Bookworm

Small Fortune

2009-04-09T14:50:00.007-04:00

So what have I been doing instead of blogging? Schoolwork, mostly, but I've had time for some game design as well.

I've put together a brief rule sheet for Fortune, the RPG system I'm working on. It's a barebones document that doesn't offer much in the way of explanation, examples, or game worlds, but it's the major rules of the system in a nutshell. It's also a work in progress, so just about everything in the document is subject to change.

If you're interested in RPGs or game design, download a copy of "Small Fortune" here. And of course feedback is appreciated.

Eventually, I hope to draw up a few setting sourcebooks (the two I've brainstormed so far are a 1950s/60s SF setting a la The Twilight Zone, and an over-the-top reality television setting.)

Seduction and consent

2009-01-06T11:31:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted - I spent most of December finishing up projects for my library science classes, and then catching up on the holiday shopping I hadn't done, and finally just taking some time off.

There's been a discussion starting with radical feminist Maggie Hays and making its way to several other sex-positive blogs (see below for links) about expanding definitions of rape to include things like "seduction." While the debate seemed to start out as yet another "radical vs. sex-positive" argument, it's grown more nuanced (or more nitpicky), as the definition(s) of "seduction" get examined.

I think the central issue here is whether "seduction" is seen as a method to encourage enthusiastic consent, to obtain nominal consent, or to simply have sex. And I think that we live in a culture that typically doesn't distinguish among these, which is why there's so much confusion and argument going on in these discussions. Seduction is seen as anything from "flirting with intent" to the dubious lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" to the now-obsolete seduction tort.

I also think that people are looking at this from different perspectives and that clouds the issue somewhat. From the "seducer's" perspective, doing things that might erode the "seducee's" ability to freely consent to sex is problematic, and not caring whether your partners freely and enthusiastically consent is the attitude of a rapist. From the "seducee's" perspective, though, treating things that only *potentially* compromise consent as *automatically* compromising consent can rob him/her of agency.

Because, when it comes down to it, the authority on whether consent existed has to be the person whose consent it was. (Yes, in a criminal case this is often something that's seen as needing more proof, but we're talking morals here, not trials.) Which means that telling the "seducee" that he/she was raped is wrong, but it also means that it's not legitimate to excuse behavior intended to compromise consent to sex on the grounds that they did or could have still consented. (Just as, for example, reckless disregard for someone's physical safety isn't excused by the fact that, in a particular instance, nobody was injured.)

Other posts on the topic:

16-year-old Japanese girl picked in pro baseball draft

2008-11-17T15:26:00.003-05:00

This is pretty cool:

A 16-year-old schoolgirl is making a unique pitch to become the first woman to play professional baseball in Japan.

High school student Eri Yoshida was drafted by the Kobe 9 Cruise, a professional team in a new independent Japanese league that will start its first season in April.

"I always dreamed of becoming a professional," Yoshida, who is 5-feet tall and weighs 114 pounds, told a news conference Monday. "I have only just been picked by the team and haven't achieved anything yet."

Yoshida throws a side-arm knuckleball and says she wants to follow in the footsteps of Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who has built a successful major league career throwing a knuckleball.

I've always cheered for the players who succeed based on skill without having favorable genetics to supplement that. I suppose it comes back from when I swam competitively, and at the higher levels of competition tended to be shorter and slighter than the other swimmers. And I've never seen a sidearm knuckleball before.

The comments are slightly more depressing; they're the sort you get every time there's a discussion of women in baseball: many supportive folks, but a few who insist that women will never succeed at the professional level, or if they do--well, imagine how much better she'd be if she were a man! And on top of that, this one has all kinds of sexist/racist "Japanese schoolgirl" comments as well. (On the other hand, there's the kind of fan who acknowledges that this is quite an accomplishment but really just wants to figure out the physics and kinesiology involved.)

National Men Make Dinner Day.

2008-11-06T16:20:00.002-05:00

From figleaf comes a link to something called National Men Make Dinner Day.

Whoah! Put on the brakes! Stop right there! Freeze! Ask yourself THIS QUESTION: Are you a man who makes dinner on a regular or semi-regular basis? If the answer is ‘YES”, do not go any further!
National Men Make Dinner Day is NOT for you! May we suggest another website. Something like www.fark.com. Its really funny.

No, it's not for me (and no, fark isn't all that funny); I can't remember the last time anyone made dinner for me at my apartment and I didn't at least help. (Probably happened at some point over the last year when I was sick or exhausted and Keri made me something.) But it's arguably for the 18-year-old me who hadn't learned to cook yet, and the 18-year-old me would be really put off by it:

Ok, now since you’ve continued reading, we assume that you are a man who NEVER cooks. And that you fit the profile of the ‘men’ who have inspired this once-a-year occasion. The ideal participant in ‘National Men Make Dinner Day’ is the man who:

helps with household chores
has a sense of humour and is a great all-around guy
loves his wife/girlfriend, kids and pets
…BUT NEVER LEARNED HOW TO COOK, and is somewhat afraid of the idea.

Officially celebrated on the FIRST THURSDAY OF EVERY NOVEMBER, ‘National Men Make Dinner Day’ is for you!!

One guaranteed meal cooked by the man of the house one day of the year!

Okay, maybe it's not exactly for my younger self; back then I was living in dorms and getting my meals through the university cafeteria. I didn't cook much at first because the dorm kitchens weren't very good, and later at St. A's because it was intimidating to share that kitchen with folks who knew a lot more than I did. I certainly wasn't in a live-in het relationship (gay men are born knowing how to cook, apparently) at the time, or anything resembling "the man of the house."

Figleaf argues that this is a good idea, as a way to get past the intimidation factor:

But here's the thing: if, as they say, the day's not for me I think it really is a great idea for men or for that matter *anybody* who's intimidated by cooking.

And here's the other thing: it's pretty clear *they're* not assuming one meal a year *makes up* for anything. They're certainly not saying cook one meal and you've done your part for the year.

Instead it looks like they're talking about helping people get over the intimidation hurdle. Because with even minimal help from partners, family, or friends (i.e. not complaining it's not like dad used to make or getting impatient and saying something like "oh men! Here let me do that") it's *waaay* easier to cook the second, and all subsequent meals, *after* you've cooked the first.

I'm not so sure it's not implying "you've done your part." There's way too large a helping of 50s-style stereotypes in there:

Rule #2: Man agrees to participate in national men make dinner day. Bonus points if he does so without seeking promise of night out with boys in return.

Rule #8: Following recipe carefully, man starts to cook dinner! Apron is optional, tool belt is not allowed. (bonus points if recipe includes one of the following: capers, saffron, or the word 'scallopini').

Rule #12: After meal, table is cleared by man, dishwasher is loaded. Man returns to table for stimulating after-dinner conversation. At this point, man is told how much his meal was appreciated. He, in turn, describes the joys and challenges of the experience. He is given a hug, and his TV remote is returned to him.

This is straight out of a bad sitcom--big strong man, probably played by Tim Allen or whoever's doing that sort of thing now, tries to make some effete dish! (Also, way to assume that they have a dishwasher as well as a spouse.) (Also also, it's probably a bad idea to give saffron to the sort of guy they're talking about.) Seriously, guy cooks one meal and gets lavished with praise (as part of the "rules" of the event, no less)?

If we really want an "intro to cooking" type event, I'd suggest the following:

1. Make it gender neutral. There's no basis for assuming that women are all familiar with the kitchen and men aren't. (Yes, socialization trends that way, but I've known plenty of men who are excellent cooks and plenty of women who live on takeout.)

2. Make it friendly. In their attempt to make things easy for the neophyte chef, the site's tone actually comes across as condescending--which itself can be intimidating.

3. Make it its own reward. The enjoyment should come from the experience and from the end product. (If you want a cookie, bake it yourself.)

Flashbarack

2008-11-06T15:02:00.002-05:00

[S]ince ancient antiquity, whenever those who seek power would want to control the human spirit, they have gone after libraries and books. Whether it’s the ransacking of the great library at Alexandria, controlling information during the Middle Ages, book burnings, or the imprisonment of writers in former communist block countries, the idea has been that if we can control the word, if we can control what people hear and what they read and what they comprehend, then we can control and imprison them, or at least imprison their minds.

That’s worth pondering at a time when truth and science are constantly being challenged by political agendas and ideologies, at a time when language is used not to illuminate but, rather, to obfuscate, at a time when there are those who would disallow the teaching of evolution in our schools, where fake science is used to beat back attempts to curb global warming or fund lifesaving research.

At a time when book banning is back in vogue, libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.

- Barack Obama, keynote speech at the 2005 ALA annual conference

Ya done good, voters.

Stuff I randomly found out

2008-10-16T10:37:00.002-04:00

Tim Burton is slated to direct a live-action/CGI adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. As incredible as that has the potential to be, I don't think it has the scarring potential of the 1985 version and its creepy, creepy Jabberwock.

Some fly-by-night game company is claiming to have a Lovecraft CRPG in the works. I'll believe it when I see it.

Envy and the Great Sex Columnist Layoff of '08

2008-10-10T11:13:00.010-04:00

Over at Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory writes about all the sex writers whose columns are being cut, and she and her interviewees articulate some of the thoughts I've been having ever since I started to hear about this, and why I can't find myself feeling entirely sympathetic:

Susannah Breslin, a reporter who runs the blog Reverse Cowgirl, argues that sex writers have, for the most part, been held to a lower journalistic standard. “Sometimes people become sex writers because they screw a lot, not necessarily because they can write well,” she told me in an e-mail.

On a similar note, Broadsheet’s Sarah Hepola, formerly an editor for the smart sex mag Nerve, said the traditional shock-and-awe approach to sex columns doesn’t work. She finds “the frustrations of a real person grappling with sex — the lack of it, the absurdity of it, the frustrations of it” more compelling than reading about, say, being tied up in a dominatrix’s dungeon and being flogged with a cat o’ nine tails.

Often times, instead of learning about the emotional and intellectual facets of a stranger’s sex life — and, most interesting, those contradictory cross-currents — I have felt an unwilling participant in their exhibitionistic fantasy.

Most of the sex writers out there are (or play the role of) young conventionally attractive hipster women in large urban areas, who routinely get invited to partake in the sort of activities I never did/will. I've noticed for a while that lists of "best sex blogs" tend to feature young women almost exclusively, either as writers (if it's a writing-centric blog) or as models (if it's an image-centric blog). There's a lot of looks privilege and social privilege going on there, it seems. (And yes, I'm aware that it's a very relative and localized privilege that results from the whole "sex class"/"no-sex class" idea, that many folks are loath to call it privilege at all, that social interaction isn't perfect for anybody, that if I'm not careful I'm going to be indistinguishable from an MRA, etc.)

But what it comes down to is that I'm not all that outraged at the cancellation of all these writers' columns. Some of that is just that those columns don't connect with me, the way that a lot of writing about financial advice for the under-35 set doesn't work for me because I'm not a well-paid IT professional with more money than I know what to do with. And while that sort of thing (either writing about money I don't make, or sex I'm not going to have) can be interesting, it doesn't resonate very well. Some of it is simply the idea that nobody is owed a job, especially one as seemingly cushy as that.

But a lot of what it is, to be honest, is envy. (While I don't get all that jealous, I can be quite an envious person, and sex is one of the most reliable triggers for that; I can hear Lili Taylor's character from Say Anything... screaming "That'll never be me!" whenever I read about or hear about that sort of thing.)

It's not just that it's about comparing experiences; it's that the preponderance of that particular perspective crowds out everything else, and there's no acknowledgment that this sphere has room for folks like me. (Oddly enough, financial writing doesn't do this nearly as much; though the classism of it irritates me, I don't find myself wanting to be rich nearly as often as wanting to be desried.)

I know the whole thing is petty. I know I'm overstating the case, and that there are other perspectives out there on this topic. I know from a justice perspective it's less important right now to worry about how young women write all the sex columns and far more important to focus on the fact that they're excluded from the rest of the newspaper, and I know that the CEO who treats his/her job as an entitlement is far more deserving of my ire than the writer who does. I know that if I'm interested in making a change rather than whining, I'd provide an alternative voice or support those who do. And I know that it's especially shallow these days, when I have less reason than ever to feel ugly and undesirable. But dammit, sometimes I am shallow and envious and selfish and petty and just want what someone else has.

On Beauty Privilege

2008-09-23T17:20:00.003-04:00

There's a couple discussions of beauty privilege in the comments at Pandagon here and here, as folks (myself included) take Amanda to task for comments like these:

Thanks to reader Winnifred who sent me this story about men who feel entitled to date out of their league, physical attractiveness-wise.

I think most reasonable people can agree that intelligence, good looks, and hand-eye coordination fit into this category---inborn traits that vary from person to person. Irrefutably privileges, but trying to take them away in the name of equality would make the human race poorer and violate the holders’ human rights.

The sentiments implicit in these kinds of statements bother me to no end. The dating one, I suspect, is relatively well-intentioned, and is most likely aimed at the folks who believe that they are owed a supermodel girlfriend. (The accompanying picture of Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl seems to confirm this.) However, the ambiguity of the verb "date" evokes another common complaint, where unattractive people are bashed for having the audacity to hit on someone who is "out of their league," absent other factors. (In other words, not being creepy or boorish, but just being ugly, or fat, or old.) If you're not pretty, know your place - it's of primary importance that you not inconvenience the actually attractive by thinking you have the right to be sexual too.

With respect to the second statement, putting "good looks" in a general category of privilege that we won't do anything about because it just wouldn't be fair to take it away seems to miss the point. Looks privilege isn't simply about people's reactions, but about how they act on those reactions. Nobody's advocating something out of "Harrison Bergeron," or "Eye of the Beholder," or Uglies. But it is possible to think about this privilege, about attractiveness bias, etc., rather than just write it off as something too unconscious to do anything about.

Some further thoughts, in convenient (i.e., lazy) bullet-point form:

Looks are a spectrum, not either-or. It's not just supermodels that have looks privilege, and sometimes folks will enjoy privilege in one context but not another.
Almost everyone thinks of themselves as "ordinary looking," the same way almost everyone thinks of themselves as "middle class." This may be especially true for straight folk, or for men; we don't get taught how to evaluate our own attractiveness very well, and so we think that aside from whoever is generally acknowledged as attractive, there's no attractiveness difference among men.
If you're talking to someone on the internet that you haven't seen, it's really condescending to (1) diagnose them with Body Dysmorphic Disorder; (2) tell them that you're sure they're just making it up; or (3) tell them that their real problem is their attitude.
"Everybody is beautiful in their own way" is a nice fluffy sentiment, but when you're saying it in a discussion about beauty privilege what you're saying is that such privilege doesn't exist. Sure, everyone may be beautiful, but some folks are more beautiful than others. And that's the point, not whether the glass is half empty or half full.
If you're going to posit some standard of oppression that underprivileged folks must meet for privilege to exist, be aware that there are folks who want to do the same for those forms of privilege you accept. This is the "women are oppressed in Saudi Arabia, so you 'Western' feminists don't have anything to complain about!" argument.

And some things I'm not saying (because some folks seem unclear on the concept:

I'm not saying that attractive women "have it easier" than unattractive men. Beauty privilege doesn't trump other forms of privilege.
I'm not saying that attractive people don't get some flak for being attractive. Similarly, thin people often get snide comments made about their size. It doesn't negate the fact that most of the privilege goes the other direction, though.
I'm not saying that it's on a par with any other form of privilege. What not having it has meant for me was teasing as a child and adolescent, and being ignored in favor of better-looking people in situations where looks are paramount. It's not horrible in an absolute sense, even if it can sure feel that way at times.
I'm not saying anyone has to be attracted to someone they're not attracted to (though personally, I think a lot of people would be better off being more open-minded about such things).

For a less infuriating look at beauty privilege, see these posts from Feminist Gal and Jaded Hippy from a couple months back.

Red State, No Way!

2008-09-16T12:23:00.001-04:00

Adam Cadre, who I don't read as often as I should (because his site doesn't have an RSS feed), writes that yes, blue states really are better.

I'm not sure I totally agree with it (I think Adam's too flip about people choosing where to live based on their politics), but any opinion piece that uses the phrase the incredible erratic adventures of Stiffy McCain can't be all bad.

BFG indeed.

2008-09-10T08:26:00.005-04:00

Via Parenthetical comes this article about a side of Roald Dahl I never knew about:

He is known to the world as the author of bestselling children’s books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Yet before he became a successful writer, Roald Dahl had a very different reputation – as the sexiest British spy in America.

I agree with the commenter who said this screams for a film adaptation. Not sure who I'd cast, though.

A minor journalistic quibble: the author of the article never actually gives the title of Ms. Conant's book. (It's The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.)

Some advice

2008-09-03T11:49:00.002-04:00

Don't pick on John McCain for being old. Pick on him for abandoning his principles to cozy up to George W. Bush.

Don't pick on Sarah Palin for being a woman. Pick on her for being an anti-abortion, pro-secession wingnut.

Similarly, don't pick on this guy for probably being a sexual have-not. Pick on him for being a pretentious, misogynist pseudo-intellectual git who seems to have not realized that smart writing is about putting together ideas, not just words.

This venting brought to you by the Intercollegiate Coalition of Non-Misogynist Reluctant Virgins (alumni chapter).

Google Chrome

2008-09-02T09:15:00.002-04:00

Google has a web browser coming out. How was I unaware of this?

Stay classy.

2008-09-01T21:00:00.002-04:00

Ever since the announcement of Sarah Palin as McCain's vice presidential pick, the Google feed on feminism has been dominated by social conservatives declaring the death of feminism.

From some conservative Christian blog (that I'm not going to link to directly):

The advancement of Sarah Palin will reveal, as few other things could, the sham called feminism. Classical feminism will be seen as nothing more than a leftist power grab designed to allow unattractive women a chance to feel important. [Emphasis added]

Apparently beauty theology is the new prosperity theology, and only the smokin' hotties shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

Return your books or go to jail? Not exactly.

2008-08-26T10:33:00.003-04:00

Tonight is my first class in the MLS program at the University at Buffalo Department of Library and Information Studies. (One of the reasons I haven't been posting as much has been because that block of free time has been taken up running around getting my student ID, making sure my financial aid is in order, buying my textbooks, that sort of thing.)

To keep with the library theme, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books links to a story about a woman arrested in Wisconsin for not returning library books:

Somewhere, a librarian just stood up and cheered. As someone who always wants the book that someone else won’t return, I hear you, librarian, I hear you.

But handcuffs? Wow:

[Heidi] Dalibor did not respond to four notices from the library, two phone calls and two letters. The library forwarded the case to police, who issued a citation for Dalibor’s failure to return the materials or pay the fine. The citation included a court date, which Dalibor admits she ignored.

Well, I suppose it could be worse. But I'm getting the impression that this story has been very, very sensationalized. Technically, what Ms. Dalibor was probably arrested for is not failure to return the books or pay the fines, but failure to appear in court. While I suppose the libertarian logic of "taxes are coerced at gunpoint" is equally applicable to library fines, this isn't really a cautionary tale to return your books so much as it is a reminder that when the summons says you'll be found in contempt of court if you don't show, it's not kidding.

SBTB goes on to poke fun at the books that weren't returned: White Oleander and Angels & Demons. I can't tell how much of that is lit-snobbery, and how much it's just boggling at the pointlessness of it--it's not like those books are out of print or hard to find, so why pay $170 in fines for what you can pick up for a few bucks at any bookstore?

But when it comes to the ones that aren't so easily obtained, there is a big issue there: what to do about the folks who try to exercise a "purchase option" on library materials that may not be easily replaced?

Now, it's impossible to curtail this completely, because there's no way to distinguish between a book that is "lost" to a private collection and a book that is actually lost or destroyed; any penalty will have to take both situations into account. Trouble is, draconian penalties discourage patrons from borrowing altogether, because if you're going to pay exorbitant fines (or suffer other penalties) for losing a book, at some point you'll decide it's not worth it and either hit up a used bookstore, read it on-site (at which point, we've made the whole library a rare book room), or--most likely, I suspect--go without.

On the other hand, if you take an approach where fines simply cover the replacement cost, effectively treating a lost or held book as a purchase, you're turning the library into another used bookstore, and selection suffers. Blockbuster Video has tried this at its brick-and-mortar stores, and it really makes it hard to find older titles (though some of that is likely due to their prioritizing of the 20th copy of a new release over replacing the single copy of an occasionally-rented classic).

Non-monetary solutions have their own problems. Jail time for actually not returning books (not contempt of court) is far too draconian, not to mention seriously bad PR. Revoking privileges (i.e., if you've got overdue books out, you can't borrow more) is a possibility, but it's got the potential to penalize legitimate users. Perhaps some sort of tiered or "three strikes" system? I.e., first time (in, say, a five-year period) you pay the replacement cost, second time you pay more and/or have borrowing privileges temporarily revoked, third time you pay the replacement cost but have borrowing privileges permanently revoked.

So what's the solution? I guess the best thing to do is find a balance, if possible--high enough so that "book shoppers" will go to an actual bookstore, but low enough so that patrons won't be frightened off by the prospect of a book being mislaid or damaged, coupled with some sort of escalating penalty system that's more likely to target the folks who are "losing" books to their personal collections than the ones who just manage to leave one on the bus.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls

2008-08-07T14:36:00.000-04:00

There are a few articles (from The Onion AV Club, Jezebel and Broadsheet out there on the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" - the sort of character from Garden State, Almost Famous or Sweet November that's just a quirky cipher for the male protagonist to get infatuated with.

To me, the MPDG is just an especially egregious example of what I've taken to calling the "Designated Hot Girl" - a female character who is the primary focus of the male gaze, both diegetic and non-diegetic. In other words, all the straight guys in the show are attracted to her, and her attractiveness is played up for the presumed-to-be-male audience. (Star Trek, the original series notwithstanding, is a notable offender in this regard - Deanna Troi, Seven of Nine, and T'Pol are all Designated Hot Girls.) Often, it's rather inexplicable why one character gets the treatment and another doesn't, since every female character between 15 and 50 is going to be some form of "Hollywood pretty."

(It occurs to me there's a slight difference - the MPDG attracts the attention of the hero, because he's a sensitive soul uniquely positioned to understand how amazing she is; the DHG attracts the attention of *everyone* to a degree unwarranted by her actual appearance, actions or traits.)

The MPDG is especially bad because her sole raison d'etre is to be "to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." She's all object and no subject, because as a protagonist she doesn't work. Though one common trope is to point out how the male lead - and, by extension, the audience (though not the *writer*) - has denied her agency.

Compare the MPDG with, say, the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. There have been several women characters on the show (Rose, Martha, Sarah Jane) who talk about how the Doctor flits in, changes their lives, and then leaves again, and indeed it's not too hard to conceive of a retelling that casts him as a Manic Pixie Dream Boy. But that's *not* the story that's told, and in fact by the end of series 2 *Rose* is retconned into a form of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, that shows a universe-weary Time Lord how to love.

Are You There, Cthulhu? It's Me, Margaret.

2008-08-07T09:17:00.002-04:00

From Scans Daily: Are You There, Cthulhu? It's Me, Margaret.

It's pretty much what you'd expect from a comic with a title like that. (Though said title also defeats the initial misdirection.)

Keeping geeks sexist since 1997

2008-08-06T15:05:00.004-04:00

What the fuck, Mr. Malda?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 06, @09:42AM
from the get-rid-of-judged-events dept.

Dekortage writes

"If you watch the Olympics gymnastics this year, you may be confused by the new scoring system which will let athletes score 14, 17, or even higher. The new rules are 'heavy on math' and employ two panels of judges: one for technical difficulty, which adds points up from a score of zero; the other for execution and technique, which starts at 10.0 and subtracts for errors. The two numbers are then combined for the final score. As one judge put it, 'The system rewards difficulty. But the mistakes are also more costly.' The new rules were adopted after South Korea protested a scoring at the 2004 Olympics."

Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon-twirling thing.

[Emphasis added, heterosexist anxious-masculinity asshattery in original]

Now I know I shouldn't expect too much from a forum best known for Natalie Portman jokes, and to be fair the commenters over there, many of them are calling him out on it. (Though many more are missing the point with "Wait, not liking gymnastics is misogynist now?" replies or "Of course I'll watch skinny adolescent girls in leotards, hur hur hur" jokes.)

As for the scoring system itself, I'm not sure what to make of it - it seems to be the gymnastics equivalent of getting rid of THAC0. It reminds me a bit of the scoring system for diving, which I'm slightly more familiar with, in that it retains the traditional "perfect 10" for the elements that have an ideal, and awards bonus points for difficulty. Apparently it's a sum of two scores rather than a "degree of difficulty" multiplier, though, and if the Olympic scores stay in the typical range of 9.5-10.0 I don't see how the "difficulty" points won't decide the competition. (Though I should find some scores from trials and crunch the numbers before coming to any conclusions.)

Kyle Payne responds, sort of

2008-08-02T15:51:00.017-04:00

So apparently Kyle Payne has a letter up at his blog. It's the sort of "politician's non-apology" that's about manipulating people into backing off rather than about actually trying to make up for one's actions.

[All emphases in Mr. Payne's letter are his own.]

We rarely change when we are simply cruising along, insulated from the world. It is only when we drop the barriers that separate us from other human beings, admit that we don’t know all the answers, and listen closely to others and to the world around us that we can truly promote personal transformation. I write this letter in the interest of dropping barriers, sharing openly and honestly a story that is very difficult to talk about, in hopes that doing so may bring peace, understanding, and hope to the lives of others. I also write this letter out of respect for an international community of citizens working for social justice, one that has deeply inspired me to envision a better world and empowered me to work for change. I have committed a terrible act, one that contradicts my own personal values and my politics, and through this letter, I wish to explain (not justify) my actions and their effects. I also will describe what I am currently doing, and what I will continue to do, in an effort to promote justice and personal transformation. I wholeheartedly welcome your feedback and questions. You may contact me at kyle.d.payne@gmail.com.

Honestly? I think he's writing this letter in the interest of getting letters of recommendation from online feminists asking the judge to go easy on him because he's really sorry, he's not a bad person, no sense ruining his life over it, &c.

Also, keep in mind that phrase, "openly and honestly."

On Monday, June 30, 2008, I pleaded guilty to criminal charges in Buena Vista County in Iowa, specifically one count of attempted burglary and two counts of invasion of privacy. On January 3, 2007, I was invited to assist an intoxicated female student at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Following my responsibilities as a resident advisor, I looked after this student in her dorm room to ensure her safety and evaluated whether or not medical attention was necessary. Fortunately, medical attention was not necessary. However, as I will explain, some of my actions while assisting the student were harmful and inappropriate.

This? Not open and honest.

It doesn't matter that he also undertook actions that were aimed at ensuring her safety (i.e., doing his fucking job).

While caring for the female student, I felt a sudden impulse to expose her breast. Not knowing how to deal with this feeling at the time – and to put it more clearly, not knowing how to make sense of such an urge, given my personal values and my politics – I acted upon it. With a digital camera I kept with me regularly, I briefly photographed and took a few seconds of video of the woman’s breast. She did not consent to this act, nor did she have any knowledge of it at the time. This event ended as quickly as it began, leaving me in a state of disbelief at what I had done.

This? Not open and honest.

It's pretty much the secular version of "the devil made me do it." He feels "a sudden impulse" (but never owns it) and "acted upon it." Indeed, the reason he acts upon it is that he's such a damn good feminist (are you listening, feminist letter-writers?) that he doesn't "know how to make sense of it." And of course, after the fact he's in "a state of disbelief."

That call for self-examination that landed me in some hot water a while back? This (and not kink) is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. How on the one hand someone can claim the mantle of feminist and anti-rape activist, and on the other hand simply "feel an impulse" toward sexual assault, "act upon it" and then be in "a state of disbelief" boggles me. (I suspect he's trying to get this regarded as something akin to "temporary insanity.")

As I have been instructed not to make contact with the victim, I have no way of knowing how she is doing or what effect my actions have had on her life. I feel it is likely, however, that my actions have, at the very least, left her feeling less safe in the company of men. I hope she is doing well, and I hope she knows, with the utmost certainty, that she did not deserve to be treated in this way. No one does. I am very deeply sorry for what I have done. In a matter of moments, I committed a terrible act, abusing a position of authority and betraying a sacred trust shared with me as a resident advisor. I owe my humblest apologies to the victim and her family, to the campus community at BVU, to my own family, and to many others who put their faith in me as a person of good moral character. I owe a special apology as well to the many women who have sought my assistance as a rape crisis advocate and who, upon learning about my actions, may have experienced re-victimization. I believe my actions warrant everyone’s questioning of my character and of my ability and willingness to act in accordance with my own professed values. I will either earn trust back, or I won’t. That is not for me to decide. But I take this as an opportunity to speak openly and honestly and be held accountable for my actions.

This? Not open or honest.

It's not a tragedy when a sexual offender doesn't get a chance to directly apologize to their victim, because it's not about the offender. It's also a bit squicky how quickly the apology widens in scope and makes the victim invisible. Yes, I'm sure the campus community probably felt betrayed, and the feminist communities that were aware of it certainly did, but being let down or pissed off is not the same thing, and lumping the person who was directly hurt with everyone from classmates to random bloggers like me is just plain wrong. And maybe I'm being cynical, but this comes across as emphasizing for the judge that he really is a good person who just happened to let some people down.

Many people have been understandably shocked and angry upon hearing about the criminal charges. Since I started college, I have developed a strong reputation as a pro-feminist activist and advocate for survivors of sexual violence. Feminism, in fact, has been at the heart of virtually every major endeavor I have pursued in the last several years, including my work in residence life, student government, campus media, community service, wellness education, and of course, supporting the women’s studies program. Why would someone so passionate about working to stop violence against women commit such an act? At this point in time, I cannot give a complete answer to that question. The act itself is not something with which I identify, nor are the interests behind it. Indeed, for some time following the incident, I could not believe what had actually taken place. This may seem confusing, but I hope this letter can begin to shed light on what happened and my experience of it.

This? Not open or honest.

"Rimmer was outraged at Lister's accusation. Even though it was true, he felt it was so out of kilter with his own image of himself, he was able to summon up genuine indignation." (Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers)

Don't be Rimmer. If I wrong someone, I don't get to say that I don't identify with the act and have that mean anything. (And your feminist resume? It's been out of date since January 2007.) It's certainly not reassuring from a recidivism perspective - before you worry about getting back in feminists' good graces, Mr. Payne, maybe you should figure outwhere these "impulses" are coming from and how to control them. Otherwise, you're just saying that it's not like you to do such a thing - until the next time when it is.

As I have undergone a full psychological evaluation and begun a treatment program for various mental health issues, I am learning more and more each day about what factors led me to commit the act I have described. My experiences of child sexual abuse have produced a great deal of unresolved anger, primarily because I was unable to obtain necessary support during that period and have since worked very hard to repress those memories. That unresolved anger at the injustice and violation done to me is what led me initially to anti-rape work as a rape crisis advocate when I started college. I felt that helping others might allow me to find some sort of peace with what happened to me. Being an advocate did help me to better understand the socio-political context of my experiences of abuse, particularly as I began reading feminist theory. However, because I concentrated my energy solely on an advocacy role for others, rather than addressing my own experiences of abuse, nothing got better. In fact, things got much worse.

Serving as an advocate for survivors of sexual violence and hearing their stories of violence, cruelty, and degradation re-introduced me to my own pain and humiliation via flashbacks, panic attacks, insomnia, bouts of depression, and chronic anxiety. Believing that further justice work, in the absence of appropriate psychological treatment, would help me resolve these issues, I dove headlong into feminist anti-pornography activism, academic research on pornography, and working closely with abusive college men as a resident advisor. I feel very pleased that this involvement allowed me to make a real difference in other people’s lives. But due to serious neglect and denial on my part, my involvement in anti-rape work only distanced me from resolving the effects of being victimized at a very young age. Through further psychological treatment and careful meditation on this history, it is my primary goal to reach a healthy balance in my life and minimize the risk of hurting anyone in the future.

This one, I'm not sure I'm qualified to judge the openness and honesty of. I'm very skeptical of this flip analysis - it strikes me as trying to deflect responsibility, and telling the evaluators what they want to hear, but I really don't have any kind of knowledge or experience in this area. (I do think that, even if past abuse factored into what happened, this apology was the wrong place to discuss that.)

I still struggle to understand what was going through my mind during the incident last January, and more importantly, what prompted me to disrespect and truly dehumanize another person. Given what I have experienced as a survivor of sexual abuse, my failure to obtain proper treatment, and my obsessive attention toward the harm of the rape culture, it seems likely that I neglected to fully investigate and confront the influence of patriarchal conditioning on my own sexuality. In fact, as my involvement in anti-rape work, and feminism in general, has constantly stigmatized any form of sexualized domination, there would be obvious incentives, psychologically speaking, to repress any (conscious or unconscious) identification with these behaviors. Accordingly, I have insisted that my psychological treatment assist me in a sexual development rooted in feminist thought, while also addressing the developmental challenges and political entitlements of being male in a male-supremacist society.

This? Not open or honest. Blame the patriarchy all you like (and I don't doubt that it had a strong influence), but the buck stops with you.

The idea that being a feminist gives incentive to repress identification with patriarchal conditioning, though, seems bizarre. (Well, perhaps not if it's looked at as fauxminism - if the goal is not to do right by people but to be accepted in a clique, it might be worth it to pretend one's a special snowflake who's unlike all those other troglodytes.)

I have faced a great deal of serious consequences of my criminal and unethical actions, all of them just and appropriate. I lost my job in residence life at a major research university, my university-owned apartment, in addition to my acceptance at an excellent graduate program in student affairs. I was unable to attend graduation at BVU, and since pleading guilty, I have been banned from campus for life. My reputation as a pro-feminist activist and an advocate for survivors has been seriously, and quite possibly irrevocably, compromised. I have been forced to leave several activist groups, including those for which I was a leader or founding member. I have also been the subject of intense scrutiny at BVU, in my hometown, in my professional and social networks, and all over the internet. With a criminal record, I will face serious limitations on my career prospects, as well as on my involvement with various social organizations and in personal relationships.

This? Not open or honest.

The idea is basically "haven't I suffered enough?" And basically what he's suffered is getting kicked out of school (which, yeah, means you lose your university job and apartment, same as you would if you'd graduated), not getting into a grad program, and people not liking him. And sure, that sucks, but you know what? It's not a replacement for the criminal justice system, and it's privileged as hell to insinuate that you're put-upon for losing that status.

The consequences of my actions are well-deserved. No act of men’s exploitation of women ought to be excused or overlooked, regardless of a man’s history of good deeds (even if, in fact, those deeds have been feminist in nature) or a history of trauma related to sexual abuse and other exposure to violence. For a man to identify as an ally to feminism, as I understand it, is to agree to practice, as Pearl Cleage discusses in her writings, a “posture of listening.” Being in such a posture means to me that I must hold myself accountable to a community of feminists, answering openly and honestly any challenge or question that women bring to me regarding my actions and my words. As such, I share with you some of the consequences of my actions, not to draw sympathy, but to embrace these consequences and provide some context for one of the most important lessons I have learned.

This? (You all know the chorus by now; feel free to sing along.)

Yes, the bolded sentence is true. It's also there, and bolded, because it's supposed to deflect criticism like this. The post definitely reads as an attempt to draw sympathy. "Provide context for one of the most important lessons I have learned"? Why the hell should we care about that? I care a hell of a lot more that someone was hurt than that the offender learned from his mistake. (I'm not *that* kind of utilitarian, thanks.)

Nice namedropping to try to salvage some academic-feminist cred, BTW.

I have lost a great deal over the last several months. Chief among them, at least during particularly difficult times, has been a willingness to wait and see what the next day had to bring. Without the trust that other survivors and other activists had shared with me, a trust that had sustained me and helped me clearly see that there was good in the world, I felt that there was nothing left. I wanted to die. Fortunately, it was a select few of those compassionate souls who helped me remember what real hope is all about. In the words of Vaclav Havel,

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Dude, you're emotionally blackmailing the feminist community here. "I wanted to die" - oh, we're the horrible ones, because we made you feel bad. How about we make it up by telling the judge to go easy on you?

You didn't lose shit, Mr. Payne. You threw it away. If you're feeling suicidal, get help, but it's not incumbent on feminists to walk on eggshells for you.

I may not regain that sacred trust I described. My hurtful actions ought never be completely forgotten or left behind. And the guilt and remorse I feel for what I have done will never leave. But rather than simply fading away myself, I need to have the courage to own what I have done, to open myself to criticism, and to continue living more responsibly than I have in the past. And in whatever ways possible, I need to continue working for the common good.

If you want to work for good, recognize that your ways to do so are limited, and the next question is not "how can I go back to helping the way I used to?" but "in what ways can I help now?" And it may well be that the best thing you can do is just stay the hell out of the way.

I am currently living with my parents, who have been very supportive and compassionate throughout this long and difficult process. I am employed full-time in the assembly department at a manufacturing company. And I am also a full-time graduate student and will soon finish a graduate degree in adult education. With my degree, I hope to obtain employment in training and development or producing educational media, in addition to freelance writing. Wherever the future leads, I plan to remain actively involved with community service and civic engagement. Until treatment has resolved my mental health concerns, however, I am halting any involvement with research, activism, or advocacy related to pornography or sexual violence. I am also setting aside my interest in employment in student affairs, particularly residence life. In the last few days, I have sent letters to over seventy friends, family members, and other relations explaining my actions in detail, expressing my remorse for these actions, and asking for forgiveness and understanding. I have specifically asked for these loved ones to share their questions and concerns, not to treat this matter as something to “sweep under the rug.”

Oh, poor privileged college boy, having to debase himself at a blue-collar job instead of having a cushy book-and-lecture gig as the next Robert Jensen!

As I mentioned previously, I have faced a great deal of criticism through the internet. Since November 2007, I have maintained a personal blog through wordpress.com entitled “The Road Less Traveled” (kylepayne.wordpress.com). Through this blog, I have spoken out in support of feminism and other social justice movements, particularly against different forms of violence (e.g. physical, sexual, military). In the days following my guilty plea, a pro-pornography blogger picked up the story, and having identified obvious discrepancies between the “public face” on my blog and my criminal actions, began an online smear campaign. This effort, which has garnered support from over fifty prominent bloggers from around the world, as well as at least one official trade publication of the pornography industry, has raised considerable public attention toward my actions, and it has alerted me to the larger political consequences of those actions. While many of the criticisms online are based on inaccurate or incomplete information about my case, the feelings and concerns behind them are highly appropriate.

They're appropriate, but it's still a "smear campaign" by "pro-pornography" forces? Bullshit. (And hey, don't forget us porn-critical Z-list bloggers who supported it too!)

My actions have been terrible and tremendously hypocritical, and they have caused harm not only to the victim, but to women generally, who deserve nothing less than an end to rape and all other forms of male domination. Recognizing what I feel to be my responsibility as a male ally to feminism, as well as a decent human being, I ask that any women reading this letter who wish to share their responses contact me via email at kyle.d.payne@gmail.com. I welcome your questions, concerns, feelings, and anything else you would like to share. And I would especially welcome your thoughts on how I might move forward in my life with respect and compassion toward women. As I mentioned, practicing this posture of listening is vital to any notion of justice, and furthermore, it represents, I feel, a way forward through which some good can come of this situation.

Well, since I'm not a woman, I don't have to feel bad about blogging this rather than sending a private email. Not that I would, or that other women should - this should be a conversation in the community, not a bunch of little private dialogues, because this is about more than Mr. Payne.

While I still wholeheartedly identify with feminism – and in fact, started a personal blog as an attempt to become more in touch with feminist principles – there is no question that my actions have grossly contradicted these principles. Furthermore, by failing to address these contradictions openly, while presenting myself as any sort of ally to women, I have not been completely honest. There was no malicious intent to withholding this explanation – for legal and psychological reasons, I was not prepared to address them. As part of my attempts to make amends, however, I will not post any new material on my blog until such time that I have been welcomed back into a community of feminists.

Still not open or honest. No, you don't get to say "until" there. This isn't about saying ten Hail Mary Dalys and being absolved, and it's not incumbent on any community of feminists to welcome you back, ever.

More responses (credit to Google Blogsearch for turning some of these up):

Oh hells no.

2008-07-31T16:36:00.004-04:00

Moral dilemma courtesy of Broadsheet: If this guy "founds" a way to deliver electric shocks over the internet, do I use it?

You're not a geek, dude. You're a business guy with a bit of technical savvy and a hell of a lot of lingering issues re women.

And this guy?

I have another point about how (mostly male) pubescent tech geeks suffered in moldy basements poring over tech manuals in their formative years, and now deserve all the celebrechauns and seed money being thrown at them. I'm trying to phrase it in a way that is not offensive to those of you who were spending these years attending parties and learning generally accepted social mores. Still working on it.

Total Perspective Vortex, stat. (Just as soon as I stop laughing at the idea that I spent my formative years attending parties and picking up social skills.)

Oh, and all y'all who say "well, there really are some women like that": the point, you has missed it. (You don't need a seminar to avoid superficial people, if that's what you want; you just need some fucking standards.)

Useful Psychology

2008-07-17T16:59:00.002-04:00

Victor Gijsbers at The Gaming Philosopher has an interesting discussion of the use of "psychology" (really, about varying responses based on simulated emotional states) in interactive fiction.

Voices of reason

2008-07-17T16:47:00.000-04:00

A group of Stanford faculty got together and released this set of ten principles for using/discussing racial and ethnic categories:

Statement 1: We believe that there is no scientific basis for any claim that the pattern of human genetic variation supports hierarchically organized categories of race and ethnicity

Statement 2: We recognize that individuals of two different geographically defined human populations are more likely to differ at any given site in the genome than are two individuals of the same geographically defined population

Statement 3: We urge those who use genetic information to reconstruct an individual's geographic ancestry to present results within the broader context of an individual's overall ancestry

Statement 4: We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time

Statement 5: We caution against making the naive leap to a genetic explanation for group differences in complex traits, especially for human behavioral traits such as IQ scores, tendency towards violence, and degree of athleticism

Statement 6: We encourage all researchers who use racial or ethnic categories to describe how individual samples are assigned category labels, to explain why samples with such labels were included in the study, and to state whether the racial or ethnic categories are research variables

Statement 7: We discourage the use of race as a proxy for biological similarity and support efforts to minimize the use of the categories of race and ethnicity in clinical medicine, maintaining focus on the individual rather than the group

Statement 8: We encourage the funding of interdisciplinary study of human genetic variation that includes a broad range of experts in the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences

Statement 9: We urge researchers, those working in media, and others engaged in the translation of research results to collaborate on efforts to avoid overstatement of the contribution of genetic variation to phenotypic variation

Statement 10: We recommend that the teaching of genetics include historical and social scientific information on past uses of science to promote racism as well as the potential impact of future policies; we encourage increased funding for the development of such teaching materials and programs for secondary and undergraduate education

Any of the scientists in the crowd wanna chime in?

I suspect that, to the degree which it's acknowledged at all, this will be dismissed as an intrusion of politics into science (like it wasn't there already) - I don't expect these sorts of things to stop any time soon.

And that settles my 3d-gen console decision

2008-07-14T17:12:00.001-04:00

Final Fantasy XIII will be released on the XBox 360.

(via Feminist Gamers.)

No Country for Solo Men

2008-07-14T13:43:00.001-04:00

An interesting comment thread has cropped up on the LiveJournal polyamory community in response to an advertisement for "poly speed dating." The event (but, strangely enough, not the advertisement) had a caveat that "solo men who are only looking for women" are no longer permitted to register.

I'm of two minds about this sort of thing. On the one hand, while there may be a bit of indignation (since I'd likely be among the excluded group, and that rankles a bit even when it's an event on the other side of the country) I can see the reason for this; it's going to be a bad time for all if there's no attempt to balance the genders among the het-only folks (from what I can tell, the event isn't itself restricted to het dating; if that's the case, I'd love to see their algorithm).

On the other hand, a lot of these sorts of things wind up taking an overtone of commodifying women; the entry fee for men becomes "$12 and a woman." And in addition to being generally squicky, the people this brings in are not necessarily ones who are particularly interested in the exercise; it doesn't solve the problem if the het side of the speed-dating event is full of people who may not actually be interested in dating anyone.

I should acknowledge that closing admission once there's an imbalance is very different from closing admission from the outset. In the latter case, sometimes it may be based in a correct assumption that such an imbalance will occur, but the impression I get a lot of the time is that it's something like the highly patriarchal polygamous communities that routinely cast out men from the group to make sure that those men who remain don't have any "competition."

So what *is* the best way to handle this? In the long run, I think what's needed is to reform attitudes; I have a suspicion (totally unsubstantiated, of course) that if you took away the subset of men who are just looking for any way to get laid, and you added in the subset of women who would be interested except for those men or societal pressure, the numbers would be pretty well-balanced.

In the medium run, what's needed is to foster an attitude within the institution that everyone is an agent rather than a commodity.

In the short run, it's pretty much up to the organization, and it seems to break down into a classic utilitarianism problem - do you do what's immediately best for the most people (i.e., restrict solo het guys for the benefit of everyone else), or adopt an approach that leaves fewer people singled out (so to speak) but negatively impacts the event for a lot more?

Unsafe at Any Page Length?

2008-07-10T16:31:00.001-04:00

Anyone know what the deal is with these folks (found via Parenthetical)?

GuideStar lists an organization called "Citizens for Safe Libraries" as a 501(c)(3), but that organization is based in Utah while the contact info for safelibraries.org is in New Jersey and Illinois, so I'm thinking they're different. (Which raises some ethical issues with having a link for donations, if it's going to some guy's bank account.)

Google suggests that, despite the representation on their website as a concerned citizens' group, this is largely one nutjob with an axe to grind, using the net to link up with a few other people to form a letter-writing campaign--pretty much the 21st century version of the folks who've gone around trying to get Judy Blume pulled from libraries for the last few decades. There seem to be a few other groups like this out there (Citizens of Positive Education, for example, which seems to be the same sort of group, only in Ohio).

What I'm really curious about is how these groups intersect with the other socially conservative forces - specifically, conservative Christian churches (not that religion is a prerequisite for this sort of thing, just that they tend to have a structure already in place for it). Sometimes this happens by way of religious organizations putting up a secular front to win wider support, but a lot of the time it's independent "grassroots" groups that all get their talking points from the same place. (Which I suppose is why Looking for Alaska is on so many hit lists.)

Am I being paranoid?

As for the larger issue itself... I have the privilege of largely avoiding the issue of age-based restrictions (or general restrictions made in the name of protecting the children), as law libraries don't typically have minors as patrons.

As a child, I read a lot of material that many folks would have probably considered inappropriate, largely because I read a lot of material and didn't limit myself (I first read Stranger in a Strange Land in middle school, though I didn't understand much of it at that time). Shyness saw to it that I wasn't seeking out Playboy or The Joy of Sex (or for that matter sex ed materials of the sort more often seen as age appropriate) at the library, but the librarians allowed me to check out the more "adult" materials I did ask about. I don't remember if there was any sort of parental control option available - the only time my folks took issue with my reading material was a particularly garish nonfiction book about medieval magic, which they asked me to not keep with the other library books in the living room where guests might see.

Of course, this sort of issue isn't usually framed in the best interest of the child - rather, it's assumed that the parents know the child's best interests better than the child (which perhaps explains why Stephen King's Carrie is so often challenged?). There's no distinction made between protecting children and controlling them.

If it were completely up to me, I'd have no age-based restrictions; if a minor has enough acumen to seek something out, they're welcome to it. (Such a policy doesn't mean that the library couldn't revoke the privilege of accessing some material if the patron is just going to snigger over a naughty word or nude illustration.)

I guess what it comes down to is that I have a hard time picturing these materials doing actual harm. (With the possible exception of Bridge To Terabithia. Assigning that to fourth graders was just sadistic.) Certainly I don't see the sorts of materials that commonly get challenged as harmful (probably because I don't count rebelliousness as "harmful", and because I don't believe that adolescents aren't interested in sex unless they read a Gossip Girl novel). Certainly it doesn't cause the sort of harm that's better remedied by censorship than by providing better information.

I know this isn't really tenable in the society I live in, so perhaps it's for the best that I'm looking to be part of a more specialized field.

Kyle Payne

2008-07-09T19:23:00.002-04:00

He presumably has similarly shaped chromosomes and similarly shaped bits. If you think that because of that, his crimes have anything to do with my feminism, I suggest you find other blogs to read.

(If you have no idea what I'm referring to, see these posts at Fetch Me My Axe and Renegade Evolution.)

On "not getting it" or "getting it somewhere else"

2008-07-08T16:47:00.003-04:00

There's a discussion at Pandagon about Dagmar Herzog's book Sex in Crisis that's taken some interesting turns, at least one of which I'm probably to blame for.

The one I've been arguing about started with the discussion of the expectation that, because for Christians sex within marriage is the only acceptable form of sex, wives as the gatekeepers of their husbands' sexual morality are required to be "available on demand." (Not much mention is made of the reverse; I'm not sure if this is because men are assumed to be always ready and willing or if women are assumed to not actually have libidos. Probably both.)

From there, "dwhite10701" argued that this was a case of conservative Christians taking a good idea too far, that while saying that a wife should be "a 24/7 tootsie" is incredibly creepy, of course any long-term relationship involves sex you or your partner don't want to have, because "if they don't get it at home they'll get it somewhere else."

And that creeped me the fuck out.

I'm pretty much zero-tolerance these days about cheating - "these days" being ever since actively identifying as poly, so there's probably some convert's zeal going on there. It also stems from having been cheated on. (On the other end of things, I'm not totally innocent, as I regarded a LDR as "open" without making that explicit, and it was mostly dumb luck that she did too.) Using a partner's lack of desire as an excuse to cheat instead of working to remedy the issue or ending the relationship is simply lazy and cowardly.

The discussion managed to move away from cheating and more toward what one should expect in a relationship. A lot of folks took up the position that of course in a committed, long-term relationship there are going to be times when you have sex you don't want to have, but it's okay because there'll also be times when your partner has sex they don't want to have.

And that, too, creeps me the fuck out.

Maybe I'm being naive. I've never been married; I've only had one long-term relationship that involved living together. But the idea that it's better to have bad sex (because let's face it, sex that one of the participants doesn't want to have isn't going to be good) than no sex just doesn't resonate with me. Not only is it going to be immediately suboptimal, but congratulations, you've just opened the door to doubt your partner's desire in all future encounters. That's really worth it? Seriously?

To be clear, what I'm talking about are situations when one person's genuinely not interested. Though I talk about this as a desirous/non-desirous binary, it's more of a continuum where most experience is between those two poles, somewhere in the realm of "I may not be actively desiring sex at the moment, but may be persuadable." Which is a perfectly fine place to be, provided "persuadable" doesn't turn into "are we there yet?"

Gender stereotypes hurt men too

2008-07-08T14:55:00.000-04:00

Dave Hill has an article up at Comment Is Free about how feminism is a good thing for men as well as for women:

Men should embrace these principles too, not only for women's sake but also for their own. All else being equal, to be born male is to inherit legacies of entitlement that continue to outweigh those bestowed on those born female. Yet the state of maleness carries its own burden of expectations and constraints. Contemporary studies of boyhood shed light on what we've always known – what I still remember vividly from my own boyhood – about the disabling and limiting influence of male behaviour conventions, homophobia and general "gender policing" on men in the making and the huge anxieties that inform them.

All in all, it's a good article for a general-public audience.

The comments are fairly predictable and often infuriating. At first glance, it seems pretty evenly split between supporters and detractors, but that could change as more blogs link to the article.

The complaints mostly boil down to the following types of statements:

"This article was unnecessary."
"Women feminists don't care about the issues men face!"
"Feminism is about female supremacy, not equality!"
"Women (and, by extension, women feminists) want to pick and choose between patriarchy and feminism as benefits them most!"
"Feminists are trying to emasculate men."
"Women aren't attracted to feminist men."
"The strong, silent warrior/provider type isn't altogether a bad thing, so what's wrong with demanding all men fit that role?"

Additional discussion can be found at Feministing.

The last P stands for property

2008-07-03T12:17:00.006-04:00

Technorati's "feminism" feed brings the anti-feminist nutjobs out of the woodwork, including one calling himself "The Counter-Feminist" (not gonna directly link him; you can do a bit of searching if you really want), who posts an email from one of his supporters containing the following quotation:

According to modern sensibilities a woman's sexual favors are hers to bestow, whenever to whomever she so pleases. The idea of a womans sexuality as "property" is thus retained, only it becomes the EXCLUSIVE property of the female.

This is actually a technique I see quite often:

Assert something that "they" say
Point out some potential benefit to (some) women or harm to (some) men.
Blame women and feminists interchangeably for that effect.

In this case, what's happening is that the quoted commenter is working within a "sex as property" idea, and then blaming feminism for the effects of that paradigm.

We see the technique again (with the faint glimmering of recognition that, maybe, this has something to do with the patriarchy/kyriarchy as well):

As might be expected, most of our society's judgmental attitudes toward male sexuality are not original to feminism though feminists have been more than happy to exploit them.

Of course, the ways in which feminists are said to "exploit" these attitudes are:

Valuing girls' virginity more than boys' (which explains all those feminist-run "purity balls")
Reserving "courtship, weddings, marriage, children" for women (and not, apparently, vice versa - it could just as easily be said that the attitude is to reserve women for courtship, weddings, marriage and children)
Establishing relationships as an exchange of sex for other benefits (and again, not vice versa - there's apparently no power in being able to use economic clout to compel sex)
Granting women a "protected and untouchable status" (because, as we all know, nothing says "top of the hierarchy" like "untouchable")

Now, with respect to the property argument, I can see what would on the surface be a very similar point made by some types of feminists: that the idea that sex is a "favor" for women to "bestow" (upon men, presumably) doesn't really provide for sexual agency, even if you vehemently affirm that it's *their* favor to bestow; it's still something that's done "to" rather than "with." It's the realm of "Just Say No Means No"; it's the argument-by-adhesiveness made by abstinence-only "sex educators" who liken sexuality to a lollipop or a strip of tape; it's the scarcity economics model where a "favor bestowed" is worth less the more people receive it. It also works as denial of agency because it sets up sex as something that is "bestowed" or "refused" as a reward or punishment, which is another way of saying that "I want to/don't want to" isn't a good enough reason.

The anti-feminists, on the other hand, argue (simultaneously, it seems) that "nobody really thinks of women, or of sex, as property" and "but women really embrace this idea of property, because gatekeeping is power." Because, after all, the problem with sexuality as power from this perspective is that it's power they don't feel they have. (It's such a burden on us men, having to hand out hot dickings to everyone who passes by.)

The difference, I think, can be highlighted by looking at the two groups' proposed solutions. The anti-feminist solution appears to be less to abandon the idea of sex as property and more to look at sexuality (women's, anyway) as a commons - something out of Brave New World, perhaps, where sex isn't property only because nobody ever says "no" to anyone else. (One of the fundamental attributes of property, after all, is that the owner can refuse to grant access to others.)

Most of the feminist solutions I've seen are to move from sex-as-property to something more like sex-as-performance - the idea isn't so much that the property model is bad because it divides humanity into sexual haves and have-nots, but that it's bad because commodification alienates people from their sexuality. (More on both those ideas at some later date - they've both been kicking around in my head for a while but aren't ready to post.)

The later part of the post just degenerates into the typical "patriarchy means an active conspiracy by men brought about by facially discriminatory laws, and anything else is just The Way The World Works, and no sense trying to change that," and is even less worth responding to than the rest of it.

Because consumer advocacy is for skinny people

2008-07-03T11:23:00.002-04:00

Consumerist posts, without explanation or comment, The 10 Fattest States In the Country. Commenters who point out that this correlates heavily with the poorest states are drowned out by folks who just want to whine about having to see fat people out in public.

The IGNORE operator

2008-06-25T12:58:00.002-04:00

It occurs to me that Google (or, really, any keyword-style search engine) could use a new operator.

At the moment, I can specify that a keyword or phrase either be included or excluded. A search of A -B, for example, includes all hits of "A" that don't also include "B." So "A" gets found, but "B" doesn't. So far, so good.

But most web pages are not so simple - they have multiple occurrences of keywords, especially when I'm looking at the most relevant results. So "A, and also A and B" may be relevant to what I'm looking for, but that pesky B keeps the result off my list.

A more concrete example: I was looking up uses of the word "patriarchy" on blogs I comment on. There's a quite popular (if quite controversial) feminist blog known as "I Blame the Patriarchy" that's on quite a few blogrolls. If I simply search for jfpbookworm patriarchy, I'm going to get a hit on every single page on Feministing that contains my username, regardless of whether "patriarchy" was included. On the other hand, if I search for jfpbookworm patriarchy -"i blame the patriarchy", I'm going to miss all the results on any site that includes the blogroll on article pages, not to mention any article where IBTP was named.

What I want to look for is all pages that contain the terms "jfpbookworm" and "patriarchy", except that I want to ignore instances of "patriarchy" where it occurs only as part of the phrase "I Blame the Patriarchy." I don't think this is possible by stringing together OR, AND and NOT operators, because there's no way to limit the scope to less than the entire page. What's needed, I think, is an IGNORE operator (I'd propose using "!" as the shorthand, because as far as I'm aware the symbol isn't used and it already has a negation connotation), which says "this phrase is not what I'm searching for, but it's not so obviously wrong that its presence connotes irrelevance." Its use would look something like jfpbookworm patriarchy !"i blame the patriarchy", which would take all the hits for "jfpbookworm patriarchy", "de-highlight" instances of "i blame the patriarchy," and then check again to see if all the keywords are highlighted. (There may be a more efficient way to do this; that's left as an exercise for the reader.)

So what do y'all think? Good idea? Idiosyncratic grumble? Just plain incomprehensible?

4th ed, 2d look

2008-06-24T12:08:00.000-04:00

I took a quick read of the 4th edition Player's Handbook last night, and looked at a few more reviews online.

From a comment by rentagurkha at a review by Chris Pramas:

D&D is inspired by, and should be able to feel like, the works of Lieber, Howard, Burroughs, Vance, Tolkien, and Moorcock, among others.

That's the big issue so far for me, I think. This edition of D&D doesn't feel like it's inspired by them, but rather by the computer-based RPGs that were themselves inspired by D&D.

Some of this is game mechanics (the Vance-inspired spells are gone, as are the Moorcock-inspired alignments). Some of this is just an instinctive feel - AD&D always had this 70s/80s vibe to it. This edition seems meant to appeal to the folks who think Conan started with the Schwarzenegger movies, and would criticize Elric as being a ripoff of Drizzt.

Will I use 4th Edition? It depends. If there's enough people around to start a new campaign (and now that I'm near the university, that's likely), and that's what they want to play, then sure. Though it doesn't really have the same feel, it looks like it could be a fun tactical combat game. (On the other hand, I wouldn't be at all surprised if 4th Edition turns out to be the RPG equivalent of Windows Vista.) If it's totally up to me, I'd rather use a classless, more freeform system like FUDGE or FATE, and a non-fantasy setting.

Nice Guy Wars, part Who the Hell Knows

2008-06-23T19:45:00.003-04:00

(I've lost count.)

From Feministe, among others, comes this story of a study testing for a correlation between a "dark triad" of negative personality traits (narcissism, impulsiveness and deceitfulness).

The sample was entirely college students. College students, while they're easy to get as samples (just make the study mandatory for an intro psych class), are not representative, because:

They skew young - teens and early 20s. Younger people are more likely to be susceptible to both manipulation and to societal messages about these traits. (Similar to how there's a difference between a Nice Guy(TM) and a good man, there's a difference between a Bad Boy(TM) and an asshole.)
They skew privileged - healthy, wealthy and (primarily) white.
They may skew with respect to personality. If being narcissistic, impulsive or exploitative makes it tougher to get into college, then the ones who do may be more likely to have some compensating characteristic.

Other flaws:

They're asking about total number of partners, not partners over a given time period. Especially when you're talking about college students, total number of partners is heavily dependent on age of first sexual activity.
The number is self-reported - it's not inconceivable that the "dark triad" personalities are more likely to lie about the number.
The write-up conflates number of partners and desirability, which assumes that all these encounters were of the "enthusiastic consent" sort. (Especially since this correlation seems to be especially true of men.)
It's also quite possible that those "dark triad" personalities are the sort that buy in to the "number of partners is your score," and so make more of an effort to increase the number for its own sake.
The write-up also conflates number of partners and frequency of sex, which may not be - lots of people are in monogamous sexual relationships, which get counted as "one," just the same as a one-night stand, even though the amount of sex is very, very different.

You whippergamers, get off my lawn!

2008-06-23T15:28:00.005-04:00

Jolt Country reviews D&D 4th edition.

Now I was actually a fan of 3d edition - I thought they did a good job of streamlining the game and avoiding some of the problems with the earlier editions. Of course, my main experiences with 1st and 2d edition AD&D were playing premade modules (including the original Ravenloft module) and SSI's "gold box" games; I didn't really get into serious campaigns until 3d edition had been released and popularized.

4th edition appears to be heavily influenced by MMORPGs, especially World of Warcraft. I'm not sure what to think of the "role" system and how it's tied to class (the 3d ed. multiclassing system, which was the only one that ever made sense to me, is scrapped), or the idea of "aggro" (does this mean it's not DM's discretion who gets attacked? Are heavily armored rodeo clowns now a viable combat unit?) The "powers" seem overpowered (a cleric can get an unlimited-use ranged attack that also works as a one-time bless at level 1? Seriously?)

While that sort of thing does solve the ages-old problem of magic-users being useless after they've used their daily spells, it really does seem to be an entirely different game at this point. And since they already have a World of Warcraft tabletop RPG, I don't seen the need for this kind of rewrite.

[Addendum: they changed the alignment system! "When they Chaotic Good is outlawed, only outlaws will be Chaotic Good..."]

The new place: a tour

2008-06-21T09:59:00.008-04:00

Now that we're mostly moved in, I managed to take a few pictures of the new place.

This is a view of the entry hall when you first come in. Pretty basic.

This is the pantry (and coffee nook), with insane amounts of cabinet space. (Turn around, and there's another wall of cabinets.)

The kitchen. (Post-housewarming party, which is why there's so much booze atop the refrigerator.)

A view into the kitchen from the living room. (That opening on the left side should probably get filled with a plant at some point.)

The living room. New coffee table courtesy of my mom and her Crate & Barrel employee discount. The futon/sofa against the wall is going to be supplemented or replaced by a bigger sofa in a couple months.

The Wall o' Entertainment Tech.

The main bathroom. (Keri's got a second bathroom off her room, but this is the one with a shower.) I have no idea who chose that shade of yellow for the fixtures (the sink is the same shade), or why.

The bathroom is also equipped with a mirror. (Had to supply the cheesy hold-the-camera MySpace pose myself.)

My room. New bed (platform, so no box springs, just the innerspring mattress and a foam pad on top), second bookshelf, etc. (I really should look into getting a proper nightstand though.)

Didn't take any pictures of Keri's room, which is kind of a shame because she's done more to decorate than I have - lights along the window, a desk salvaged from some college students who'd moved out, posters, etc.

So there you have it. Pretty basic, but not a bad place to be. What's left to do is mostly further decoration - break up some of these blank white walls, find a plant to hang in that space between the kitchen and living room, maybe look for a little more furniture (if another round of college students moves out at the end of the month, we may be able to find some good things on the cheap; if not, there are a few discount places around).

John C. Wright explains science fiction

2008-06-20T09:17:00.001-04:00

Read it and be enlightened.

Furniture update

2008-06-17T23:42:00.003-04:00

I have a bed and a coffee table! No more putting everything, including myself, on the floor (which is good when I live on the ground floor).

Feminist-positive sex: some initial thoughts

2008-06-11T12:10:00.005-04:00

Inspired by Sunflower's post (::wave::) about sex-positive feminism, and by this thread at Feministe which appears to have turned into a debate between me and Amber Rhea and Renegade Evolution, and somehow keeps getting interpreted as another episode of Kink On Trial:

The problem I have with "sex-positive feminism" is that, a lot of the time, it seems to start with "we find these practices enjoyable" as an axiom, and builds its feminism around that; if sexual practices and feminist principles conflict, the principles lose every time. (Consequently, "sex-pos" can wind up supporting a lot of forms of privilege.) On the other hand, the problem I have with many "radical feminism" approaches to sexuality is that in that conflict, the practices lose every time. (And, conversely to the last parenthetical, "radfem" winds up being a haven for folks who *can* legitimately be described as anti-sex.)

I'm not okay with either of these. I think practice and principle need to be balanced against each other; I call this "feminist-positive sex." The way we get there is by *not* taking desires for granted, but examining them; “this turns me on, and therefore it’s good” gets replaced with “this turns me on, this is why it turns me on, these are elements of it (if any) that I’m less comfortable with, these are why I’m uncomfortable with them, these sources of discomfort I repudiate, these other sources of discomfort I accommodate by choosing practices that reduce or eliminate that discomfort, this is a result that I'm happy with.”

Why do this? Aside from the fact that if one actually believes in one's principles, it's the right thing to do (a sadly discredited argument these days), it helps distinguish "innate" desires from "imposed" desires, and helps make sure that one's really on the same page as one's partner.

And, of course, it helps one feel better about one's self. Though over on the Feministe thread, a commenter pointed out that:

See, I’m not sure about this, because it sounds well good on paper, but this kind of analysis didn’t work for me. It drove me kind of nutty and came close to pathologizing my own sex life. Not only did I end up feeling like crap and feeling guilty about sex for the first time since I actually started having it, I also didn’t come away with any answers.

I'm not sure quite how to respond to that criticism. For one thing, I'm the sort of person who can't *not* analyze things, and who can't silence misgivings, so it was more about what to do with those - try to ignore them and feel vaguely uncomfortable, or follow up on it and try to reconcile that discomfort.

For another, I've seen this form of complaint before - it's a strong part of the "Nice Guy(TM)" paradigm, where the "nice guy" who tries to be respectful of his partner is unable to function and be acknowledged as a sexual being, while the "jerk" who simply doesn't care has no problems. I know this is a slightly different situation, because the analysis is about whether one's self rather than one's partner is being mistreated, but I still think a closer look is a good idea.

One thing that probably needs to be pointed out, given all the miscommunication that seems to occur about it, is that this call for self-examination isn't limited to folks whose desires are generally seen as "deviant" or "problematic." A lot of folks seem willing to interpret this idea not as "we should think about our desires" but "you there, you should think about your desires; mine are just fine." If anything, it's the folks who are closer to societal norms who have the most need to examine their desires, both because it's harder to distinguish "imposed" from "innate" and because many forms of kinky or queer sexualities already endorse a measure of self-reflection.

Similarly, a call for self-examination is just that: a call for examining one's *own* desires. It's not my place to tell someone else they haven't looked hard enough when they conclude they're okay with something, even if I think it's not okay or even that they haven't looked hard enough. Sure, I might ask some leading question, or talk about the public side of things, but to gainsay their reflection process is to deny their own autonomy.

A final observation that was made (and then blown completely out of proportion) in the Feministe thread is that I'm coming from a different perspective than a lot of the other commenters. The social construction of male sexuality is one where a lot of practices and preferences are imposed, whereas for women virtually all practices and preferences are shamed. (Sex class vs. no-sex class again.) In addition, I'm personally easily squicked by shaming, degradation, humiliation, etc. And like I said earlier, I'm prone to hyperanalyze everything. So is this me simply doing what countless other groups have done, and demanding everyone else conform to what works for me? I've tried to avoid that trap, but I'm not sure how successful I have been or will be.

(EDIT: Emphases added because, across the blogosphere, this keeps getting turned into something very, very different.)

I'm back

2008-06-05T23:09:00.003-04:00

We're mostly moved into the new place. No photos yet, not until we get the boxes out of the living room.

All that's left to do at this point besides more unpacking is getting the heat turned on (a week of cold-water showers hasn't been fun, but that should end tomorrow), getting some more furniture in here (we'll probably pick up a bookshelf for the living room, and a bed and coffee table are on the way with a sofa to follow), and figuring out where everything's going to go once it's here.

Same-sex kisses: tougher to explain than the Infield Fly Rule, apparently

2008-06-05T22:42:00.002-04:00

Via The Curvature:

Lesbian kiss at Seattle ballpark stirs debate

As the Mariners played the Boston Red Sox on May 26, Sirbrina Guerrero and her date were approached in the third inning by an usher who told them their kissing was inappropriate, Guerrero said.

The usher, Guerrero said, told them he had received a complaint from a woman nearby who said that there were kids in the crowd of nearly 36,000 and that parents would have to explain why two women were kissing.

"Because if they didn't, they'd have to watch the Mariners?"

The code of conduct - announced before each game - specifically mentions public displays of affection that are "not appropriate in a public, family setting." Hale said those standards are based on what a "reasonable person" would find inappropriate.

Guerrero denied she and her date were groping each other, saying that along with eating garlic fries, they were giving each other brief kisses.

If it's just about the PDA distracting from the RBIs, there's an obvious solution here. Simply add more garlic to your garlic fries, Safeco concessioners. Problem solved.

Or better yet, M's management - embrace the embrace. Implement a "Seventh-Inning Smooch" and change the lyrics to "Let's Make Out at the Ballgame."

(For actual funny, go to William Wolfrum over at Shakesville.)

Downtime

2008-05-23T23:25:00.003-04:00

Not much in the way of posting lately, as I've been preparing for the apartment change. If all goes well, (i.e., if the landlords can get the electricity turned on by then), I should be all moved in by Tuesday. (I'll have Internet at the old place until Monday.) If not, there's always friends' places, the library or cafes with WiFi to stay connected.

You are likely to be eaten by a grue

2008-05-16T19:01:00.002-04:00

How was I previously unaware of this?

Folk rock on!

2008-05-15T21:36:00.002-04:00

Spirit of the West and Great Big Sea are both playing free concerts in Buffalo this summer!

Blurb spoilers

2008-05-14T10:48:00.001-04:00

There's a review over at Parenthetical of Inkheart. I haven't read it, but probably should; she generally steers me right with respect to YA lit, and anything that can be compared to The Neverending Story, The Last Unicorn and the Time Quartet is going to be right up my alley.

Apparently, though, the book jacket reveals a twist or two too many:

You’ll find out if you read the flap or any reviews, but I think the book would have been more enjoyable if I hadn’t known the premise before I started.

I encounter this fairly often; the most recent example being The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Sure, I probably would have guessed the spoiler anyway, but having it confirmed in advance is just annoying. Orphans of Chaos sticks out as well in this regard; the setup of the paradigms, which the characters discover over the course of the first part of the book, is neatly encapusalted on the book jacket.

The basic rule these days seems to be that anything that's not from the last third or so of the book is fair game for being revealed. However, a lot of books put a major twist somewhere between halfway and two thirds of the way through. But I get the impression this is a new thing; I certainly don't remember being spoiled for, say, Bridge to Terabithia. Most of my elementary school class was outraged at Paterson's "betrayal"; if the book cover had hinted at that the book would lose most of its impact.

Google Groups turns up a discussion of the topic at rec.arts.sf.written as well.

What are the most egregious blurb spoilers you've encountered?

Dear Google,

2008-05-12T09:09:00.003-04:00

Is it too much to ask that the Blogsearch feed for "feminism" actually have some posts by feminists?

Apartment: hunted.

2008-05-10T18:42:00.004-04:00

Looks like we might have found an apartment! It's up in Amherst, by the campus. If all goes according to plan, we should be moving in there in two weeks.

Positives about the new place: it's close to campus and to friends; we can actually invite people over without them having to drive for half an hour to get there. The area has a lot more appeal as well, with better supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, etc. The one thing we are giving up is having a Borders/Seattle's Best close by; the nearest one is about 10 minutes away in Cheektowaga.

Downsides: like pretty much every apartment in that area, it's more expensive than the old place, and it's about a 10-15 minute walk to and from the bus stops. That's not much of a problem in June, but I may be wishing I still had a bus stop outside my front door come January.

Intentional Sex Torts

2008-05-09T10:21:00.002-04:00

Deanna Pollard Sacks' article Intentional Sex Torts has been made available for downloading.

It's a good article, though I wish the abstract was a bit more successful in communicating to non-lawyers that the idea of "fraudulent inducement of sex" is proposed as a matter of civil law than criminal law.

I always preferred Ultima, myself

2008-05-06T21:37:00.002-04:00

Seriously, what century are we in here?

The charge from the school district — Wizardry!

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

(via Echidne of the Snakes)

Fantasy and Science Fiction Bingo, No Racism in Fiction Edition

2008-05-05T20:51:00.001-04:00

Mandolin over at Alas, a Blog presents a bingo card for discussions of racism in fantasy/SF.

The Descent of Stan

2008-05-05T16:55:00.002-04:00

Via Planet IF, the tale of Stan the Absentminded Kleptomaniac Journalist.

The Pornographer's New Clothes

2008-05-04T22:27:00.003-04:00

The Apostate provides a takedown [arguably NSFW] of a "nude in public" porn site, one that apparently tries to portray itself as sex-positive:

It would be innocent and non-political if the nudity was equal opportunity and not sexualized. This is explicitly sexualized and there is a definite taint of exploitation to it. MRA types call us prudes when we point these things out and say that we disapprove of nudity and would have everyone wear burkas. That’s patently false. We simply disapprove of the same-old sexism — women in the service of men — dressed up to look like open-minded “sex positivity.”

I'm hardly a socialist, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that commercial of sex work simply doesn't work, at least when the money is going to people other than the ones being sexualized; the financial incentives simply create too much of a conflict of interest.

EDIT: In the wake of a UK bill criminalizing some forms of pornography, Red Pepper has put up a selection of opinion pieces on the subject.

Intentional sex torts - the reactions

2008-05-04T21:36:00.005-04:00

Well, that post on Feminist Law Profs about intentional sex torts was received about as well as expected.

I'm not going to directly link or quote the more misogynist follow-up blog posts. If you're really interested, there are follow-up posts at Above the Law and Women's Space. But the arguments can pretty much be summed up as follows:

Of course it's not rape! As long as you're not physically violent, it doesn't matter if your partner would want to have sex absent the fraud--anything goes.
Employing fraud for the purposes of getting laid is a natural, unavoidable practice.
Fraud is part of the "thrill of the chase." If everyone were honest, dating would be a lot less fun.
But women do it too--they hath one face, and make themselves another! Because wearing makeup and a push-up bra is totally the same thing as saying you're not HIV-positive!
If we outlaw fraud for the purposes of getting sex, we must outlaw similar torts for the purposes of refusing sex, like giving someone a fake phone number.
This is just the government sticking its nose into your bedroom again.
This is really anti-feminist, because it assumes women don't have the capacity or responsibility to take care of themselves.

And, of course:

They're just ugly/man-hating/jealous that nobody wants to sleep with them.
If we didn't accept this, nobody would ever get laid!

What's so complicated about the idea that you shouldn't have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex with you? (If you want to criticize the idea on legal grounds, that's one thing, but how can anyone defend the practice on a moral level?)

>DRIVE PLYMOUTH SATELLITE

2008-05-04T16:28:00.004-04:00

Nick Montfort of Grand Text Auto clues me in to Planet IF, an aggregate blog about interactive fiction. Most of the blogs represented there are ones I read already, but it's nice to have a distilled feed.

Intentional sex torts: fraud as rape

2008-05-02T17:10:00.003-04:00

Deanna Pollard Sacks has a short article up on Feminist Law Profs about the state of "intentional sex torts"*, specifically the increase of currency in the idea that fraudulent inducement of sex is rape.

While I wholeheartedly support that principle of not having sex with anyone who's not totally interested in having sex with you, I wasn't aware fraud-as-rape had been codified anywhere in the U.S.; apparently it's the law in four states (Alabama, California, Michigan and Tennessee, a motley group to be sure) and may soon be the law in Massachusetts. I haven't checked out the actual statutes, so I don't know what the standard for fraudulent inducement is; I suspect it's still a pretty high bar.

I have a minor quibble with this bit, though:

Thankfully, this mentality appears to be dying out. In a world filled with dangerous sexual diseases, it is particularly important to protect women’s rights to protect their own bodies, not just against physical violence, but against fraudulent inducement of sexual decisions and all of the dangerous consequences that can result from a lack of truly informed consent to sexual relations.

I think the focus on STDs and "dangerous consequences", while it might win short-term support, is counterproductive. It's not wrong because your partner can get sick or pregnant, it's wrong because it's a violation of basic autonomy.

* (I don't know why she uses that phrase, when what we're dealing with is apparently criminal law, not civil.)

You are not your bookcase

2008-05-02T10:12:00.001-04:00

Megan Hustad at Salon writes about how we over-rely on media in online profiles. To paraphrase the line from High Fidelity, it's what you like, not what you are like. The issue was also visited last month by the New York Times (along with a good discussion at Feministe.

I'm certainly guilty of this. My OKCupid profile is still mostly a list of media, and I'll certainly ogle someone's bookshelves in person - while acknowledging that they're not always representative. (Mine certainly aren't; for a bookworm I don't actually *buy* a lot of books these days. The Books application on my Facebook profile is a much better sample.)

And I believe there *is* something to it - not that tastes have to overlap, but that because media is important to me, if someone appears to particularly avoid reading any SF, for example, that's gonna put a strain on things.

But I think the panic in Hustad's article is a bit overblown:

We're also keeping our distance from a whole array of cultural output because we think it sends the wrong message about who we are and what we want to be.

In Hustad's "pretentious literary circles," perhaps. Personally, if I'm scanning someone's bookshelf and I don't see any sort of "guilty pleasure" reading, I'm going to assume that either (a) it's "fake," assembled to impress guests rather than hold the books they actually read, or (b) they really don't have all that much in common with me.

Apparently the secret shame of most bibliophiles in Husted's social circle is self-help; she gives several accounts of people hiding self-help books as if they were porn. I'm not sure if this is because, as Hustad implies, they're shamefully lowbrow, or simply because it's seen as broadcasting one's flaws. (I don't have much in the way of self-help books, but that's less because I don't find the concepts interesting and more because Internet forums scratch that particular itch.)

Of course, I'm not writing articles for trendy Internet magazines, so I don't have too much at stake when it comes to people evaluating my tastes.

EDIT: Apparently Megan Hustad has published a self-help book targeted at the literary set. Color me disappointed that this was never actually acknowledged in the article.

"She looks like, one of those, librarians' girlfriends."

2008-04-30T16:24:00.002-04:00

From Brooklyn Arden via my fraternity mailing list: Baby Got Book.

I've got a few minor quibbles with the song, but props for the effort.

Nice Guys' fantasies about women's fantasies about non-Nice Guys

2008-04-30T16:01:00.002-04:00

BetaCandy at my new favorite feminist-media blog The Hathor Legacy points out that the misogynist who gets the girls is a male fantasy:

I’ve been thinking about this character I see on screen everywhere. He’s mean to women. The women know they’re being mistreated. And yet they can’t get enough of being used and abused by him.

He doesn’t exist.

Let’s just dispel that myth right away. As presented in TV and film, he doesn’t correlate to anyone in reality. He’s actually a fantasy concocted by male screenwriters who have issues with women.

As straightforward as the explanation is, though, I have a feeling most Nice Guys(TM) won't buy it, because there's another meme that goes around that What Women Say They Want and What Women Really Want are unconnected. "Look at [Attractive Bad Boy] on [Popular Show]!" they cry. "It's not just the characters that are attracted to him; the fans are too!" (Of course, the fact that the Attractive Bad Boy is virtually always played by the most conventionally attractive actor on Popular Show has nothing to do with this.)

Except that the A&F mannequins aren't my type

2008-04-29T15:21:00.002-04:00

What PortlyDyke said.

(As referenced in this post, another worthwhile read.)

Drama stars

2008-04-29T14:23:00.001-04:00

There's an interesting set of discussions going on at Tales of the Rampant Coyote and Blog of War about how to crack the save game problem, that problem specifically being that, in a situation where the outcome is dependent on a roll of the virtual dice, players will save and restore until they get the desired outcome. Sometimes it doesn't actually involve a save game - lots of old school RPGs encouraged obsessive-compulsive rerolling of stats and balanced the game accordingly.

I've done this before, Fallout 2 being the most egregious example to come to mind. There, I played my typical scientist/diplomat main character (because I like having as many dialogue options as possible), only to find out that, unlike the first game, you can't talk your way out of most fights. So instead, I just did a lot of save-scumming, restoring the game on a per-combat-round basis, to get through the tougher fights.

There have been plenty of methods employed to limit this behavior, the most common being save points, prerolling and "roguelike" saves (i.e., where quitting automatically saves, saving automatically quits, and dying forces you to start over). Save points are often annoying because they parcel out the game into chunks that aren't always manageable (if I have 20 minutes of free time, there's little point in playing a game that spaces the save points around 30 minutes apart), and because they can give away the pacing of the game. Prerolling involves making decisions involving randomness far in advance of when they would actually be checked - for example, determining the contents of a treasure chest at the start of a level rather than when the chest is opened. If the player wants to try for better treasure, he or she will have to replay the entire level. This works tolerably well for something like treasure, but not at all for something like combat, where there's not much way to determine outcomes in advance. Roguelike saves work for roguelikes because those games involve randomly generated content; for a story game, replaying the beginning stages will quickly become repetitious.

The Rampant Coyote has come up with an alternative mechanism to discourage save-scumming: "drama stars." These work analogously to the "drama points" used by many tabletop RPGs - if you engage in what the game deems risky behavior (e.g., "dangerous" dialog choices, and presumably anything requiring a nontrivial skill check with consequences for failure) or when bad things happen (e.g., a character getting knocked out or killed in battle), you accumulate "drama stars" which can be redeemed for in-game benefits like reviving a fallen character.

The system reminds me of a variation I thought up a while back of a battle system proposed by Shamus Young for lightsaber duelling, wherein the concept of "hit points" was stupid (nobody gets scratched by a lightsaber). My system had various types of analogues for hit points, from armor that took damage to magic potions that wore off over time (I aimed for "interesting" and "varied" more than "realistic"), but the version that applied here was a character whose survival was based on "luck." "Luck" was a kind of RNG karma; unlucky circumstances (e.g., failing to hit an opponent) would build up karma and lucky ones would build karma. Enemy attacks, however, would always miss, using up karma dependent on the likelihood of hitting and the ferocity of the attack, until the character's luck ran out. Under such a system, you don't want to be the golden boy/girl who succeeds all the time, because that'll deplete your karma and you'll lose faster. (I'm not sure how one "recharges" one's fortune - perhaps going to a casino in town and losing money?)

The tricky bit in the "drama stars" system, though, and the one that really discourages save-scumming, is this: drama stars aren't saved. You restore your game, you're back at 0. Thus it's arguably better to play out poor consequences, because the drama stars earned more than negate those effects. However, this creates a new challenge: how do you maintain game balance when some players play in 20-minute "coffee breaks" and others play marathon sessions? One suggestion in the comments was to allow a "progress save" that works like a roguelike save - you want to stop playing, you save and exit, and when you come back your stars are intact. If you restore any other save, though, you're back at 0.

All in all, it's an interesting concept, and I can't wait to see more about Frayed Knights. (Why does this sort of thing only seem to show up in indie-game discussions, anyway?)

Jeff should really go to sleep

2008-04-29T00:53:00.003-04:00

Sometimes it feels like everyone else out there has a textbook to life with all the theorems explained, and I just got a handful of axioms and have to derive the rest. Except that the textbook was put out by a less than competent publisher, and is rife with confusing language and out-and-out errors, so I really am better off figuring it all out myself, even if I make the occasional mistake and spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

Don't be That Guy

2008-04-27T22:22:00.003-04:00

Via tekanji: synecdochic (whom I discovered through this post on being sex positive in the wake of the OSBP explosion), has a post about not being That Guy:

I thought: hey, good post. And then I stopped myself. Because fucking hell, those parameters -- though nicely stated and I'm really glad the guy has both figured them out so early and can articulate them so well -- shouldn't be something that's so rare. They should be standard default operating assumptions.

I particularly appreciated this bit of advice, which I hadn't thought of before:

And if you see a man and a woman having an interaction and the woman's displaying those signs -- backing up, pulling away, looking away, her mouth smiling politely but her eyes nowhere near the person she's talking with -- the way to gracefully stage a rescue is to step in from a distance (not in her space, not within touching distance of her) and distract the guy by striking up a conversation with him, not with her. That gives her the chance to slip away if she feels the need, with less of a chance of making her feel more threatened. (Not no chance, sadly. But less of one.)

I see this happen pretty often (especially riding the bus - women riding alone get singled out for being chatted up just about any time they're not actively avoiding it). The best response I could think of on my own was frown power, because I really didn't want to take it upon myself to interfere for fear of coming off as a "white knight," and I didn't trust myself to read the interaction right. Even now, I'm not sure what my intervention threshold in such a situation would be--especially given that the particular accoster I'm thinking of has in the past tried to start conversations with me when there wasn't a single woman to hit on, and wouldn't take "I'm sorry, I'd like to read my book" as a hint to back off - it's selfish, but I fear that if I do that I won't have a moment's peace again (then again, I'll be changing bus lines in a month when I move)--but it's nice to have more recourse than just saying "dude, that's not cool."

2008 Nebula winners

2008-04-27T00:12:00.003-04:00

Congrats to the 2008 Nebula Award Winners!

I feel a bit out of the loop, as I've only read/seen the really mass-appeal ones (Harry Potter and Pan's Labyrinth). I've seen The Yiddish Policemen's Union in the bookstores, but placed in general fiction it had the appearance of your typically pretentious modern-lit. I'll probably check it out soon from the library, as I've been reading that sort of thing a bit more of late.

Apparently the short story and novella winners are available online at Asimov's, so I'll probably read them soon as well.

And all we got when I was there was TMBG

2008-04-27T00:02:00.002-04:00

I don't know if this is awesome or horrible.

Brown Daily Herald: Gunther, Sunshine Girls 'Tra la la' audience

Namesakes

2008-04-25T23:07:00.007-04:00

Apparently the old Adam West Batman show had a supervillain called the Bookworm (played by Roddy McDowall), whose lair was a library, whose henchmen were named Printer's Devil, Typesetter, and Pressman, and whose power was to read books in a matter of seconds, giving him the knowledge of all recorded criminal plots.

How cool is that?

Of course, this being the 60s Batman, he merely speaks in quotations and leaves Riddler-esque literary clues to his crimes.

For a darker, more modern twist on the literary-minded supervillain, there's Tatterfiend from Madness: Minority of One, a (regrettably incomplete) Justice League fanfic.

EDIT: From derspatchel come these links to the cute and hilarious "The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman":

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZJXUkSy45Y
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBRoGduSv9A
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpZFucWSk6g

The 50 best cult books

2008-04-25T15:33:00.001-04:00

The Telegraph lists the 50 best cult books.

Whenever there's a list like this, I like to construct a histogram from the list. For series, I'm arbitrarily using the date of the first book in the series.

1700-1799 **
1800-1899 ****
1910-1919 *
1920-1929 **
1930-1939 **
1940-1949 ****
1950-1959 ********
1960-1969 ***********
1970-1979 **********
1980-1989 **
1990-1999 ***
2000-2008 *

Unsurprisingly, like every other such list it approximates a bell curve, this one peaking in the 60s. (That early bump is an artifact of condensing the 18th and 19th centuries.) While the argument can be made that that era was more conducive to these sorts of books catching on, I think what we're seeing here is a skew from the compilers of the list and society in general. This peak corresponds to the postadolescence of the Baby Boomers. Cult books from previous generations are largely forgotten; cult books from later generations haven't attained the same level of sustained notoriety.

Commenters have pointed out some of the more egregious omissions, and I think it's telling that (at least among the ones I agree with, which is admittedly biasing things), they're either more modern works that haven't gotten credit (Fight Club, Trainspotting), or genre works (Stranger in a Strange Land, Lord of the Rings).

Things are falling into place

2008-04-25T14:57:00.003-04:00

Just got a call from the UB saying that I've been offered a scholarship. It's not a full ride, but it's a couple thousand dollars less than I'd otherwise have to pay.

Now all I have to do is find a bus-accessible apartment closer to the university.

OH JOHN RINGO NO

2008-04-25T10:10:00.005-04:00

Thanks to this whole "Open Source" debate, I've learned a new catchphrase: OH JOHN RINGO NO. And now I've become aware of the source.

Now I've seen his books (with covers like those, how could you miss them?) taking up lots of shelf space at the chain bookstores around here, and I'd mentally put them in the Military SF is Not My Thing[*] pile next to folks like David Weber and Eric Flint. But these excerpts? Gah. I'm not surprised any more by mild squick in SF novels (thanks, Jack Chalker), but this stuff makes Chalker look like Tiptree - in writing style as well as gender relations. How does a guy like this get such a huge chunk of shelf space (outside of the theory that other authors' books sell and don't stay on the shelves)?

[*] At least conservative military SF; I dislike Starship Troopers, am equivocal about The Forever War and enjoy the Bill, the Galactic Hero series.

EDIT: Ringo replied to the review, and was a surprisingly good sport about it. (Though folks like Annes Rice and McCaffrey set that bar pretty low.) His response did have this gem, though:

If I needed the sun coming up in the east, I'd do it. It's that kind of story. Reality be utterly damned.

Which strikes me as summing up this series (assuming the review is accurate, which it seems to be if Ringo himself is saying "touche") excellently.

It's not OK just because he's a Republican

2008-04-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

His stated policies are bad for the United States and the world. He gets a lot more credit from the media than he deserves. From all accounts, he's not a very good person. So why does every criticism of John McCain have to be about his age? This isn't any more acceptable than stereotyping Sen. Clinton by sex or Sen. Obama by race.

Forking the Project: Open-Source Body Positivity

2008-04-23T12:35:00.005-04:00

This started as a reply to Sunflower's comment in my earlier post, but it's sufficiently lengthy that I'm going to make it its own post.

Admittedly, I'm less familiar with cons than a lot of the participants in this discussion. The only one I've attended was a heavily commercialized experience, and when I think of "hallway" in that context my mental image is one of the spaces outside of an event room where people are waiting to go in. In other words, a public space, and an already-purposed one.

By "semi-private space," I'm thinking more of something like a hotel room or set of rooms, which Joe and Jane Congoer can access but where (a) it's safe to assume everyone is there by specific intent, (b) that specific intent is for the touching and not something else that's unrelated, and (c) it's possible to exclude people if necessary. (It should be pointed out that (a) and (b) are rebuttable presumptions; if I accompany a friend to the area it doesn't mean I can't say no to participating, and I shouldn't be pressured to.)

As for the "ass contest" Sunflower described in her comment, that's actually a good concrete example to help me figure this out because I'm trying to look at it from as many perspectives as possible. Not exactly a role reversal, because there's all sorts of surrounding issues of socialization, perceived safety, etc., but more immediate than "what if I were a woman at that con?"

When I think about it from the perspective of the person being asked for permission to touch, three questions come up: (1) How do I feel? (2) What do I want? (3) How do I respond? One of the things I find problematic about the whole situation is that the answers to these questions are often very unrelated. For instance, I may be flattered by the attention, but not actually want to be touched, or I may actually not mind the touch but be put off by the way I'm propositioned. And I may agree to be touched even if I don't want to, because I see it as the price of admission to the party, or because I don't want to hurt the asker's feelings, or because I don't distinguish between wanting to be asked and wanting to be touched. Or, conversely, I may want to be touched, but something about the situation triggers a shyness response.

I've been giving some thought to how to create a positive version of this event (it is "Open Source," after all). In addition to the ideas that have already been thrown out, there are a few other changes that could radically shift the tone:

Insist on respect. This means actual respect, not just going through the motions and saying "please" so you don't get slapped. It also means that you don't give somebody a pass on bad behavior because they're a Big Name, or because they're your friend, or because they're in the less-represented gender and you're finding it difficult to keep the ratio from becoming too lopsided.

Police the space. If people are transgressing the boundaries of the interaction, then they need to be removed from the space. This goes even for "positive" forms of interaction; if some people decide they're okay with fewer boundaries (i.e., they want to make out, or be naked, or whatever), they should probably do that elsewhere to avoid shifting the focus of the space and making others feel uncomfortable or pressured.

Make the fundamental unit of interaction the compliment, not the touch. If it's about being body-positive, that seems like it should go without saying.

Don't gender the interaction. Making this primarily about breasts means that those interactions involving men are always going to be unidirectional. Being about body in general doesn't make it totally egalitarian (this is still a patriarchy, after all), but it's a start.

Change the dynamic of touch interactions from request/consent to offer/acceptance. From what I read in the original post, offer/acceptance was how the whole thing started, and it was only when people wanted to expand the scope that they started asking other women if they were okay with being touched. While offer/acceptance doesn't by itself totally negate the peer pressure aspect, I think it's a lot easier to say nothing than have to actively turn someone down, and it separates the compliment element and the physical element. (This was suggested in the comments to theferrett's post, but was rejected by him as being "too passive," which comes across as "but then I wouldn't get to feel as many boobs!")

What it comes down to in the end, I think, is that this idea relies on "trusted strangers" (among friends, it's a very different dynamic), and that's hard to achieve. (I think it's possible to at least conditionally trust them, if there are enough safeguards in the environment, but everyone's mileage varies in that regard - yet another reason to get a room.) For some folks, the fact that the other person is at a con is a sufficient basis for that trust; it seemed that one of the problems theferrett had was that he assumed that that basis was sufficient for everyone.

Harlan Ellison was just ahead of his time

2008-04-22T12:01:00.004-04:00

I love it when friends I know from non-feminist circles get feminist.

Tablesaw, whom I know from ifMUD, critiques a write-up of something calling itself The Open-Source Boob Project.

As for what I think about the Project itself, not having been there I don't know the actual dynamic, but the summary sets off a lot of warning bells. Tablesaw addressed most of them in his comment on the post, but the ones that stuck out for me:

1. The validation aspect:

There wasn't that undertow of desperation of come on, touch me, I need you to validate my self-esteem and maybe we'll hook up later tonight.

They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.

By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry.

Which is it? Is it about validating self-esteem or not? And seriously? "Good enough to be touched?" Do insufficiently attractive breasts communicate diseases or something? The impression I get from that is that it became less about body positivity and more about being "good enough," which leads to the next issue.

2. Groping as grouping:

My God, these are beautiful breasts you have, along with the backstream compliment of Thank you, you're worthy of touching them.

And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it.

It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks. (Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.)

Though I've lumped them into one issue, there's two things going on here. First, there's the idea of "access" as a measure of "worthiness." If she says yes, you're special and honored. It's that whole tired "gatekeeper" idea. Second, there's the idea that it's all or nothing, that this is a group acceptance and not an individual one. If you're a lout, no boobs for you; if not, nobody refuses you. Again, I wasn't there, and don't know the real dynamic, but I suspect there's an element of peer pressure involved, and an element of wanting to avoid "Why did you say no to me when this other woman didn't?" And while there's lip service paid to the voluntary nature of the activity, there's *always* lip service paid to the voluntary nature of the activity. The fact that nobody in the hallway situation said no makes me a little suspicious about the claim that the decisions were all totally free and uncoerced.

I think it's a little telling that the "Yes, you may" button says only that - it keeps it in the Super Secret Boobie Touchers Club. Yes, I recognize the problems with a more explicit button, and having to deal with the fallout from that; on the other hand, I don't think it's entirely coincidental that the statement elides "Yes, you may ask" and "Yes, you may touch."

3. Making it about the menz:

In this moment, all of the societal restrictions had fallen away

I felt the terrors of high school washing away from me. It could be this easy. Just ask!

For a moment, everything that was awkward about high school would fade away and you could just say what was on your mind. It was as though parts of me were being healed whenever I did it, and I touched at least fifteen sets of boobs at Penguicon. It never got old, surprisingly.

Well, that's great that touching women's breasts gets you over your personal issues with high school, but so what?

4. Keepin' it patriarchal:

exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from 'touching" to "unwanted heavy petting."

It could have been a base lechery. But instead, it was sexual desire made simple.

We weren't degenerating into an orgy, but rather exploring the amazement of how beautiful this body was and how wonderful it was to have access to them.

This could go wrong, collapsing and turning us into cruel lechers who'd make her feel uncomfortable and shamed of who she was....

But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.

And there haven't been any hookups that I know of thanks to the Open-Source Boob Project. It is, as I said, a very special thing.

it's strangely wholesome and sexual at the same time.

There's a definite sense of "good sex" versus "bad sex" going on here. The "Open-Source Boob Project" is "good sex" because it doesn't lead to anything else, particularly to "bad sex." Why is it a bad thing if people hooked up? Why is the touching/"heavy petting" distinction equated with the wanted/unwanted distinction? Why would additional sexual activity be a "degeneration" and not, say, a "metamorphosis"?

5. Short skirt chasing:

Because a beautiful girl in an incredibly skimpy blue Princess outfit strode down the hallway, obviously putting her assets on display

You didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress

Abso-fucking-lutely not. I can't see how any cosplayer wouldn't be insulted by that.

Power Girl, for example, is a favorite among a lot of my comics-loving friends. Her costume has a relatively revealing cutout. Does that imply that someone dressed as Power Girl is there to "impress"? (Heh, I can just imagine someone asking Peej for a feel. Stick with Starfire, boys.)

Or take some of the more elaborate anime/videogaming costumes. The ones for women (and some of the ones for men) are often quite skimpy, but also very elaborate. Someone who makes (e.g.) a Lulu costume may be wearing it low-cut to "put her assets on display," or it may be more about the fact that that's how the costume is designed, and accuracy is important.

Now I have no doubt that this "project" was a positive experience for many or most, for all kinds of reasons. Hell, in other contexts (at somewhere like Burning Man, for example, or maybe some part of the con that's semi-private space), with other spin, I'd probably be posting about this as an example of the direction our attitudes need to go. But it's not above examination. Basically, the problem I'm having with this "Open-Source Boob Project" or at least the summary thereof is that it seems to take something that is, or at least could be, "free-as-in-speech love" and turn it into "free-as-in-beer love."

A Sexual Defense of American Women

2008-04-20T17:46:00.004-04:00

Maga reviews some book from the mid-1960s entitled A Sexual Defense of American Women. It's great reading if (like me) you're a sucker for historical relationship advice. The library of my literary fraternity in undergrad contained the enormously entertaining How To Get a Teenage Boy and What to Do with Him When You Get Him, and online there's the Social Guidance section of the Prelinger Archives.

There's really not too much to add, but this bit stuck out:

The point of this book, clearly, is male aspirational envy; it's ostensibly directed towards women, but I can't help feeling that this is at least partially misdirection. The book's main energies are spent on playing up the hotness of the hot chicks into whose heads and pants Rankin has got, and on pouring scorn on Inadequate Men, so I'm guessing that teenage boys and young men are at least partially the target. The publishers don't seem to be quite sure about this - the advertisements on the final pages include both male-targeted sex pulp and female-targeted romance pulp.

These sorts of books are absolutely targeted to men; selling masculinity back to men is their raison d'etre. (Sure, some of them do it because they want to reshape what masculinity means, but I suspect the vast majority just play up the stereotypes because that's where the money is.)

One thing I do wonder is how these sorts of guides read prior to WWII, second-wave feminism, and the contemporary form of anxious masculinity. There's a pretty big gap in my knowledge between Capellanus and 50s social advice.

Milliways

2008-04-18T10:05:00.001-04:00

Waxy.org has a great article about the development process, such as it was, of Milliways, Infocom's vaporware sequel to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, now slightly less vaporware due to a playable early version.

I haven't tried the game yet, but I wonder what it'd be like if someone from the contemporary IF community took it over. The question, then, would be who? My first choice would probably be Nick Montfort, though Jon Ingold or even Graham Nelson himself would probably do an excellent job. (This is all idle speculation, of course, as there are all kinds of intellectual property issues in the way of such a thing ever happening.)

There are also interesting design ideas, such as a MEANWHILE command to switch viewpoints and several proposed methods of scene-changing. The puzzle design is definitely from before The Craft of Adventure, even before the more player-friendly LucasArts games. In the first game synopsis, the notes for the very first puzzle state that "this is a nasty trick puzzle because if you solve it, you lose the game." (Despite this, unlike the author of the article I like the first synopsis better than the second. A Barry Manilow CD is a very specific cultural reference that isn't particularly entertaining and feels out of place among the intergalactic weirdness.)

The other thing that struck me in the article was the time involved in creating these games in ZIL. Amy Briggs complained that it was impossible, even with a completed script (I'm not sure if "script" means general plot points, or all the main text, or what), to code a game that size in nine months. And yet it seems that, these days, that's about the median for a comp-length (i.e., ~2 hours to complete) written by an amateur in their free time. I suspect an adaptation that's already got a script Which makes me wonder - what if Infocom had had Inform at their disposal, rather than ZIL? Maybe they'd have been able to produce even more great works. Then again, people asked "What if George Lucas had CGI at his disposal?" and what we got were Episodes I-III.

...with its sword.

2008-04-17T14:38:00.002-04:00

Adam Cadre (he of Ready, Okay!, Photopia and the MiSTing of The Eye of Argon) has posted the 2008 winners of his Lyttle Lytton Contest, a harder, better, faster, shorter version of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Adam points out that his examples of sentences that don't belong in the competition may be funnier than the actual winners because they're intentional-intentional comedy, not intentional-unintentional comedy. In a few cases that's true, but most of the examples come across to me as far too precious - the sort of thing you find in humorous genre novels that try to be the next Hitchhiker's Guide (I'm looking at you, Rob Grant), but aren't actually the sort of jokes that make that sort of novel good for me - it's the longer conceptual jokes that make or break that sort of book.

The other thing that stands out is that unintentionally bad writing routinely trumps intentionally bad for the funny. I don't know if it's just that the contest entries tend to be overcrafted, or whether I'm giving credit for the unwittingness of it.

I still suspect the winner cribbed from LaHaye and Jenkins, though.

The Next Chapter

2008-04-09T19:46:00.001-04:00

I just received my official acceptance to the UB's library science program.

Now to figure out what to take, when to take it, and how to pay for it.

Indiana protects the children, one Alison Bechdel comic at a time

2008-04-03T16:41:00.009-04:00

From Tom Smith comes this story of a new law in Indiana requiring anyone who sells sexually explicit material to register with the State, and the response of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Here's the text of the law (in italics), with my commentary (in roman):

[NOTE: I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. If you're a bookstore owner in Indiana, don't rely on anything I say here.]

Chapter 55. Intention to Sell Sexually Explicit Materials

Sec. 1. This chapter does not apply to a person who sells sexually explicit materials on June 30, 2008, unless the person changes the person's business location after June 30, 2008.

This is a "grandfather clause" that means that bookstores that already exist don't have to register - but if a business changes location, changes ownership, or opens a new branch, it may apply.

Sec. 2. A person (as defined in IC 35-41-1-22) that intends to offer for sale or sell sexually explicit materials shall register with the secretary of state the intent to offer for sale or sell sexually explicit materials and provide a statement detailing the types of materials that the person intends to offer for sale or sell.

I'm assuming, without having looked it up, that the "person" definition there is meant to include corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies.

The actual definition of "sexually explicit materials" occurs later in the act, and will be discussed there.

Sec. 3. (a) As used in this section, "local officials of the county" refer to all of the following:
(1) The county executive.
(2) If a person described in section 2 of this chapter intends to locate in a municipality, the executive of the municipality.
(3) A local entity that supervises a zoning board in the county.

(b) After receiving a registration described in section 2 of this chapter, the secretary of state shall notify the local officials of the county in which a person described in section 2 of this chapter intends to offer for sale or sell sexually explicit materials of
the registration filed under section 2 of this chapter.

This is procedural stuff that says the Indiana Department of State (with whom the bookseller registers) must notify local officials, and which official needs to be notified. Most telling is section (a)(3), which says that the supervisor of a zoning board needs to be notified. It's curious - you'd think that a zoning board would *already* ask about this sort of thing; one of the whole points of zoning laws are so that local authorities can say "not in my backyard" to porn stores and sex shops. More on this later.

SECTION 2. IC 23-18-12-3, AS AMENDED BY P.L.60-2007, SECTION 6, IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2008]: Sec. 3. (a) Except as provided in subsection (e), the secretary of state shall collect the following fees when the documents described in this section are delivered for filing:
Document Fee
(1) Articles of organization $90
(2) Application for use of
indistinguishable name $20
(3) Application for reservation of name $20
(4) Application for renewal of
reservation $20
(5) Notice of transfer or cancellation
of reservation $20
(6) Application of registered name $30
(7) Application for renewal of registered name $30
(8) Certificate of change of registered
agent's business address No Fee
(9) Certificate of resignation of
agent No Fee
(10) Articles of amendment $30
(11) Restatement of articles of
organization $30
(12) Articles of dissolution $30
(13) Application for certificate of
authority $90
(14) Application for amended
certificate of authority $30
(15) Application for certificate of
withdrawal $30
(16) Application for reinstatement
following administrative dissolution $30
(17) Articles of correction $30
(18) Certificate of change of
registered agent No Fee
(19) Application for certificate of
existence or authorization $15
(20) Biennial report filed in writing,
including by facsimile $30
(21) Biennial report filed by electronic medium $20
(22) Articles of merger involving a domestic limited liability company $90
(23) Any other document required or
permitted to be filed under this article $30
(24) Registration of intent to sell
sexually explicit materials, products, or services $250

I've kept the full list in there for a reason. Look at the costs of other registrations - they're anywhere from no fee (for updating information about the registered agent) to $90 (for articles of organization or a certificate of authority). In contrast, the registration fee for intent to sell sexually explicit materials, products or services is a whopping $250. That kind of fee isn't meant to cover the costs of processing or keep the number of applications filed under control - it's meant to discourage people from engaging in the business altogether. Sure, a sex shop is likely to just absorb the one-time fee as a cost of doing business, but what about the folks for whom these "materials, products, or services" are more incidental? Remember, it's not *just* that extra $250 that's at stake, it's the zoning application as well. If it jeapordizes the main business,

[Sections (b) through (e) omitted, because they're not relevant to the new law].

SECTION 3. IC 24-4-16.4 IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW CHAPTER TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2008]:
Chapter 16.4. Sexually Explicit Materials
Sec. 1. As used in this chapter, "person" has the meaning set forth in IC 35-41-1-22.

This is the same definition of "person" used above.

Sec. 2. (a) As used in this chapter, "sexually explicit materials" means a product or service:

(1) that is harmful to minors (as described in IC 35-49-2-2), even if the product or service is not intended to be used by or offered to a minor; or

This is an interesting phrasing. The presumed rationale is the "what about the children?" argument - that minors may have access to the product or service even if they're not supposed to, by sneaking in or shoplifting or whatnot. But the whole point of "harmful to minors" being a standard in the first place is that the State has an authority to regulate these materials with respect to minors that it does not have with respect to adults. The definition of "harmful to minors" is an adaptation of the Miller test (with S&M thrown in), as modified by Ginsberg v. New York, which allowed a different standard for minors than adults:

Matter or performance harmful to minors
Sec. 2. A matter or performance is harmful to minors for purposes of this article if:
(1) it describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse;
(2) considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors;
(3) it is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors; and
(4) considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Those uses of "for minors" aren't incidental. Since the cultural narrative is that *every* instance described in subsection (1) appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors (cue Kristy Now from Southland Tales: "teenage horniness is not a crime!"), this makes every representation fit subsection (2). Since the adult community typically decides *no* such material of any explicitness is suitable for minors (hell, even frank sex ed books get challenged), subsection (3) is easy to fulfill. The inclusion of "for minors" in subsection (4) is most insidious of all, because it strips many literary, artistic, political and scientific works of protection because a hypothetical 16-year-old might not appreciate their merit, but get off on a nude figure or description of sex. And don't forget - we're not just talking about restricting these works from minors, as in Ginsberg; you need to pay several hundred dollars to sell these

Back to the new law:

(2) that is designed for use in, marketed primarily for, or provides for:
(A) the stimulation of the human genital organs; or

In other words, vibrators. (Yeah, I know there are other products that fit this category, but they're much, much rarer.) And just after Texas lifted its ban. Is there a Law of Conservation of Patriarchy or something?

Aside from the fact that there's a disparate impact here - or arguably because of it - what's the state purpose here? Is there really a correlation with the sale of vibrators and criminal elements? Are they worried about hordes of sexually satisfied women running riot?

(B) masochism or a masochistic experience, sadism or a sadistic experience, sexual bondage, or sexual domination.

Wholly unsurprising, for two reasons. Not only is it straightforwardly anti-kink, it gets around the issue of BDSM where everyone stays clothed and no conventional sex happens.

Of course, these terms aren't defined (yeah, good luck with that!) so it's pretty much a guarantee that someone's going to argue that a corset at Hot Topic is for the purpose of sexual domination.

(b) The term does not include:
(1) birth control or contraceptive devices;

Because that would be obviously unconstitutional.

or
(2) services, programs, products, or materials provided by a:
(A) communications service provider (as defined in IC 8-1-32.6-3);

Because that would pre-empt the federal Communications Decency Act, which gives "communications service providers" immunity from liability for the content they distribute;

(B) physician;

Again, that'd be pretty obviously unconstitutional.

or (C) public or nonpublic school.

They're obviously trying to make sure that schools aren't required to register in order to conduct classes, but I have to wonder something: given the definition of "sexually explicit materials" above, what sexually explicit materials does one expect to be sold at a school? Last I checked, schools typically didn't sell vibrators or BDSM gear on campus. That leaves, of course, "material that is harmful to minors." You know, I have this sneaking suspicion that, if it's okay to exempt schools here, this material may not actually be harmful to minors.

Sec. 3. A person or an employee or agent of a person may not offer for sale or sell sexually explicit materials unless a registration and statement are properly filed as described in IC 23-1-55-1.

Sec. 4. A person or an employee or agent of a person who knowingly or intentionally offers for sale or sells sexually explicit materials in violation of this chapter commits unregistered sale of sexually explicit materials, a Class B misdemeanor.

And, of course, we need to actually make it a crime, or the law has no teeth. Of course, the big issue isn't the penalty from the misdemeanor - it's losing the ability to do business. The effect of this law is actually relatively minor on dedicated sex shops and porn stores - they're not going to be run out of business by a one-time $250 fee. (Not that they should have to pay it, and not that there's a good chance such a registry would be misused either by a zealous prosecutor or by people who want to harass the business.)

Another effect is that, while businesses are required to register, anyone who's not a business is still covered by these sections. So if I live in Indiana and I put a book of Leonard Nemoy's photography up on eBay, I've broken the law.

I'm reasonably confident (though not certain - Indiana seems to be a very conservative place) that this law won't survive the first court challenge, but still - how does it even get that far?

I'd call for an "I Am Spartacus" style protest, overwhelming the state with registrations, but there's that pesky $250 fee again.

Typical.

2008-03-20T22:37:00.005-04:00

Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech is brilliant. If you haven't already, watch it or read the transcript. As Pam Spaulding puts it,

In Obama’s speech I was reading the words of a man that gets it, regardless of the fact that he is a candidate for President of the United States of America that resonate with me on this issue. That he is this close to becoming president of this country — and to risk it all by cracking open this door on a painful area of this country — is something I thought I would never see. He is giving voice to a healthier view on race relations that needs to be embraced from a stage where it’s hard to argue that it is not an issue worth tackling.

Of course, a call to have an open, sincere national dialogue about race is totally ignored by the pundits, in favor of scandal-sniffing. "Did he sufficiently distance himself from Wright?" "Did he contradict himself about not having attended controversial sermons?" "Did he throw his grandmother to the wolves under the bus?"

And now the latest "gaffe" being pounced on is his clarification about the mention of his grandmother in the speech:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know - there's a reaction in her that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that's pretty powerful stuff.

The typical response I hear from the folks who want to pounce on Obama for this statement is "What if someone (Clinton, McCain, Joe Whitebread) talked about a 'typical black person'?"

What if they did?

Here, I'll even go ahead and make such a statement, so it's not just a hypothetical:

A typical black person in America harbors anger and resentment at white society because he or she has been on the receiving end of racism throughout his or her life. I think that comes pretty close to the tone of Obama's statement - though of course, nowhere near as eloquent, which is one of the reasons he's a serious candidate for President of the United States and I'm just a guy with a Z-list blog.

Was I stereotyping? Was I racist? Perhaps. The black experience is not my own; I'm just repeating my understanding of the situation, learned secondhand. You can make the argument that it's not my place to speak for black people, and that my role as a white person at this point in the discussion is to shut up and stay out of the way, or to use the privilege I have to help people who know what they're talking about get heard. Even if I don't completely agree, that would at least be a productive discussion (one that we as a nation aren't currently having).

Would Clinton or McCain be attacked for making a statement like the one above? Probably. There are partisans on all sides who use whatever disreputable tactics are at hand. Clinton gets attacked with sexism. McCain gets attacked with ageism. This sort of thing should be regarded as uncalled for, as beyond the pale, but it never is. Maybe it's a human tendency to overlook the faults of our allies and exaggerate those of our enemies. Maybe it's a belief that the ends justify the means. Maybe, to quote The Simpsons, "some people are just jerks."

But I'll risk being accused of some more stereotyping and say this: a lot of the people who are complaining about the potential blowback for talking about a "typical black person" are not talking about a statement anything like what I said above. Some have just internalized the idea that *any* talk about members of a race as a group is going to be racist (which, though an easy fix, is a privilege that's far more available to white people) and they're resentful that they have to police their behavior in a way Obama apparently isn't.

But I suspect others are talking about the typical ways of talking about typical black people. They're talking about Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (the latter of whom is on record as favoring Obama's speech, incidentally) discussing black people's intelligence in The Bell Curve. They're talking about Jimmy the Greek going on TV and theorizing about black people's athletic ability. They're talking about Darryl Gates defending his policemen in Los Angeles by claiming that "blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on 'normal people.'" They're talking about bigotry, and they're complaining that they'll get called bigoted if they're open about it.

As well they should.

As Jon Stewart said of Obama's speech, "at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race, as though they were adults." Isn't it time we started acting like it?

100 books every child should read

2008-01-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

The Guardian has come up with a list of 100 books every child should read, and like all such lists, it's both good and really, really bad.

Every "top 100" list invariably incorporates the compilers' nostalgia. The list is heavily weighted towards the Victorian era through World War One (national nostalgia for England) and the end of World War Two through the sixties (personal nostalgia for the Baby Boomers). There's a subboom in the late seventies and early eighties, but it's almost entirely due to Roald Dahl. The list picks up again after the post-Rowling YA boom, with Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Holes.

My own childhood is hardly represented at all. From my prime young-adult reading years (ages 7 to 14, 1984-1991), there are a grand total of three books, none of which I'd actually read back then. (I've since read Howl's Moving Castle.) I think this is due to the youngest of the compilers being slightly older than me, and the oldest of the compilers' children being slightly younger. The Westing Game isn't on the list. Neither is the Wayside School series. Same goes for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwelier, Bridge to Terabithia, and The Giver. There's no Madeliene L'Engle. There's no John Christopher. No Shel Silverstein (not novels, but that didn't stop them from putting Hiawatha and Beowulf on the list). Hell, there's no Judy Blume.

In addition, this list brings up the debate that any list of great books does about what goes into the canon and what doesn't. Gender seems to be hamhandedly equalized through the inclusion of "boys' books" such as The Call of the Wild and Treasure Island and "girls' books" such as Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. More importantly, the list is almost entirely white authors (Mildred Taylor being the only exception at first glance). Apparently "every child" doesn't need to be concerned with race.

Romney, faith and "moral conviction"

2007-12-06T17:10:00.000-05:00

I was completely unaware of Mitt Romney's impending speech this morning when I had the idea to write this post. (Most of my awareness that morning was focused on the fact that the bus driver who didn't stop for me though I chased after the bus for 3 stops, shouting and waving my arms, was an asshole.) The idea came from my earlier post about the Sacks and co. was (and still is) intended to lead into a discussion about how "because it's the right thing to do" is never enough justification.

Then I saw Melissa McEwen's take on Romney's speech, specifically this paragraph:

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

As Melissa points out, it's totally false.

This post was originally going to be about how we don't have a vibrant national dialogue about morality in America, the way we have dialogues about public policy. But Mr. Romney provided such a fine opening, I can't not take it.

We *don't* share a "common creed of moral convictions" precisely because the majority religion in America, Christianity, co-opts and preempts moral convictions. We never get to talk about morality; instead we just talk about what the Bible or a particular authority figure says and pretend that's the same thing - but it's much, much closer to the opposite. Or if we don't want to involve religion, we eschew questions of morality as well in order to dwell on legalism and consequentialism.

Here's how an exploration of moral conviction can work. Method #1 (let's call it the Axiomatic Method) is to start with an ethical axiom, and explore all the ramifications of that axiom, rejecting it or conditionally accepting it based on the conclusions drawn. This method seems to me to be the more common form of non-religious moral reasoning, but it's one that's relatively inaccessible. Though you find this a lot among philosophers, divinity students and libertarians, I suspect the average person doesn't really employ this form of moral reasoning in his or her life.

Method #2 is what I'll call the Mindy Method. Start with a moral observation - "X is good." Then ask "Why?" Now you've got a new moral principle. Again, ask "why?" and now you've got another. The goal of this version is *not* necessarily to arrive at a moral axiom and then to build back up from there. Rather, it's to reach an understanding with other moral agents, and to see where we differ. This serves two purposes: (i) we can find common understanding with people who might disagree on particulars; and (ii) we won't get duped into alliances with those whose goals are superficially similar but fundamentally opposed.

It's precisely because Christianity has so completely co-opted morality that "no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people." Christianity, at least as it's practiced throughout this country, explicity rejects the Mindy Method - you generally can't ask "Why?" more than once or twice before bottoming out at "God said so," at which point most inquiry ceases. "Why should we do something just because God said to?" is a question that's reserved for theologians whose general faith is deemed beyond question; the folks in the pews don't typically get that luxury. Even when the question is asked, the answer tends to be consequentialist - either referring to personal consequences for the moral agent in this world, or the next.

Because Christianity avoids the question of "Is this the right thing?", substituting the question of "Is this what God wants?", the domination by Christianity of the moral sphere results in no real discourse about morality. And because the question of why the Christian God's purported wants should be obeyed is answered with an appeal to personal consequences, our discussions of policy tend to follow suit.

Of course, Romney's speech isn't really about moral convictions; it's an appeal to power. It's about defusing concerns among the Religious Right that electing a Mormon president would reduce their influence.

Size on the subway

2007-12-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

Over at Miss Conduct, the following question is asked:

Frequently I’ve seen overweight and obese people insist on squeezing themselves into subway and bus seats that are too small for them. This results in their arms and legs landing on top of the people sitting on either side of them. This is very uncomfortable for the riders being squished, who often just get up out of their seat because it's too awkward to say anything to the person with the weight issue. Nobody seems to know how to handle this. What do you suggest?

I ride the bus out here in Buffalo regularly, though the ones around here aren't usually crowded the way a Boston subway car can be. I've also been a regular user of public transit when I lived in New York City and Honolulu, so I think I've got some idea what I'm talking about.

It's not just fat people. I'm not particularly fat; I fit just fine in a bus seat. However, I'm a lot wider at the chest and shoulders, which means that on the typical two-seater I have to (a) pull my shoulders in and hunch over; (b) sit sideways; or (c) get more intimate with my seatmate than I typically care to.

Unless Boston is significantly different from other cities (including NYC), this example of the fat person shoving the already seated person out of his or her seat isn't something that happens regularly enough to warrant much consideration. More often, what happens is that someone sits down, and if the bus is crowded they'll be touching. If that someone is fat, people react differently - they're more grossed out by the contact, or they think that "if this person weren't fat, then I'd have more space." To which the only valid response is: get over it. You're not going to catch the fat off of them, and you'll be off the bus in a while anyway. The idea that "nobody seems to know how to handle this" is bunk - what the questioner assumes is that everyone else is as uncomfortable as he/she is, and just won't say anything. The question isn't how to handle it - plenty of people handle it fine - it's how do we change social expectations so that my discomfort is more important than their right to a seat?

One of the main reasons this happens on non-packed buses is a phenomenon I call "checkerboarding." People sit with one seat's worth of space between them and the next person over, in an attempt to maximize the cushion of space around them. (It's also annoying when you want to sit with a friend.) In situations like this, I again can't be too sympathetic with the person who complains that their space is being invaded, when they've relied on others' reluctance to do so to deprive them of room.

One of the other major evictors of people on a bus are wheelchair users. The way buses are set up, a bench that normally seats 2-3 must be folded away to accommodate 1 wheelchair. But we feel (rightly) that this is okay, because the alternative is to say that wheelchair users can't ride the bus if it's crowded, and that's not an acceptable alternative. (No, it doesn't matter if someone's fat because of genetics or through some fault of their own, just as it doesn't matter why someone's in a wheelchair.)

Basically, it comes down to whether it's okay to make fat people second-class citizens, and once it's put that way I sure as hell hope the answer's obvious (but fear that, for many people, it's not).

Kate Harding over at Shapely Prose also has a post up about this.

Who likes songs that are repetitious?

2007-12-05T16:25:00.000-05:00

Carol of the Bells.

The theme from Halloween.

How alike.

And yet, how not.

What's not to love?

2007-12-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

One of the interesting facets of subscribing to "blog searches" on subjects like feminism is that they don't discern viewpoint; anti-feminists show up as well. One such search led me to Glenn Sacks' post about the California National Organization for Women launching an I Love Consensual Sex campaign. This strikes me a great idea, as it takes ammunition away from anti-feminists who want to claim that anti-rape activism is anti-sex.

It's also a great idea because it's a hell of a lot more accessible than your typical anti-rape message. I mean, who doesn't love consensual sex? And if you don't, then you don't have to have it - that's what that "consensual" word means!

Nevertheless, Sacks and his commenters are loath to give any unqualified support. Sacks is quick to get in a jab at how "some feminists have had a hard time acknowledging [that] women enjoy having sex with men." (Except for lesbians, presumably, but we'll come back to that.)

The larger issue that Sacks has is, of course, with the definition of consent. There's no specific definition given, as far as I can tell, but Sacks is sure that whatever it is he'll take issue with it. And I suspect he will, as any definition of consent beyond "she didn't scream no or fight back" - i.e., the "whatever I can get away with" definition - tends to be resisted as placing an unreasonable burden on men, as well as granting power to those women whom the MRAs just know are lined up at police stations around the country waiting to file false accusations.

Sacks also brings up the idea, common among contemporary social conservatives, that feminism was a noble goal at some point in the past, but has gone too far. However, instead of the usual "first wavers were in the right, but the second wavers have gone too far," Sacks cites the feminism of the 1970s as "more positive, male-friendly." (Does this mean that the MRAs will update their quote lists? One can only hope.)

There's also the problem Sacks so often faces when trying to sound like a voice of reason - his commenters. It's like the old analogy of crabs in a cookpot - rather than let him rise above the fray, his commenters act to drag the discourse back to the usual misogynist level. The reactions to this piece include:

More accusations that women claim rape in response to consensual sex they regret.
The accusation that "sex positive" is doublespeak, and that of course feminists hate "the male libido" (wait, I thought women had the hivemind?).
Continuing to associate feminists with conservative Christians as one big fun-spoiling mob. Heck, even the most vehement anti-porn feminists no longer ally themselves with the theocrats.
Complaining about a requirement of "enthusiastic verbal agreement" that's never actually stated as a requirement - and only by nitpicking that not all enthusiastic agreement is verbal.
An attempt to turn it into that primary issue of all MRAs, child support.
Fear that "I love consensual sex" will include sex among gays and lesbians. (Wait, we're the ones allied with Christian conservatives here?)
Blaming standards of consent for the difficulty in obtaining rape convictions - by saying that the standard for consent is too limited. (I'm not sure how this works. I guess the idea is that if only cases of violent stranger rape went to trial, conviction rates would be up, though convinctions would be down.)
Citing Dworkin's observations on the nature of consent in a patriarchy as evidence that feminists would not accept even enthusiastic consent as consent. This one would actually be a point worth discussing, if you could get rid of the people who insist that feminists believe "all sex is rape." The distinction is between ideals and reality. Ideally, sex would be something that could be more freely chosen than it often is today; however, in the world we live in enthusiastic consent is a "good enough" standard.
Complaining that it's too strict to suggest that both partners should be enthusiastic about sex.
Arguing that men don't get to consent, as if feminists have somehow claimed this was okay, or that men are okay with not consenting, so women should be too. (Pick one and stick with it, guys.)

The impression I get is that the Sacks/MRA conception of feminism is now stuck sometime in the mid-80s (which, to be fair, mine was until well into the 90s, when my only knowledge of feminism came from First Amendment discussions wherein feminism and the Religious Right were lumped together as the forces of oppression), and basically sees modern feminism as a cynical grab for bargaining chips in an adversarial division of sexes rather than a movement for social justice.

What it comes down to, I think, is that MRAs have demonized feminism to such an extent that any idea a feminist proposes must be rejected on principle. Besides, under a "bargaining chip" paradigm, any concession, even one you're predisposed to, is a loss of power.

My Mental Killfile

2007-11-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

(Probably part 1 of many.)

Abortionist
Contracept as a verb
Mary Daly as representative of all feminism
Equity feminism as distinguished from gender feminism
Fiat currency
Marilyn French as representative of all feminism
Fourth wave feminism as an existing movement
Fox News as a news source
Ifeminism as a movement
"I know I'll get flamed for saying this, but..."
Islamofascism
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton as racial bogeymen
Wendy McElroy as a "good feminist"
Men's News Daily as a news source
Robin Morgan as representative of all feminism
NOW as a stand-in for all feminism
Personal responsibility as something that other people need practice more
Erin Pizzey as a "good feminist"
Political correctness used unironically
Reverse racism or reverse sexism as something as severe as the non-reverse form
Glenn Sacks as a news source
Valerie Solanas as representative of all feminism
Christina Hoff Sommers as a "good feminist"
Success objects as the equivalent of "sex objects"
World Net Daily as a news source
Cathy Young as a "good feminist"

You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising

2007-11-28T09:48:00.000-05:00

There are some interesting excerpts from a new book about outrageous advertisements from the past, and the gender stereotypes they furthered. (It lends some perspective to the common MRA complaint that the sitcom stereotype of the childish, slovenly family man is "just as bad" as the media's treatment of women.)

Unfortunately, they're being featured in the Daily Mail. Their take is basically that these are titillatingly "outrageous" (in the sense of "out there" rather than "provoking outrage") rather than actually offensive. The implication is that we as a culture have lost something in that we can't make sexist jokes any more without the butt of the joke having the audacity to complain about it; it's "political correctness" gone too far.

I'd rather live in a century without that kind of crap, thank you very much.

The Rational Actor's Libertarian Fête

2007-11-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

This poem from litbrit is utterly brilliant.

Sex and the College Girl

2007-11-26T11:56:00.000-05:00

Via Feministe: there's an incredibly interesting reprint of a 1957 Atlantic Monthly article on sex and relationships in college, the general reaction being "this is the sort of thing social conservatives want to go back to?" (And this is a story from the upper class white folks.)

One of the things that really struck me was that, despite being from the 1950s, it's a very different 1950s than we typically see (Silent Generation, indeed). Our cultural narrative of the latter half of the 20th century is almost uniformly from the perspective of the Baby Boomers - it's Forrest Gump as documentary. So the 1950s are a decade of childlike innocence, and sex is pretty much absent because the people telling the story haven't discovered it yet. Which, in a way, could explain the fascination with the 1950s so many social conservatives have - it's a return to a childhood state where we were blissfully unaware of other people's problems.

I was also struck by the uncanny but unsurprising resemblance to Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons; though there are superficial changes (integrating the universities, cellphones and computers, Wolfe's attempts at modern slang, etc.), the characters' attitudes are much closer to the ones described in this article than those of the college students I know. (Not surprising - Wolfe's own college days predated Ms. Johnson's by only a few years.)

Mac and Cheese

2007-11-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

Made mac and cheese this weekend, a variation on the recipe I usually make. It's incredibly easy, because I cheat by using Velveeta and pre-made spice mixes. Here's the recipe for both versions:

Jack and pepper sauce (what I made this time):

1/4 cup butter
2 cups milk
2 tbsp flour
8 oz. Velveeta
1/2 cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp creole seasoning

Buffalo Wing cheese sauce (my usual recipe):

1/4 cup butter
2 cups milk
2 tbsp flour
12 oz. Velveeta
1/4 cup bleu cheese, crumbled
2 tbsp hot sauce
1 tsp salt

For either sauce, just add all the ingredients and heat over low heat until the butter and cheese is melted, then pour over 1 lb. cooked pasta in a 9"x13" baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Next time: a variation with Italian cheeses, sundried tomato and garlic.

Issue Framing 101

2007-11-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

How to frame an issue in eight easy steps:

1. Compose an "ethical dilemma" hypothetical that narrows down an issue into a single "yes or no" question.

2. Demand that your opponents answer the question with a simple yes or no.

3. Accuse anyone who doesn't give a yes or no answer of evading the question.

4. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to point out how stupid the question is, of evading the question.

5. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to explain how their reasoning would change if the hypothetical changed, of evading the question.

6. Demand that your opponents who answered the question in the way expected to answer a "follow up question."

7. Accuse anyone who gives a simple answer opposite from the one your leading question or follow up leads to of being an extremist.

8. If someone asks where the questions are leading, deny that there's any ulterior motive.

We are not your fetish: race and relationships

2007-11-15T13:25:00.000-05:00

A post over at Jezebel stirred up a lot of comments at Feministing and Pandagon on the subject of racial fetishization (specifically, fetishizing Asian women) in relationships.

I've been on both sides of this. My first girlfriend was Chinese-American, and we got a lot of flack from everyone - her folks, who we had to keep the relationship hidden from because I wasn't Chinese; other Asian-Americans who assumed I was a fetishist, and I was very defensive. On the other hand, lots of white folks also assumed I was a fetishist, and when they thought they'd found a kindred spirit they said all sorts of horribly racist things.

I do think there's a difference between a fetish and a preference. I think people wearing glasses are attractive; even if I jokingly refer to it as a "glasses fetish" it's more of a preference. I'm aware here that I'm using the term "fetish" in a particular way, and it is commonly used in other ways as well, most notably as denoting exclusivity rather than inclusivity; that is, any trait that you absolutely require in order to be attracted to someone is a fetish.

With respect to race, it gets complicated (as it always does) because there are direct physical preferences, and there are trends, and there are stereotypes. Saying "I think fair skin and dark hair is attractive" is a preference. Saying "I like Asian women because they have fair skin and dark hair" is a trend. Saying "I like Asian women because they're demure and ladylike" is a stereotype.

All of these kinds of posts bring out the defensive types. The typical argument they make is "I'm not racist for having a physical type!" But as tps12 pointed out on the feministing thread:

These of course are considered attractive traits in our society in either sex, so without even having to check whether they actually are more common among Asians, the larger claim is pretty well falsified by the fact that you see way more white guy/Asian girl couples than white girl/Asian guy.

Of course, that whole gender disparity opens a whole other can of worms that I'm both unwilling and unqualified to comment upon. Though I will say that Daniel Dae Kim and Sendhil Ramamurthy (and, at least among my friends, Grant Imahara and Masi Oka) seem to be doing rather well at changing some of those perceptions.

What happens next is typically that the defensive folks acknowledge racial fetishization, but claim that their personal exclusivity is different, more noble somehow. Usually it's "I like the culture" (when it's not a rant about how feminism has "ruined Western women"). The idea is apparently that it's okay not to treat someone as a person if you think highly of the abstraction you reduce them to, or if that abstraction's not physical or sexual.

Personally, I find fair skin and dark hair attractive, the reverse (i.e., hair that's lighter than the person's skin) not so much. It's by no means the overriding factor in my dating decisions, but it's definitely a preference. I can trace some of it back to growing up in Southern California and having bad experiences with folks with blonde hair and suntanned skin, and later moving to New England and fitting in with geeks, but I'd be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that at least part of the preference is based in cultural concepts of whiteness and beauty.

So what do we do about this? Our best. Seriously, I think that trying (or more likely pretending) to adopt a Colbertian "I don't see color" doesn't work, but that doesn't mean we don't have some responsibility to try to do right by people. Personally, if the only things attracting you to your potential partner are traits shared by large groups, I feel you could probably do better (at the very least, someone who has all those traits plus individual ones that appeal to you), but if you're insistent on remaining within your "type" at the very least I'd say you have a responsibility to make sure your potential partner is on the same page, and is okay with your motivations.

Not only that, but examining exclusive preferences can improve your own life. A hell of a lot of the things we decide are mandatory in a partner aren't things that make us happy, but instead are things we insist on for stupid reasons like "I want someone my peers will acknowledge as attractive." Eliminate those, and you only increase your chances of finding someone with the traits that are really important. (Whether the important traits are "a gentle spirit" or "a nice ass" is an exercise left to the reader.)

What, no mention of Amanda Marcotte?

2007-11-14T11:47:00.000-05:00

Conservative columnist Dennis Prager has a rant up about how awful liberals are for eroding public discourse through the use of swear words.

Prager goes on to quote a few "leading cultural and political figures" (Jane Goodall, Bill Maher, and Cornel West - yeah, that's who I'd pick too as my triumvirate of leading leftist thinkers) who don't curse in their interviews but still evidence "absence of serious thought", apparently because they made statements that he doesn't agree with. Serious thought, one concludes, happens by accepting without question what conservatives tell you. Go fig. (Or don't.)

What this says to me (and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out) is that conservatives value appearances over content. (Hence all the church-going family men in the closet?) Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin (among others) say horribly sexist and racist things on a regular basis, but as long as they don't say "fuck" it's okay? Of course, when Cheney says it it's okay because it was a whispered. And Coulter saying "faggot" doesn't count, apparently - perhaps it was because she pulled the rhetorical trick of "I'm not saying this," though I suspect it had more to do with targeting John Edwards with the slur.

I'll take my foul-mouthed people who stand up for what's right over squeaky-clean bullies every time.

And now, to ruin your day...

2007-11-13T13:03:00.000-05:00

Via Shakesville comes the singularly awful story of a teenage girl who committed suicide after being verbally abused by an online friend, and her parents' reaction to finding out said "friend" was the fictitious creation of some adult neighbors.

I posted this to reddit as part of my ongoing crusade to make the typical privileged Internet crowd think about things outside their immediate interests, and it's been interesting to read the reactions there. Most of them are identical to the reactions everywhere else - this is horrible, the perpetrators of the hoax are awful people, why would someone be so mean - but there's a contingent (tangential to the 4chan/SomethingAwful/Encyclopedia Dramatica crowd, I'm assuming) that's basically casting about for someone else, anyone else, to blame. The parents (by which, of course, they mean the mother) is to blame for letting her daughter onto MySpace (even with supervision), and for leaving her alone for a whole twenty minutes. The victim is to blame for being too thin-skinned to handle discovering that the boy who said he liked her was lying about everything. But the neighbors themselves? Not their fault. Because if it were, then they might have to look at their own actions and the harm they cause. Someone suggested that the "anon" crowd is different because they go after the "guilty" - they don't. They go after the easy targets. Sure, one of the ways to become an easy target is to be so reprehensible that nobody will defend you, but it's not the only way or even the most common.

This sort of thing is bullying, and there is no excuse for it. If your "fun" involves being cruel and hurtful to other people, find a new fun.

Study: Joe's joe arrives 20 seconds faster than Lottie's latte

2007-11-13T10:07:00.000-05:00

An undergrad study which showed that women wait longer for their drinks at coffee shops has been picked up by the blogs. Slate, Consumerist, and Jezebel all have articles on it.

One of the most interesting things about this study to me is looking at all the bullshit excuses people come up with to justify the difference:

"20 seconds isn't a big deal." Actually, it's about 20% longer.

"It's because heterosexual male baristas want to look at the women for longer." Oh, well, that's all right then.

"Women order more fancy drinks." Never mind that the study controlled for that.

"They don't do it on purpose." Oh, well, that's all right then.

"Women are more likely to complain, so the barista takes the time to get it right - this is really discrimination against men for getting an inferior product!" Um, yeah, sure. You want to conduct that study, feel free. (I'm still trying to reconcile this with the idea that the pay gap is due to women *not* complaining enough about their salaries.)

"Well, *I've* never noticed it." Unless you get coffee both in and out of drag on a regular basis, I doubt you would. That's why we do studies.

"The methodology isn't good enough. I don't know what it is, but it's not good enough." Unless there's something glaring, which I don't see, that's not really a valid criticism until you conduct a better study.

Now, I'm plenty critical of a lot of scientific studies out there (particularly the evo-psych "just so stories"). I will ask "did they control for everything?" the way a lot of the detractors did. However, I recognize that that's speculation, and not a reason to totally ignore the finding. More often, what I dispute are not findings, but conclusions (evo psych is notoriously bad on this front). But this study didn't appear to actually *make* that logical leap - it just pointed out the difference. (To be fair, some of the dismissals were about drawing conclusions rather than disputing the findings - I just don't buy those conclusions or find that they justify the disparity.)

EDIT: Zuzu at Feministe has more here, making the same point about observation versus conclusion, only more elegantly.

EDIT #2: There's further discussion at Feministing, though most of that seems to be stuck in the "the study must be wrong, we just have to figure out why" stage.

The myth of "more visual"

2007-11-12T16:07:00.000-05:00

Amanda has a good post attacking the cultural narrative/evo-psych hypothesis that men are more visual.

In my experience, the reverse has been true - my female friends have a much easier time finding eye candy than I do, but I recognize that that's not because of any innate biological trait so much as the fact that women in the media get selected for a specific "look" which doesn't particularly appeal to me, whereas the range of men in the media is much more diverse. (Not to mention the fact that men in television and film tend to get to play more interesting roles than the "designated hot girl.")

More on... what a more on.

2007-11-09T07:35:00.000-05:00

Apparently Dr. Spurr (she of the women in relationships need to lie back and think of England article in the Daily Mail) also published a similar article in the Times Online. Gee, think she's got a book out or something?

The article pretty much says the same stuff as the other article: lack of sex is destroying relationships, and it's feminists' fault for having the audacity to suggest that women enjoy it rather than consider it a chore. But the follow-up commentary on the feminist blogs has been better on this one. Feministing takes the piece on, as does The F Word. Hugo Schwyzer has two posts on the topic.

Ron Paul, Libertarianism and Abortion

2007-11-07T11:22:00.001-05:00

Shakesville War II appears to have begun over the political phenomenon that is Ron Paul and the larger question, asked by Melissa McEwen, of how people who profess to hold a consistent libertarian philosophy can be anti-abortion.

I know folks I consider good people who identify as libertarian, including one that's run for political office as such. But they tend to be in liberal communities like Boston and San Francisco, rather than conservative communities like Orange County, and the libertarian movements in these communities (being small, and in need of more supporters) tend to take on the political positions of the people around them.

In the case of liberal communities, it means an emphasis on the wrongness of criminalizing drugs, and support for gay rights and reproductive freedom. Some of them say the state has no business involved in marriage, but they concede that if it's going to be it certainly has no business telling some people they can marry and others they can't.

In conservative communities, it means an emphasis on the wrongness of taxes and gun control, and support for anti-abortion laws and increasing the power of religion, with justifications that have always seemed like handwaving to me.

The most popular form of handwaving these days seems to be federalist buck-passing: candidates for national office declare that positions they can't justify under a libertarian philosophy should be left to the states; candidates for state office (if they can't get statewide support for their measure) say it should be left to local government. I'm not all that sure what candidates for local government do - pass the buck back up to the state/fed by claiming that the protection of rights by those levels of government is interfering with the democratic process?

In the case of reproductive freedom (a term I use to encompass both abortion and contraception), I'm just going to plagiarize myself and use language I originally wrote for the Shakesville thread, in response to someone making the typical attempt to reconcile anti-abortion with libertarianism by calling it a use of force (the words used in the original reply, as will become obvious, were "life or death situation"):

When they call terrorism a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to fight it, they're not libertarian. When they call health care a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty (if you call taxation reducing liberty, which they tend to) to promote it, they're not libertarian. When they call drug abuse a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to discourage it, they're not libertarian. When they call shooting people a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to control guns, they're not libertarian.

But abortion is different. You can call it a stark life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to outlaw it. Guess what the difference is?

What it comes down to is that, in my experience, libertarianism is a very self-centered philosophy. Not that libertarians are all self-centered as we typically understand the term, but the choice of issues, and the positions on the issues, reflect only that which is important to their overwhelmingly white/straight/male/rich (I've met libs who weren't all of these, but never any who weren't at least two out of the four) base. Hence the enormous emphasis on the guns, drugs and taxes trifecta, and the relative indifference to issues of abortion, gay rights, racism, sexism, etc. (except for the parts of those issues that could conceivably affect them, like child support, hate crime laws, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, etc.)

Cerise: Let's Talk About Sex

2007-11-06T22:22:00.000-05:00

The November issue of Cerise, focusing on sex in gaming, is out. I particularly recommend Latoya Peterson's Immaculate Reception:

Gamers are getting older but our games are still rated PG.

I think this is a little bit of a problem....

Think of Lulu and Wakka from Final Fantasy X. The entire game they remain a respectful distance apart, with Lulu remaining cold and aloof. (Yes, I know, grieving for Chappu, but still!) The game ends, Lulu and Wakka are in love…and she’s still aloof. Then they give birth to a child, Vidina.

To be honest, I would not have been surprised if SquareEnix had mentioned that sex was not involved in the conception of little Vidina. Obviously, Lulu and Wakka cast Babyaga, and after the third perfect cast, they were rewarded with a child.

*sigh*

Twilight Heroes

2007-11-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

There's a new free online RPG out called Twilight Heroes. It looks similar to Kingdom of Loathing, but with a superhero theme and a more subdued sense of humor. It's timing out a lot for me right now, but it looks pretty cool when it's running.

Municipal Wi-Fi: A Promise Unfulfilled?

2007-11-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

Jeff Merron at InformationWeek writes about the unfulfilled promise of municipal WiFi. His main complaints appear to be (a) spotty coverage, (b) insufficient consumer demand, and (c) inability for the networks to turn a profit. His perspective is much more that of the service provider than the user, which probably explains why his issues with municipal WiFi are so different from mine. (Of course, these differences may be part of the problem - the providers don't seem to have a good idea of what the users want.)

Buffalo's municipal WiFi is pretty unusable for me; it has so many protections against abuses of the service that all use is rendered difficult. First off, the service is limited to web use. Files can't be downloaded. Instant messaging clients don't work. The web service itself is horribly slow. And, most damagingly, it's heavily censored, with what appears to be a really heavy-handed keyword approach. If I want to use WiFi downtown, my only real choice is to find an institution (like the public library) that offers real access.

Further discussion at Slashdot.

Daily Mail advises women to put out or get out

2007-11-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

According to the Daily Mail, a "leading female therapist" says that women need to learn to say yes in the bedroom. Because it's apparently easier to solve these problems by fiat, and of course it's not going to lead to any sort of resentment on behalf of the person being asked to make such accomodation. Oh, and it's always women who are the ones who say "no."

The therapist goes on to blame feminism for making women "selfish" enough to think that sex is something they should enjoy too, with all sorts of leaps of logic I can't really follow - but even I know enough history to know that this sort of thing didn't start in the 1960s.

I'm not sure what makes one a "leading" therapist, anyway. In general, it seems to be media exposure, which - get this - is going to be influenced by how saleable your message is rather than how much you help people. And there's a contingent of society who's eager to find authority figures to lend their imprimatur to "those evil women need to stop refusing me sex."

As a non-therapist but a human being with an interest in seeing people avoid miserable relationships in favor of happy ones, I'd suggest that any solution to this sort of problem which doesn't address the underlying reasons for the difference is doomed to failure. A unilateral decision that one partner should just agree to lie back and thing of England on a regular basis is going to provoke as much resentment (if not more) than the decision that the partner who is dissatisfied with the frequency should just deal with it on his/her own.

Really, I should just add "was published in the Daily Mail" as another indicator that something isn't worth taking seriously.

Further discussion on Reddit, if you don't mind the rampant misogyny.

"Advice Goddess": Marrying the Hatchet

2007-11-01T11:55:00.000-04:00

There's a column from Amy Alkon, "Advice Goddess," that's getting a lot of discussion on Reddit today. An advice-seeker writes in:

My husband of two months has always treated me very well, and is usually thoughtful. But, one week before our wedding, he broke a promise. I hate the whole stripper thing, so he agreed to a coed party at a dueling piano bar. There was a strip club next door, but he promised he wouldn’t go in. All was well until I learned that he and his brother (who’s nothing but trouble) were at the strip club. I went over and went crazy and tossed an ashtray at his head. I was kicked out, they followed, and his brother yelled at me. I wanted to call off the wedding, but we still got married. Since then, I keep bringing this up and he keeps begging for forgiveness, saying he’d never been so drunk, and he didn’t know what he was doing. I just can’t understand how he could hurt me this way.

The discussions that follow are exemplars of clashing narratives. On the one side, we've got the misogynists complaining about how women are controlling harpies, and how they're as abusive as men. On the other side, we've got folks (forget being neutral, let's call them "voices of reason") pointing out that, while her violent response was unacceptable, two wrongs don't make a right, and it doesn't excuse his own broken promise.

Alkon, unsurprisingly, sides with the misogynists. The bulk of her reply is about the ashtray sentence - his breaking of his promise is dismissed with a "Bummer, human nature happens." After that, she pretty much verbally abuses the woman for having a problem with her fiance going to a strip club, implying that she went through with the marriage out of greed, that she's just trying to control him. (Then there's the random fat-bashing at the end, which came out of left field.)

This sort of thing is Alkon's bread and butter. Her angle as "Advice Goddess" is to be hipper than Dear Abby, Ann Landers, etc. by (a) being snarkier and (b) being more about entertaining the readers than helping the advice-seeker. She also tends toward the Ann Coulter style of gaining currency by being a woman who tells misogynist men what they want to hear - in this case, that breaking a promise isn't so bad, and that women shouldn't be able to ask anything of men they're in relationships with.

Here's my advice, not that anyone asked:

If your partner asks something of you that you're not comfortable with, you don't agree to it and then break the promise. You tell them it's a problem, and you try to work out a solution that's acceptable. Maybe the solution is that it's not enough of a big deal to one partner, maybe it's a compromise promise, maybe it's deciding that this is an irreconcilable difference. But you don't get to have your cake and eat it too by telling your partner you're okay with the condition and then breaking it.

Now what's done is done, and you have the choice of what to do about it, which basically boils down to staying or leaving. I suppose there's a third option, which is trying to use the broken promise to effect some other concession from him, but I really abhor the idea of bartering misdeeds, which is why the whole thing about the ashtray doesn't exculpate the fiance. This is a relationship, presumably, not a hostile negotiation.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

2007-11-01T07:26:00.000-04:00

Apparently Joss Whedon is going to be creating a new series. This one's to be called Dollhouse and will star Eliza Dushku in a kind of Pretender/Matrix hybrid. It actually looks quite awesome - I might be more skeptical with someone else at the helm that it would turn into another cleavage 'n' kung fu series, but Joss has the feminist cred, and I trust he'll go beyond that. Actually, my biggest reservation is that it's on FOX, and I don't know if they learned their lesson from Firefly about being too quick to cancel genre shows.

Men and attractiveness

2007-10-31T16:05:00.000-04:00

The theme of the day seems to be the idea that heterosexual women, despite the label, aren't actually attracted to men.

Samhita at Feministing and Jill at Feministe take on this post from Craigslist. It's nothing new, just another in the long line of misogynist screeds about how women don't care about attractiveness, but just want guys with money and power.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon and Kyso Kisaen at PunkAssBlog take on Joel Stein's piece on Halloween saying that "neither gender wants men to try to be sexy." (As PunkAssCommenter junk science points out, "Of course they do. They just don't want them to fail at it.")

I've never thought of myself as particularly attractive on a purely physical level; never have been, probably never will be, though the reaction varies quite a bit depending on whose gaze we're talking about. (On the other hand, in a society that frowns on women being open about who they're attracted to, how the hell am I supposed to know?

I think this is one of the places this idea comes from (besides good old wishful thinking): there seems to be much less of a socially forced standard of attractiveness with respect to men's appearances. Women are able to honestly disagree among themselves about who they find attractive without catching too much shit for it; men are supposed to agree that the hottie du jour is highly attractive, and any debate is merely over ranking.

This idea also a pernicious way of taking agency away from women: if women aren't attracted to men, then their choices with regard to relationships and sex are presumably based on other factors. Since we as a society have decided that attraction is a primary component of love (and vice versa), a relationship not based on attraction is presumptively less valid, and so their decision that they're not interested can be disregarded.