter.com/Jenn_Tisdale/status/1223989826220937221?s=19

Burned.

Roujin

The office bants are in, after extensive thought this morning while I was on site the office has had a go at ranking the gayness of the office employees, ya boi here came out on top, and I'm wearing that as a badge of honour, I have achieved peak metropolitan liberal man about town.

Luckily for them, I'm in charge so no one had to call HR outside of a gentle wtf are you people doing pls its 2020 let's not rank any of the employees on any kind of scale ever again, thanks, you morans.

Ooh, I should put it on my bumble bio as well, rake in some more likes

cockbeard

Next week at Rouj PLC, office sweepie on employee most likely to get stop and searched

g.man

hahaha

nick_md

Graham Linehan on newsnight just now then... I've lost the thread of this debate. He seemed uneasy, agitated. I don't think much was achieved with the interview.

LivDiv

Waste of fucking air time. Go and watch that art doc I recommended in the TV thread, or at least the last 10 minutes of ep 2 if you want some interesting talk around transgender bodies.

Fuck beating ones self over the head with endless content from Lineham.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories