This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. I told you I was going to steal that image.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Humm….. I may have missed something.
…Don’t make me break out THE MAN TOILET story again, plz?
Yeah, reminders that women have digestive systems are seen as pretty horrifying in a lot of quarters. And women who enjoy potty humor are seen as “acting like a guy.”
Nope.
Generally, (“feminine”) women aren’t expected to have bodily functions – it’s unladylike.
I think there’s particular ways that men are “supposed to” display anger, rather than other (supposedly feminine) ways.
I worked for years as a camp counselor, and I remember a group of boys, ten years old or so, who were dumbstruck when a girl passed gas. They were talking about it in the cabin when I came in, and were just shocked when I told them, yeah, its’ really true: girls do fart.
Paul:
SG:
Yeah, okay, it’s gendered too. On the subject of ads, there’s another one about toilet paper targeting what women are really concerned about – cleanliness.
Yeesh.
Breathing?
Oh, shitting gets gendered, too.
There’s this thing — I dunno if it rises to level of a societal gender expectation thing or not, though — there’s this thing where men are supposed to be Shameless Shitters, and women… well… we’re expected to be shameful shitters and hide even the thought that we do, in fact, shit. (And if we must entertain that thought, well, we must cloak it in euphemisms and never ever come out and say, “women poop too.”)
(A Shameless Shitter is one who does not cough to conceal noises and does not worry about their odors or who can smell or hear what they’re doing in the loo, whether its a public restroom, the privacy of one’s own home, or any loo in between.)
SG:
Same things go for women – there are supposedly acceptable ways for a woman to express anger, although they really, really shouldn’t in the first place.
I don’t care about cleanliness. What manly man even needs toilet paper?
Oh, I hate that ad. I’m pretty sure there’s something along the lines of “There’s no such thing as too soft” being said as well.
Rev. BDC:
I’m not even sure about that one. I remember being taught in finishing school that a lady should never breathe through her mouth and should always breathe quietly.
Wait…eating amd walking are gendered??!!
Caine, maybe you’ve discussed this before but: you went to finishing school?
Fraid not; I see jokes occasionally about how supposedly “girls don’t poop.”
Tony:
Fuck yes. What does a ManlyMan™ eat? Steak and potatoes! What does a WomanlyWoman™ eat? Salad and fruit. And not too much of it, either!*
Walking is intensely gendered and I won’t even get into the shoe differences. Walking was the one thing I kept getting scolded over in finishing school – we had been taught how to measure the appropriate foot to foot distance for ourselves and to always walk in a ladylike manner. Striding was masculine. I’m a strider.
*I also remember being taught how to take ladylike bites and to always leave the table hungry. It’s not feminine to stuff yourself.
Small threadrupt: Does anyone here know what the adult children of anti-vaxxers should do when they grow up and want to engage in a little herd immunity? Obviously, at this point any vaccine schedule no longer applies, so…it just seems incredibly daunting to try to make up for all that lost time now.
And then there’s this weird guilt on top of it, like I’m betraying my mother. Bah.
:) (I admit that I want to downvote it, just ’cause no one has. Strange impulse.)
***
Think about it, though Even leaving aside sleep, aren’t there kinds of breathing considered masculine and feminine?
…given Caine, the image in my head was of a red-hot forged blade being quenched in water to temper it.
Pteryxx:
Soooooo, about that man toilet story..?
Yes. Ladies eat all dainty and neat and good foods and hardly anything at all usually. Ladies walk gracefully, or sexually with swinging hips and the only noise comes from the tap of high heels. No stomps, storming or striding around like a bull with your head down. Practice with a book on your head to see how much this sucks.
Caine:
Don’t forget yogurt!
Yogurt is intensely gendered, bizarrely.
Paul:
Yes. And yes, I’m that old. (55). I was supposed to go twice. I started finishing school when I was 10. Maybe 11. I don’t really remember anymore. That went on for two years. I was also looking at getting sent off to a private three year finishing school once I was done with high school. However, I graduated early and got the fuck out of the family house and away from my family at 17.
Pteryxx:
Didn’t work. I know how to be a lady, I choose not to be one.
Caerie:
Yes, it is. To a disconcerting and uncomfortable point, at least in the U.S. When it comes to Chez Caine, it’s Mister who eats the stuff. I want nothing to do with it.
Wow, JAL, that brought back a memory of walking with a book on my head as a kid, competing with my sister. We saw someone doing it in a Warner Bros cartoon, I think. I was way better than her. I’m pretty sure one of my brothers punched me. I had nine, and they were always punching me, so it’s a safe bet.
OMG! You people are so smart. Someone has got to find a non gendered activity (where is Louis when we need him?)
Art?
Skydiving?
Skiing?
Studying?
@Mellow monkey.
My advice go take the problem to a GP they’ll probably work out a way to get them all caught up.
JAL:
Oh fuck yes, I remember that. Posture, ladies, posture! We were placed in fencing class to improve posture and gracefulness.
Does Louis skydive? (Sorry, but it seemed necessary.)
Damn. I think this has been one of the most informative/enlightening Lounge threads I have seen.
Tony:
Absolutely not. Gendered to the hilt.
I drag my feet, have my dead down as much as possible and always try to do something with one hand – putting them in pockets, holding something, purse straps, smoking. Walking with both arms swinging feels so weird unless I’m carrying something in both hands.
So, basically, in the exact opposite way my military father tried to train me. Of course, I was keeping my head down since before I can remember but I def. remember trying to be as quiet as possible before the “soldier training” attempt kicked it. After that, I just said fuck it. Now walking without shuffling is a very hard thing to do and I have to think about it.
Talk to your doctor.
***
No, no, no, no.
Writing?
Bicycling?
Tony:
*Snorts* Oh, please. Absolutely fucking gendered. Started out gendered. Remains gendered. Gets toxically gendered when there’s a motor on the bike. Ever hear of “riding bitch”?
Nope.
Ok, I give up.
::slumps off with pouty face::
michaeld:
Yeah, I’ll have to do that. I just wish there was some sort of “What to Expect When You’ve Escaped from Anti-Vaxxers” type briefer.
SC:
Can you elaborate on the gendered nature of studying?
Wait..I have it!
Watching movies!
I’ll give it one more shot:
going to the dentist?
(I don’t have any strong expectation that this one will hold up, but off the top of my head I can’t think of a counterexample.)
Well, there’s some that goes “guys don’t but girls do.” But even when guys are allowed/expected to study the study habits are suppose to be different from girls. Girls do the multi-colored highlighters with everything color coded. Guys are sloppy note takers while girls are neat. Guys are the ones that do late last minute cramming while girls plan. Girls do gossiping study groups while guys are snarfing pizzas and playing games during their study groups.
Hmm..
There’s two ways I’ve seen people react to it.
Women go, even for just check ups, because they organize/plan ahead and men only go in an emergency.
Or there’s the women don’t need to go because they take care of themselves better. Manly men doing stupid dangerous work/play and not heeding their nagging wife to brush their teeth are the ones that need a dentist. Of course, those manly men are never afraid to go – they just don’t need to or can’t go.
Tony:
Excuse me?
Guy movies.
Chick flicks.
Girls cover their eyes and hide and cringe in fear to strong manly man boyfriends who do none of those things. Women are usually allowed and expected to react emotionally, while men are not, especially for crying. And of course, if there’s snacking while watching the rules of eating apply.
Hell, just how one sits to do anything, including watching a movie is gendered.
Tony, I don’t mean to be unkind, but could you try to think these through yourself before tossing them out there and expecting others to do your work for you?
***
Leaving aside how often men and women respectively go and for what purposes… Who’s the dentist? And who’s the dental hygienist?*
*This latter is one of the most gender-segregated occupations in the US. Even assuming every other aspect of a dentist visit is ungendered, this is a powerful reminder of gender roles.
SG:
Note who the commercial is specifically targeted to, with a sign and everything: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhGynsIVudM
SG:
Nope. There’s still the masculine expectation to get by with as little pain medication as possible, hurry up, gotta get back to work, all that. There’s also the sense that women go because vanity, men go because need.
Android app fail: “Pizza Maker is a cooking game for girls and kids.”
Interrupts current discussion with a Llewelly sighting!
Josh:
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Weirdly in the US. Much of the rest of the world understands that plain yogurt is also a savory cooking ingredient, not just a “Special Gift from you to you” when you’re feeling one of those “I want to indulge” moments in front of a fireplace while hubby is out.
Maybe it’s for girls and goats.
Fun for a girl or a goat!
Strong for a goat but made for a woman!
Yes, it’s made from milk.
For girls and their kids.
Yogurt is a weird case… it is intensely gendered, and then also infantilized thanks to the existence of “Go-gurt.”
Yogurt isn’t even a food anymore in America. It is almost exclusively marketed as a “snack” in tiny little cups along with heavily-processed fruit-like goop in the bottom of the cup. They’ve sucked all of the good out of it, while pretending that a 60-calorie cup o’ nothing is a magical indulgence for America’s women. And occasionally men, but in the commercials they always make the man look foolish… no surprise there.
Saw a sign at a salvage store advertizing that they sell “INSULTED WIRING!”
@Mellow Monkey: Caerie
“What to Expect When You’ve Escaped from Anti-Vaxxers”
Couple dozen needles over a year or two? That’s my guess ;p
IJoe:
No, it really isn’t weird at all. See previous comments on the nature of gendered eating. In that context, it makes perfect sense. It fulfills the requirements for ladylike eating, won’t satisfy hunger in approved fashion and won’t make you all uglified (fat).
Caine @1042:
I was thinking more about the process of watching movies, but JAL dashed that to bits.
Tony:
The whole “guy movies” “chick flicks” extends into the watching of said movies.
I’d have gone for some sort of persistent unconscious state Tony…. being in a coma is probably close as you can get to genderless… though it maybe stretching the meaning of action.
Nope. Lady comas require full makeup and no sweaty hair. It’s like birthing.
Caine:
“Weird” wasn’t the right word. Maybe “ultimate” would be better… yogurt is a food that has transcended food and has become some other weird thing… especially Activia, which seems to be promising a semi-laxative negative calorie eating disorder thing.
IJoe:
Yeah, that caters to the new agey nonsense along with being yet another point in the “yes, shitting is gendered” category.
There’s always this mystical glow from giving birth specifically but women in general are just suppose to glow.
How the fuck did women glow before makeup?
I haven’t and will never glow. If I’m suppose to give off a form of light, I’m going to be a spotlight to single out douchebags.
I never ate yoghurt (pronounced with an angry falsetto whine) as a young male until I discovered a local speciality dairy makes the most yummy blueberry yoghurt. Now I haz a sad when it’s out of stock at the supermarket. Yes, eating is/was as gendered as anything else. I’m glad to enjoy all sorts of things in my middle age that were considered off-limits to me as a youngster. Decent theatre, for one.
JAL! I mislaid my Goodreads password and couldn’t send you a message, but I found it again. Are you somewhere where you can receive a few books?
JAL:
There’s always been cosmetics. At least from the time there was any sort of record keeping. There are ancient Egyptian papyruses detailing how to make cosmetics, hair dye, and contraceptives. Hell, make-up is mentioned in the bible, more than once.
Markita! I sure can accept books where I’m at. I haven’t moved and plans to move are stalled in negotiations with the parents. Tomorrow is the day we revisit this issue.
mildlymagnificent
Nope. Some instruments are ‘ladylike’, and even on those ones until very recently female musicians didn’t pass auditions for professional orchestras because their playing wasn’t ‘firm’ or ‘strong’ enough. The only reason this changed it because of the practice of putting a screen between the judges and the applicant so they couldn’t see who was playing (a practice that was introduced for exactly this reason). Also see the story of the trombonist earlier in this thread.
Kinda skimming….
–
Yes. They managed to pull off that rarest of beasts, the Amicable Divorce, and are going to try to stay friends, which means she’s not entirely lost; she’s still got a character in the Game, for instance. But since she’s having to support herself, now, and didn’t get the chance to finish her college course that she’d laid out, she’s basically got a high school diploma to work with. Her work hours are likely, eventually, to mean that she won’t be able to play.
–
*hug* for Weed Monkey. I’m glad that there are no serious long-term effects expected.
Unfortunately, we are all presumed mortal, until proven otherwise.
–
rq: Buying a house means you can plant the whole yard in catnip if you want to, and then watch the neighborhood cats roll around in it.
:)
–
May BossNurse’s recovery from the plague continue unabated.
–
O-o
Also…the 1790s? Damn, you’re old!
:D
–
Tony, all tentacles crossed on behalf of your new job.
–
Not sure if it’s what you mean, Tony, and what I have is anecdata (let me show you it!); but there are activities that are, in general, perceived as stereotypically gendered activities—cooking, or playing the flute come to mind—except where status becomes involved; where women cook for their families, but “great chefs” are men; if you have 20 flutists in high school or college, 18 or 19 of them will be female—but the top-of-the-line, world-renowned professionals are male.
–
What? Another page?!?
*sigh*
All this heavy-duty, plague-infected sleeping isn’t going to help me keep up….
–
oh dear
I missed some stuff.
here are some tunes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEwsX_7c52k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6W_a2U-bIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnBwm590S9k
I trust to the Demon Preview.
Oh, duh! I should’ve remembered that. I remember learning that when I read about Cleopatra and the hot stick-like things (? memory is failing here) they heated up to use for applying eyeliner. I kept thinking OUCH.
This is very true. Because, as with the firefighter couple that Portia(?) (Socio-Gen? I’m not sure which firefighter story this is and there’s three pages of thread to hunt through.) mentioned earlier, the men are offered these positions, and women who ask for them still don’t get them.
JAL, kohl.
Me:
Uh, for clarity I should have included I was ten at the time and makeup being that old was mind blowing. I thought I would never forget fact. I haven’t forgotten it, I’ve just learned a whole lot more since then.
I don’t know if it’s cause I’m drunk now or if the writings gotten better but I am actually enjoying these last two X-Files partner and I have watched tonight.
cicely:
Yeah, pahe 2 is the gender discussion thread. Grab some popcorn. It really is interesting.
Ah! Thanks.
–
(I didn’t see this post before my last comment. )
Once you see it, you can never unsee it…
Caine, thanks for the link on kohl. I’m always learning. It’s still used, and, ugh, is mostly made of lead sulfide.
I’m getting the impression that these days kohl is not applied hot. I’m seeing sources that say to apply it at room temperature or even straight out of the fridge.
Still, what Paul said.
Yeah, now I’m wondering if my memory is wrong or the book was. I mean it was fiction but historical fiction should be well researched.
Paul:
Yes. Lead was a common ingredient in cosmetics. So were things like bi-chloride of mercury. I have a lot of old ‘household’ books and they all contain recipes for cosmetics using such ingredients. Lead was also popular in many health remedies, such as this one:
Eye-Water for Weak and Inflamed Eyes
Sugar of lead, 5 grains; sulphate of zinc, 5 grains; rose water, 2 ounces; morpine, 1 grain.
That one is from the mid 1800s.
glowing
is not something you’ll ever catch me doing. Basking, relaxing, in a cuddle-puddle (OMCC, cuddle puddles!), occasionally radiating an aura of evil and mischief, yes. But never “glowing”.
Then again, aside from having hair down to there, I’m not what you’d call “girly” or particularly “feminine”. I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy, and prefer “guy things” (gaming, action-y movies, “crude” comedy), but it doesn’t make me any less a woman. Neither does the fact that I fart, burp, scratch myself in awkward places, or like beer and pizza.
Aaaand I have no fucking clue where I was going with that.
Sorry.
I’m stoned.
Other things:
After 6 days without hot water, it finally was fixed a couple of hours ago. Only to find out our roof leaks from the upstairs apartment. This of course was after the workers left and they were there just to fix the water heater anyways. There’s a bucket under it and the Landlord wasn’t pleased to have me bother her. She sucks as a landlord. Flexible on rent and sketchy on everything else. Like with the part needed for the water heater, she told us on the 1st the delivery for the part would come that day. Find out later, she knew it wouldn’t be because she wouldn’t pay extra out of pocket and wait for reimbursement from the property owner.
————-
For those (I know at least one person, though I can’t remember who) that like my Kindle Buffet link, here’s Kindle Social, which does daily spotlights and categories for easier searching. Kindle Social deals with books that are just free all the time (unlike Kindle Buffet) and special time limited offers (like Kindle Buffet).
—————–
Also, I’ve probably missed where this was discussed before, but why is the link preview so weird? I hope that’s fixed, it’s so annoying and totally messes everything up.
*crossed fingers* Hope it comes out all right.
JAL, your memory’s not wrong. Here is someone mentioning hot sticks. But I have no idea if this is accurate.
WMDKitty:
You cracked me up. I am jealous you are high. Hopefully this time nect month I can afford some herb….
****
Hey, what about drugs?
Coke?
Marijuana?
Alcohol?
Are they gendered?
(Damn, can’t let this go)
Tony, I really can’t think of a single thing. You’re just now taking the red pill?
Alcohol – OMG yes. You’re a bartender – you should know about girly-frou-frou drinks! Beer & whisky is for MEN, sweet stuff and low-cal stuff etc for women. And let’s not go from perceptions to what can happen when a woman is drunk/stoned in public.
Tony,
http://boy.urbanup.com/1451116
http://girl.urbanup.com/1074562
Death.
Tony, yes, I think drugs can be gendered too – the first thing that comes to mind is the addition of whore to any drug a woman might be doing. As for alcohol, oh yes. Just think – drunken slut, drunk bimbos, etc. (We had a fine example of a sexist asshole going on about drunk bimbos in the gang rape thread.) [Raging Bee’s comments]
Egyptian book of the dead:
“A man says this speech when he is pure, clean, dressed in fresh clothes, shod in white sandals, painted with eye-paint, anointed with the finest oil of myrrh.”
While you’re at it, don’t think for a second about exercise. Men muscle up, ladies don’t lift heavy, muscles on a woman are ugly… but look at this for a twist: http://jezebel.com/5973202/mac-put-a-female-bodybuilder-in-a-makeup-ad-and-its-beautiful
Godsdammit. I am also having this discussion with T, who took several gender studies and/or psychology courses in college. Everything I come up with is gendered.
Joe, I blame you :)
John: http://www.whiteladyfunerals.com.au/
http://www.peoplesflowernetwork.com/blog/post.cfm/funeral-flowers-for-men
Tony
I can’t speak for the other drugs. My experience has been that most users are male, but you run into “stoner chicks” fairly frequently. I haven’t noticed a huge amount of judgement or specific condemnation for being female and enjoying the herb, but it could be that I’m not noticing what’s right in front of me. Well… there was that one black guy that was impressed that the little white girl could hold that much smoke. *shrugs*
It’s probably safe to assume that sexism pervades all aspects of society, including drug culture.
On my way home today, my increasingly deformed rear wheel broke off my rear shifter (or something did, and I know it’s been catching occasionally), rendering my bike unridable. I carried it home, and now I get to spend tomorrow trying to figure out what I can do to fix it. I am very tired now, and depressed. I’m going to go lie down now, and try not to think for a while.
I’m pretty sure this is Rebecca Watson’s fault, if anything is.
I have it!
Even T has no refutation—-sleeping!
Rebecca is only responsible for the influence of sexism in American culture. Seeing as gendered activities are unrelated to sexism…no, I really cannot finish that.
All my good e-cigarette hardware and juice has failed. I’ve had to resort to back-up devices which I’m very much not happy about. Grr.
Bzzzt! Brought up on page 2. It is.
Personal:
Oh! Another thing, when mom brought the Little One back home to day she informed me on more of Step-dad’s stupidity. He wants their female cat to have a litter of kittens first before getting neutered. It’ll make her more mother-y and cuddle-y and shit. Mom is against this. I literally fucking facepalmed. I appreciate the warning, which is actually so I don’t flip in front of him. My discovery and opinion of his thoughts/actions previously has been badly received by him so it’s just better that I can prepare myself.
Tony:
Nope. We covered that one under breathing.
JAL:
Does he have any plan for what to do with alitter of kittens?
Wow, JAL. Is that evolutionary psychology for cats now? Even the queens can’t catch a break!
Besides, my bestest cuddle buddy kitteh was a tom.
I’m back to Manhood in America and I’m now reading about the mid-nineteenth century obsession with sexual self control and came across spermatic economy.
*The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America, G.J. Barker-Benfield
As people here have shown, pretty much anything gets gendered. I can’t personally think of a thing that’s immune to gendering.
What you have to keep in mind though is that it’s culture specific. Pharyngula culture will hopefully (at least I hope so) gender less things than a YouTube comment field. That for instance the work many here have done on gendered slurs. People have over some time negotiated that slurs should not be gendered here. So if you ask “are slurs gendered” the answer would depend on whether the question relates to 1: Here and now in this setting, 2: Most commonly/society at large, 3: Ever.
In this case it’s 1: No, 2: Yes, 3: Yes. And in respect to gendering of things in general the answer to 3 is always yes. There is no thing(that’s reasonably cross cultural) that hasn’t been gendered somewhere sometime.
Previous plan didn’t work. Now seeking other distractions.
Caine
A very similar superstition is found in Taoism.
G’night, Pharyngula.
Dalillama, coitus reservatus.
Paging mildlymagnificent! Drop me an email at cajela at the gmail if you would like to have lunch or coffee in a couple of weeks.
Good morning and may I say, I have never yet had such an educational morning!
Some of the discussion was familiar to me, most of it wasn’t – thanks, Joe, for the question!
JAL
@ 1066 – I second that kind of a spotlight.
Tony
I think you’re stuck living in a totally gendered world. Sadly, as are we all.
Caine
Thanks for the two-spirit link (that was you, right?)!
+++
I had some other things I wanted to say, but I’ve since forgotten them (long thread).
Oh, hair – I am probably soon going to fall into the married-woman=short-hair bit, because my hair will finally be long enough to donate. When my sister cut my hair, I never really thought about what it looked like and more-or-less hated it. Since I’ve started getting it professionally cut (due to absence of sister – overseas), I’ve gotten comments about how it has great colour and the hair dresser is always surprised I’ve never had it dyed or otherwise altered. So I decided that, since it’s already nearly long enough, to grow it out that extra little bit and donate it.
Now I just have to figure out how to donate it. /random story
Radium.
Women do glow.
John Morales
Link?
Azkyroth
Would uranium be a gender-neutral radioactive mineral? In my mind, radium is too close to radfem.
rq, link.
John Morales
Oh but that means men glow, too. So technically glowing is an ungendered ‘activity’. Yes? :)
Alethea:
THANK YOU. I have to recalibrate my mind about the dress etc, but DEM ARMS. *swoons* (Also, the heck with Vogue, linked in that article… female athletes are functional, that’s why they’re athletes!)
You’ve been busy tonight!
It was all a very interesting and educational read. Thank you.
For the curious – and this is gonna be portcullised soon:
Kat is at MAGFest. There is no decent Internet connection there cause a couple thousand geeks all using their 4G connections murders the signal. It’s super-fun, but also super-exhausting.
rq,
Yes. :)
Dalilama @1100: I own a bike store and once had the very best job of teaching people how to fix bikes. If there’s anything I can do to help please drop me a line coelecanth28, the googlingator’s mail thingy.
Shit spelled the nym wrong: That’d be Dalillama in my 1126.
alethea. Message sent – and hasn’t reappeared as an abject failure.
FossilFishy
How’s the
houseshed? :)Ha! I thought that was going to be some sort of parody site. I can’t believe it’s actually called White Lady Funerals.
Hey rq. Unchanged from the last report. But really, if your going to have a third of a shed having the north-west third, which is obviously the most important third, is good.
It’s been hot here, really, really hot. Plus 40 and above and the wind’s been blowing. I’m pretty sure there’s OH&S rules about when they can work in the heat.
It feels like the run up to the Black Saturday bushfires, our section of which came 3K from my place, took out 8 houses and killed two people. I’m having to deliberately stop myself from checking the bushfire website every 5 minutes.
With that heat, I was going to ask – how are the bushfires this year? :/ I haven’t heard much from my cousins yet, but they usually hit around this time of year (the bushfires, not my cousins).
And I should think there are rules about working in such heat, over 40? Yeow. Is it humid, as well? As a Canadian, I sympathise with the inability to withstand heat.
(Although, at that temperature, nothing is soothing – especially the wind. Driving across Australia was the first time my dad acknowledged the usefulness of air conditioning. At 39 degrees, the wind blowing through the window did not have a cooling effect…)
Well, thanks again, Horde, for another eye-opening
W
T
F
moment. It was the yoghurt that did it. I read that and I thought “holy shit. Yoghurt really is gendered. Merciful buggery, it is so gendered. How is that possible? It’s just sort of…like, wet cheese!” Now I’ve been racking my brains for the past hour trying to outsmart y’all on the gendered activities front, just in the sort of residual hope that that was even possible, and I can’t.
I thought I could gotcha with ‘smoking’, but then I remembered that I once got told I held my cigarette ‘like a girl’ (wedged between fore-and mid-finger rather than held between those two and the thumb, apparently). So yeah, the rabbit hole goes all the way down and you helped me see that.
You know when you talk about convincing the fringes, waverers and lurkers? Hi. Please keep going.
Yup, there’s even studies that show that above 30 I think, having a fan blowing on you just speeds dehydration rather than cooling you off.
We had a wave of thunderstorms roll through in the late afternoon. They started a couple of grassfires and at last count 4 bush fires, all of which are now controlled or contained. There are some very tired people out there who have my profound gratitude.
I heard that Tasmania has been copping it pretty badly with the bushfires, but here in Victoria it hasn’t been too bad yet. There’s another week or so of this weather predicted, I’m pretty nervous about it.
And that said, I must to bed. Mrs. Fishy and the Small Fry are asleep outside in the tent. I declined because I thought there was no way I was going to get a good night sleep crammed in there with them. On the other hand it’s still 28 in here. It’s a tough call, a big comfy too hot bed all to myself or a cool, cramped therma-rest…. I think I won’t disturb them, that way at least 2/3 of Team Fishy will be assured of a good sleep.
Night.
Bushfires? Tasmania’s pretty much on fire across the south except in Hobart itself. They had to rescue people by sea from that little peninsula appendix thingie because all the roads were done for and the fire had swept all the way down to the water’s edge. There was another non-beachside town where everybody still there had to jump into the canal/ creek/ river in the main street when the fire came through. They’ve lost over a 100 properties over an area of nearly 3000 hectares.
There’s one report that someone might have died – but that came from a fire crew who had to shelter in their truck as the fire came through and during that time they thought they saw a bloke trying to fight the fire at his house. And he’s not around. But seeing as all the power lines are down (burnt to a crisp) and most of the phone towers are out of action, there’s no way to know just yet whether the lack of phone response from anyone means anything or not.
Tasmania has a fire problem the rest of us don’t have – though we have much more fire on the mainland than they do. There are no termites there. So what falls to the ground stays there. It also means they have many more timber houses as well as stacks of firewood near their houses, because it’s “safe” (but only from termites). So when a fire starts, there’s decades of fuel just waiting for its chance to go up like a candle.
I really enjoyed Make Mine a Double, about women and drinking.
Alethea
I can’t stop staring at the photo at the make-up link. I think what does it for me is that it’s a stunning photo, period. At the same time, it is definitely feminine; but the ideal of feminine they have chosen to represent is so at odds with the usual, and unabashedly so, that, even with the accepted-feminine dress, hairstyle and make-up, the whole photo becomes a captivating portrait of a different feminine.
Or something.
mildlymagnificent
:D You must be a geographer.
Also, anyone in Tasmania, stay safe! :o A bushfire is something I never want to experience or fear in my life. Fire freaks me out.
+++
Good night, Australia.
JAL: How the fuck did women glow before makeup?
Azkyroth: Radium.
Worked for Marie Curie!
Apropos of last night’s discussion on hair length and femininity:
When my wife had breast cancer 12 years ago, she of course lost all of her hair. She looked good and didn’t bother with the wig she had bought. We had a friend who couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Our neighbor, who was in his 20s at the time, heard that she had had cancer. He said, “Wow, I didn’t know that was why you didn’t have hair. I just thought you were really cool!”
At the same time, there were people who couldn’t look at her when she didn’t wear the wig–but that probably had to do with their fear of the disease.
Reminds me of being at a conference for work. We were staying in a motel/ meeting facility in the winery area near where I live now. The road is in a bit of a depression and the accommodation units were up on a bit of a hillside.
During one of the days a fire started behind the hills on the other side of the road. So most of us spent that evening standing at our windows in 2s and 3s trying to decide whether we’d stay or go (we hadn’t had so much “Bushfire Plan” publicity back 20 years ago). At breakfast one of the blokes reckoned he’d settled on that tree on the skyline opposite – if that went up – he’d be gone. Same tree as I’d had my eye on.
And then … I was absolutely gobsmacked. Two of the three most senior managers there told us they’d hopped into one of the office cars for a couple of hours and drove along the road behind that hill to have a bit of a look at what was going on!!!??! Bet the Country Fire Service people were deeply fond of them!
I didn’t say anything then, and I still have trouble finding words for the pure, unadulterated fuckwittery they exhibited. Had a bit of trouble taking them seriously in meetings for a good while after that.
And speaking of fuckwittery, I need to nag daughter and partner. They still hadn’t cleared their roof and gutters of leaves and other cast-offs from the huge gum that overhangs part of their house. No point in bushfire plans you don’t actually put into practice.
The ‘not clearing’ referred to by Xmas Day. Nagging is now a top priority.
I’ll even pay for roof cleaning if I have to – a big fire coming towards them if the wind is ‘right’ can drop embers from kilometres away.
MildlyMagnificent,
Aw you gotta have a look at a fire!
Mind you, I am a synthetic chemist, one of the very few sub-species of humans who will actively go towards large explode-y-burn-y fires and nod “sagely” while explaining that isn’t a proper fire, nothing like the one old 3-Fingers Smith had back when I was doing my PhD….blah…blah…drone…waffle.
Such dismissive attitudes can be found to be exhibited by synthetic chemists who are actually on fire at the time. I never claimed it was a sensible attitude.
Louis
Hi there
So, commited the horrible crime of shopping while being fat.
Mr. wants to treat me with a new winter jacket for my birthday. I know how that sounds, but I guess he was sick and tired of me going all Scrooge when it comes to spending money on me because me? worth it? nay!
Now, several rather expensive brands don’t care to make clothes that big anyway, but we found one that is really nice and high quality. But there are only 2 more in all the shops of that chain in all of Germany in black, so cross your fingers and hold your thumbs that they’re still there on Monday.
Tried to find it online. What I did find was a fraudulent online-shop that copied the original brand page 1:1. Shot the original brand an e-mail, guess they’ll come down on them harder and faster than any unfortunate person who lost their money there.
As for mum: wow, that’s denial. It’s all the Hep B. No really, alcohol isn’t to blame (and therefore treating the addiction is totally unnecessary). And well she’s already getting better, so what’s the matter? And the medication she gets to help her body detoxify (yes, there actually is a context in which the concept of toxins and cleanse are valid) is nonsense, of course, she knows that because of…
But hey, being angry at her for being a stubborn mule is actually easier than crying all the time…
Joe
Well, I frequently used to run into Natalie Reed arguing about gender-expression, which is a concept that I think is valid the way gender is currently constructed but that has to die alongside masculinity and femininity all along.
I admit that there’s cis-privilege in this: My gender isn’t questioned no matter how butch I am. But I also don’t think that things will be any better if we stick to the current narrow definitions by which a pink bow in your hair makes you a girl. I think that man and woman and everything in between are real. Actually I don’t need to grab between my legs or make a gene analysis to conclude I’m a woman.
Warning: cute kids story: #1 got a plush doggie she named “Lilany” and so Lilany needs purple hair (lila = purple). Muuuum, you have to make them long because Lilany is a girl! So I thought I had a teachable moment here, pointing out that her dad wears his hair long, while her aunt and her grandmas wear theirs short and that “girl” is something you are on the inside.
“Yes, mum, but Lilany only has polyester stuffing on the inside, so please make her long hair!”
Tony
Hmm, since for many trans* people it is very important to match their body to their mind, I don’t think that this would disappear just because society is happy with people wearing a beard and lipstick and hiking boots and a miniskirt all at once who work part-time as construction workers while they raise their offspring.
Riding a bike and swimming. That’s something all kids seem to get taught. Looks like Caine disagrees. Maybe culture again.
Alethea
Which also has a lot to do with gatekeeping. In Germany you have that fenomenon that as soon as they get approval for their GRS and are through with it transwomen seem to noticably “relax”. But before, when every pair of sloggy jeans might get used against you, better be as fem as you can.
And I think it also has to do with cis-people constantly judging trans-people for being “real” or not.
Point in case: There’s a young person living in our apartment block. Well, we say “hello” to each other, talk about the weather, but I don’t even know their name. That kind of neighbour. When we first moved in they were presenting as pretty butch female, with a rainbow-flag bumper-sticker. During the 5 years their appearnance has gotten more masculine, so I think that somebody who didn’t know them would now probably put them into the “male” category. And I will avoid putting that person into any category until they tell me what they prefer. Because putting a cis woman into the male category because she has certain likes and tastes seems as wrong to me as putting a transman into the female category because that’s how we first met.
mildlymagnificent
Yay!
Well, any success girls have is due to studying, any success boys have is due to genius. Unless it’s something that’s firmly within the female domain. #1 is apparently very good at paintig because she’s a girl, not because she spends 2-3 hours every day doing it.
Paul K.
Really? Having two daughters I despair at the narrow boxes from which society allows them to choose. Playing with boys is OK, but clothes? Make me despair.
men and reading
When I met Mr. he read the worst tabloid there is. I’ll always be grateful for Harry Potter which got him reading.
Caerie
Work out an individual schedule with your GP. I guess the time you need to wait between certain shots will stay the same, but nothing wrong with setting your priorities.
Giliell,
I think it’s much easier for boys, in many ways, to be oblivious. But, yeah, clothes really keep kids in their ‘proper’ places, and teach them what those places are. Still, this is also much better than it used to be. I grew up in the 60s, and I remember the first time my sister wore pants. It did not meet the approval of many people. But my son does not get to wear a dress, and is certainly indoctrinated enough by this point that he would not want to.
rq
No. Think about it. Which gender is more likely to be described as warm, or having attention to the warmth of their bodies? Or having “warm hands”.
That people of both genders radiate body heat at roughly 37 centigrade does in no way stop “glowing” from being gendered. No more than shitting is immune from gendering from the fact that we all have to excrete in roughly the same way.
I’m picking a nit here – but I think it’s kinda an important nit:
Nothing has a gendered nature. If we at all separate between nature and culture/nuture, gendering is all culture. It might or might not have a natural (biological) base, but to connect gendering to “nature” is to essentialise it.
“Studying” is not a single, discrete activity. Different ways and perceptions of the process are gendered in different ways, but there is a lot of gendering hanging about in the universities (as anywhere else).
Paul K
It might be better than the 1960’s, but it’s definetly worse than the 1980’s, when Lego were for all kids and Barbie had real jobs.
I got in serious trouble over My Little Pony though…
A possible explanation for why I detest horses today (except as meat).
Giliell,
Oh, yes. No argument there. I run a childcare center, and won’t have anything to do with the grossly over-gendered toys that are really hard to avoid. Kids only start to care when they are given the message that they should. Most of our Lego were found at garage sales or donated, and then gone through to get rid of gendered crap, especially the most ‘boyish’ stuff: weapons.
And I should say that other staff who work at my site, and leaders at other sites, have no problem with the gendered stuff, nor the weapons, even though it’s a school district policy to not have weapons of any kind, real, toy, or imaginary, in the schools.
Paul K
Oh, our daycare is great. They have all kinds of toys, but the non-gendered version. So, there is a kitchen, but it ain’t pink. There are two dolls, but they’re made of fabric, they’re girl and boy and they come with recognizable bits. But the rest of the world isn’t. I swear #1 didn’t care about pink before she started. And she loves Legos.
Giliell
We have the exact opposite – everything on the ‘girls” side of the room is pink. BUT the boys are allowed to play there, and I’ve actively encouraged eldest to try those toys out, too. When middle-child visits (on pick-ups), he heads straight for the pink kitchen and red-tinged cash register.
Also, I was going to mention Natalie Reed as a direction to point people wanting more writing on gender. In my opinion, she writes extremely captivating, thought-provoking pieces. Can’t say if they’re all right, all of the time, but I have always, always enjoyed what she writes, and have always found her writing to be a reason for me to examine my own views about gender and culture and all that other m/f dichotomy stuff that seemed so obvious.
Gnumann+
I know, I know – it was a bit of a joke, a reference to the fact that the only really ungendered thing men and women can both do is biological processes. Because culture…
Never mind.
Louis
I wouldn’t go near a bushfire. But, I’d walk right up to a live volcano, if I could. ;) And I’m only a biologist!
mildlymagnificent
Heh. I’d have a hard time taking people like that seriously as well. More like snicker behind my hand at the wonderful, totally-professional, organized, professional and totally fiscally responsible plans they’re presenting to everyone. Or something like that!
Thanks again to the Horde for the most educational discussion! I’m still processing a lot of what I learned, but it helped clarify many things for me.
—
mildlymagnificent:
Ugh, gawkers! In our county, nearly everyone owns a scanner and going to big or nearby calls is a form of entertainment. Once, when I was with the fire auxiliary*, our service truck** got hit by a gawker who was so busy watching the barn fire that he drove right into the back of it.
But, it takes a special type of stupid to go wandering out to look at a bushfire (or forest fire).
*Renamed six years ago as the Dept X Support Service.
**Mobile kitchen for providing firefighters with food & drinks while on-scene at major calls.
—
Louis:
This was apparently my great-grandmother’s attitude. They lived across the street from the fire station in Oneida NY, and every time the siren sounded, she’d pack up whatever kids were at home, fill a thermos with hot coffee, and follow them. We suspect she founded the Ladies Auxiliary just so they couldn’t yell at her anymore.
—
Giliell:
*fingers and thumbs crossed*
I’m sorry your mom is so deep in denial. I wish you much strength to cope, now and in the future.
I used to have long hair, and kept it for as long as I did partially just to blur the lines for the kids. I wear a pink shirt occasionally, for the same reason, but also because I like it.
I work with older kids, five to about ten years old, so the indoctrination is pretty established when I get them. But one of the things I really value about my job is challenging them to think critically. I ask ‘Why?’ a lot.
via BB:
quote from: http://boingboing.net/2013/01/04/cc-licensed-muslim-sf-antholog.html
The anthology is here, at the Islam and Science Fiction blog (which also has interviews, panels and book reviews):
http://islamscifi.com/a-mosque-among-the-stars-available-for-free/
Sample of the other stuff:
http://islamscifi.com/review-apex-magazines-arabmuslim-issue/
When I was a ski instructor (back in the 1880s) we were told by our head instructor that women initiate turns differently than men. Had to do with the hips and the wider pelvis. I never saw it, nor have I heard of it since then, but, yes, for some people, skiing is gendered.
Once. Thud!
I’m a ranger. And Strider was a ranger . . . .
Would you do it on a boat?
Would you do it with a goat?
Would you do it in the rain?
Would you do it on a train?
Sorry. My mind went there.
All Hail Tpyos! That should be 1970s. Damn.
Hell, yeah. Male: Boilermaker, beer, scotch and soda, whiskey. Female: daquiri, wine, anything with an umbrella.
Very sexualized in movies. Men die protecting the world from giant ants. Women die huddled in a corner whimpering. (not in all movies, but in enough)
This morning, I enjoyed possibly the most accurately named product ever. A Gurkha Widowmaker.
And even tobacco use is gendered.
They can be scary.
Some years back, in Montana, I was at one brush fire. Another one started close by (so we were tasked with that one, too (which meant it was now the Bundy Railroad Complex, not the Bundy Railroad Fire)) and it went from start, to 150,000 acres, to out in three days. Took out twelve buildings and two cars. Scary.
My job at a fire is to prevent that sort of idiocy.
Horses sweat, men perspire, women glow.
That’s what Wife was taught.
Ogvorbis
Apparently you were a ski instructor in the 1880s. You can’t escape the truth: you are old.
Next time I’m out in the summer heat, melting and dripping all over the (hopefully by then) backyard, I’ll think to myself, It’s just a lovely glow! and pass on the shower before heading out into public.
+++
The entire balance is now contingent on the bank being at least slightly forthcoming on Monday. So we might, in fact, be owning a home a few months sooner than expected or planned. It’s like ants not only in the pants, but everywhere else, too. Pins. Needles. Excitement!
Woohoo rq! That’s awesome!
That is, the bank will own the home, for which we will pay over the next 20 – 25 years, and in which we will meanwhile live in the (false) peace of believing it is ours.
Portia
Yes! It is. I want to freak out about it, but I also don’t want to say too much about it, because I feel like I would be jinxing the whole process. And the bank can always say no, which would be assholish of them, but it’s a bank. Heh. :) So.
Anyway.
What’s new with you? :)
Yeah, I’m sure the suspense isn’t doing your blood pressure any favors right now! I have everything crossed (and stacks of thumbs? was that the thing?) that it works out splendidly.
New with me? I’m sort of allowing myself to sit and be a bum for a little bit before starting to clean the house. I went out with some friends for a cousin’s birthday last night so I slept in a bit. It was a really fun time, haven’t gone out for drinks in a long long time. It was also gratifying that it meant so much to cousin that I came.
What’s your weekend looking like? Aside from the waiting.
re: Gendered drinking
This reminded me of something that happened when L and I visited his family early in our relationship. WE ere at his (very conservative and traditional) grandmother’s house, and he was not out to her (as trans), so this is in the context of her speaking to her perceived grand daughter. Drinks were being poured, and L poured himself a tumbler of whiskey. Grandmother says “Oh, you should be drinking that on the rocks, let me get some ice.” He replied “I know how I like my whiskey, Grandma, and I like it neat.” She looked as though he’d slapped her. She was very into performing femininity to the hilt and making damn sure all of her female descendants did too, will-they nill-they.
Dalillama: I realize this is totally tangential to your story, but I’ve never heard “will-they nill-they”. I get what it means, but do you know if “willie nillie” is a derivative? Interesting.
Oh, and some grandmas do tend to enforce that stuff, don’t they? Matriarch has to keep an eye out and all that.
This weekend – nothing much. Sorting through some paperwork and reading up on legislation regarding small businesses (going to legalize the whole translating thing, since it seems the service wants to make greater use of my talents than previously, which means more income, but that means taxesssss), and probably going to take the two elder to see The Hobbit tomorrow. They’ve read the book twice (ok, fine, we read it to them) and they both know the story and they’ve been looking forward to it since the spring. Also, since Harry Potter doesn’t scare them anymore, I figure they’ll be ok.
Yeah, the year is starting big.
Oh, man, thanks for reminding me to work on my tax documents. My long-suffering accountant is still waiting on them. It’s that sort of administrative stuff that is not fun to me about running a small business. Best of luck to you on that front. Very cool that your translating revenue is picking up to that level. More income is always great.
I’m still not sure about The Hobbit, based on what I’ve heard. A few days ago SO and I agreed we’ll probably rent it later. I read the books as a kid, but don’t have a great memory for long-ago books. I hope you and the kiddies enjoy it thoroughly. It’s especially fun as a kid, I think, to see a movie about a book you love.
I’m sort of wondering how long it will take me to get sick of looking at the dirt and clutter today and work up the energy to clean. Maybe I’ll pretend it’s someone else’s house and go berzerk on it.
portia
Willie-nillie is derived from ‘will he, nill he,’ meaning with or without the consent of the person involved. Historical constructions also include ‘will-I, nill-I’ when referring to oneself (or ‘will-we nill -we’ if there’s more than one of you), will-she nill-she when referring to a female, and of course the one I used above, in the case of plural third persons or individuals of unspecified gender.
Dalillama:
Thanks! I think I just discovered another way language is gendered. I didn’t know “willie nillie” was from a male pronoun. Wonder how much else I’m not aware of. (oh, right, a LOT ha)
Portia
If it helps, pretend it’s my house. :)
Yeah, I’m not looking forward to the tax bits, but I suppose it’s better than getting giant fines and prison sentences for comparatively small amounts (I mean, I’m not going to be a millionaire or anything).
I’m hoping The Hobbit will not get too boring for the kids, though – a 3-hour movie is still a 3-hour movie. The story and fantastic creatures should carry it through for them.
<bDalillama
I have also never heard will-they, nill-they, but it has a different association (to me) from willy-nilly. The surface connection seems obvious, though (visually).
Okay NOW I understand! I was wondering why I was mentioned in Oggie’s #1155, it’s that Tony’s fault for his #1025.
Non-gendered activity. Hmmm.
Remote controlled lesbian feminist robot chess?
Louis
Louis
Nope. You still have a King and a Queen and their relative allowed forms of movement. And feminists.
Dalillama
Thanks for the explanation on that. I’d always taken to willy-nilly to mean something done in chaotic and disorderly fashion, rather than with or without someone’s consent. It does make a lot of sense, though, now that I think about it. Thanks!
rq,
Ahh but it’s FEMINIST chess where the King and Queen interchange roles as they see fit based on a mutually beneficial, rational discussion of their needs, and the robots controlling them are lesbian robots without gender.
Louis
P.S. To be fair, I’m not sure the robots are lesbians, but I want them to be. Shit. That makes it gendered doesn’t it? Back to the drawing board.
Also: respiration. Totally non-gendered. The men and women respire is identical and not open to social modification.*
Louis
* I’d have gone for shitting, but let’s be blunt, a man-shit involves a packet of woodbines, a copy of Exchange and Mart, shirt off, and at least 30 minutes.
rq
That’s also a correct modern usage; there’s been considerable drift of meaning there.
Louis
I’m pretty sure lesbians is a gendered term, so… Yeah.
Still trying to catch up, but this has been one of the most interesting Lounge incarnations ever. And it struck me – this was kind of like the way any of the feminism threads could be, if they were WITHOUT TROLLS!!!!!!!!! Without derailment by MRAs and assorted fuckwits! It’s so refreshing!
.
A delight to read, with so much to learn and such a refreshing absence of douchebags.
willy-nilly
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-wil2.htm
Louis:
You must have missed the discussion upthread of both breathing and shitting. We were pretty thorough.
opposablethumbs:
Yes!
In that case, rq, your house is a wreck. :D
Rq:
Damn, you’re right, you’re right. I’m going to have to take this seriously. I might even read the rest of the thread! :-)
If we got rid of the lesbian part? Remote controlled feminist robot chess?
Paul K:
I’m going to have to go and read that now aren’t I? Curse these timezones!
Louis
Louis
Hmm. I think feminist is still a gendered term… Somewhere in there! Remote-controlled robot chess with hidden identities (preferably behind screens). And I’ll take your revision of King/Queen roles.
Also, I believe Louis means cellular respiration, not breathing – because all cells respire (so totally non-gendered), but everybody knows (as someone pointed out) that women do not gasp for air through their mouths like fish out of water (I may be paraphrasing).
I used to like Gérard Depardieu.
The greedy asshole.
Beatrice
Yup, he’s ruined himself in my eyes.
+++
Watching Meet Joe Black in the background (for the first time, even though it was hyped when I was the right age to succumb to such hype – I think I didn’t see it on principle because Brad Pitt). And my goodness – the whole pool scene? So rapey! Girl clearly uncomfortable being alone with this man? Man with wide-eyed unblinking stare at girl, being socially inept? Yeah… Keeps talking until girl feels some osrt of sympathy? You have all ruined* my movie-watching experience.
*in a good way
Ok, four hours of sulking in my jammies is enough. Here I go.
All cells may respire, but cellular respiration is totally centered in the mitochondria.
Which you inherit from your mother.
(Just sayin’)
—
Another gendered thing: being demented. Women are to become vague, think everyone is their son/daughter, and do things like try to wear their panties has hats. Men are allowed to become violent and talk about the war. Women who have dementia are given tranquilizers and restrained when they become violent long before men are. Also, women with dementia are not allowed to start expressing sexuality in the “wrong” way as result of their dementia. A man who does is greeted with nervous laughter and discussions on how to contain it. A woman who does it is greeted with stunned silence. Part of this, I think, is the expectation that women – especially older women – are not independently sexual.
Esteleth,
That is a very good point. You do mostly (almost exclusively IIRC) inherit mitochondria from your mother. But how far back do we go? Mitochondria were cellular “passengers” prior to sex I think (I could be wrong), therefore if true, respiring would be the ultimate gender neutral thing!
Louis
Esteleth
Well, you ruined that one for me (the respiration, not the dementia).
And Louis may have saved it!
(But. If we’re going to be historical, then pink is non-gendered because it used to be a boys’ colour. So how far back are we allowed to go? And wouldn’t respiration have become gendered at the point in time where its transmission was allocated to female sex cells?)
I think I’ve finally found a non-gendered activity: Decomposing. We all rot the same in the end.
Are we conflating ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ again? I’m not complaining; this is all fascinating to me.
re: decomposing
Soon after Beethoven’s death, a man walking through the cemetery heard strange music that sounded vaguely but inexplicably familiar. After a long attempt at discovering its origin, he located it at Beethoven’s grave. He requested that the grave be opened, to confirm his belief, and yes – there was Beethoven, de-composing…
[cue laughs]
Can we even call passive things like cellular respiration and decomposition activities, though? I don’t think it’s a meaningful exception. Unless you all weren’t totally serious, in which case, carry on.
…wait I’m not supposed to be here. Toodles!
rq,
I laughed.
Hmm… decompozing. I’m not into zombies, but do they differ much in gender specific ways?
Do men and women play piano differently (or are there social rules for both)?
Tony
I don’t know about anymore, but formerly, possibly – music was the department of well-educated (that is, musically, handicraftily, etiquette-ly) girls.
From my personal experience in piano-playing, it’s a difficult instrument to gender. What you play, these days, depends on your ability and personal taste rather than concertos for boys and sonatas for girls. It gets a bit different when you get into jazz, though, because of the whole women-don’t-improvise bit, and then one might say that music is the dominion of men (and the oft-asked MRA question, why no female Mozarts? – see: Mozart’s sister, I believe from FtB somewhere a short while ago).
Portia
I think the whole respiration/decomposing as activities is a bit tongue-in-cheek… Because apparently to get to non-gendered activities (that is, eliminate the influence of culture), you’re getting into biological and cellular function. Eek!
Paul K
I’m not sure, I think we’re going the ‘traditional’ dichotomous gendering of the world to find activities that would be equally suitable for men and women. Gendering is not dichotomous, but cultural constructs insist that we all fall into the two categories, and hence all active activities seem to be divided along two possible branches (doing the same activity two different ways, or separating the appropriateness of an activity for one group or another)… Or something.
The current activity of finding non-gendered activities is more of a for-laughs type thing (on my end).
What about typing?
Exclusively from one’s mother, Louis.
The father contributes one haploid set of DNA via the sperm. The mother contributes one haploid set of DNA, and a full complement of cellular organelles – including the mitochondria – via the egg.
And yes, mitochondria are an undigested dinner from ages ago that stuck around and formed a symbiot. They are found in most (all?) eukaryotes.
Esteleth,
I am going to have to go to Google (and I can’t be bothered dammit I blame you! ;-) ) because I read somewhere that the matrilineal exclusivity of mitochondrial inheritance wasn’t so exclusive. In other words there was sometimes some contamination from the sperm.
Granted this is from the Pffft and one reference from outside my field, so all caveats apply, but here’s an example in humans (apparently):
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350
Louis
For anyone interested, there is a petition on Change.org to strip Michael Nodianos (the Steubenville, OH student seen bragging about rape on video) of his scholarship to Ohio State University. Anyone callous and immoral enough to joke so disgustingly about a defenseless victim of depraved masculinity does not deserve a scholarship to a prestigious college.Even if he was not involved in the rape itself, his disregard for human life and arrogant sexism displayed in that video should be enough to revoke him of his scholarship.
http://www.change.org/petitions/ohio-state-university-strip-michael-colin-nodianos-of-his-ohio-state-academic-scholarship
Louis
That article still leaves the vast majority of mitochondria maternally inherited, which means, unfortunately, cellular respiration is still a gendered activity. A 50-50 split would indicate it was not.
(Very interesting article, that. I surprised myself by actually understanding all of it. Thank you.)
Hello all. I just wanted to say that I’m loving the conversation about gendered things. You’re all brilliant.
Today is my last day at my parents’ house before I head back home for the spring semester. As much as I love my family, I’ll be happy to be back home again. There’s nothing better than sleeping in your own bed, and I do get tired of living out of a suitcase after a while.
In other news, my little brother finally got me hooked on Dr. Who, so I’ve decided to actually start watching them in order now rather than picking episodes on a random whim like I’ve been doing. I started with the 10th Doctor (I’m not a huge fan of 9) and I’m planning to watch all the episodes they currently have on Netflix. I’m about 10 episodes in right now, and I have a bit of a crush on David Tennant. He’s just so damn cute.
Rereads what I wrote. D’oh!
Well, if you weren’t trying totally nude skydiving (which, of course, means not parachute because that is something you wear), Tony would not have been forced to mention you. Which forced me to mention you.
rq:
Sorry, I sometimes suffer from deficient written humour detection (popular name – “old fart”).
rq,
1) I was being facetious when I mentioned respiration, for precisely the reason Portia mentioned upthread (it’s hardly an activity). I’m having a hard time thinking of an activity that cannot have connotations of gender associated with it. If that’s the bar we have to pass. I think this is because we are talking about activity, something that is externally visible to others to some degree, and thus the social constructs associated with gender can be imposed on it.
2) The idea that respiration is gendered is, to me, utterly ridiculous. Whether or not we get our mitochondria matrilineally. It’s like that ridiculous caricature of postmodernist feminism that is claimed to assert that the reason we don’t understand fluid mechanics is because fluid flow is associated with menstruation and thus women, and science is a male hegemony. Now while there are obviously problems with the sex ratios and how women are treated in science, it doesn’t follow from that that the stuff science the itself describes is necessarily sexed. It’s bonkers! Respiration is a process that occurs irrespective of gender, or even sex. It occurs in asexual organisms, across all organisms, albeit with variations in the underlying chemistry. Hence why I picked it. I thought it was an obvious joke! Maybe “metabolism” would have been less opaque…although I can see that going into fat being a feminist issue with the right misconstruing! ;-)
3) I think the question needs elaboration (which I admit might only be necessary due to my skim of the above posts). Are we asking is there any activity that people of any gender can engage in that has no external gendered ramifications? Or are we asking if there are activities that people of any gender can engage in regardless of their gender? So to use the “breathing” example, for the first question breathing fails our test, people can breathe in a gendered way, as discussed. But for the second question, breathing fits, we can breathe, or not, regardless of gender or even regardless of sex. How society and ourselves determine what method we use to breathe falls under the first question. I’m struggling to think of anything that fits the first question that is an activity. Well, anything that doesn’t immediately fall foul of solipsism like “seeing the colour purple” (not what you think of it, the simple act of seeing).
Going on what others have been saying, we’re asking the first of those questions. Sorry, I realise my flippancy occasionally obscures the fact that I can be serious….ish….nearly.
Louis
Does people do cellular respiration?
Scheise! (pardon my German, especially the spelling if it’s wrong).
Louis beat me – and my 1202 seems to apply.
Lous:
I clearly remember a female gym teacher, back when I was in 8th grade, telling one of the best athletes in our school, a girl, that girls are never supposed to exert themselves to the point that they can be seen, or heard, to be breathing. For a girl to pant, according to this teacher, makes her sound like a slut. No, not kidding. So yes, respiration is culturally gendered.
…Here I should mention the corner store customer – dudely dude, of course – who proudly refuses to drink milk because it’s homogenized. srsly.
(Also I’d totally watch nude skydiving just from curiosity to see what distortions the wind force imposes on everything else besides the face. Minds want to know!)
Louis
Rest assured I was being rather facetious with my final conclusion as well. I suppose I should also apologize for sometimes appearing to be serious when, in fact, I am not. (I’ve been told I make it difficult to differentiate in real life, as well.)
So yes, I’m quite aware that you may be most often flippant, but are capable of being serious. Usually I choose to read flippant comments with the underlying seriousness that whatever is being said is utterly ridiculous… If that makes sense. It’s kind of late but it seems to make sense to me.
As for your #3, I’ve been looking at the question as a combination of both your questions, which I attempted to elaborate slightly in my reply to Paul K @1195.
I apologize. I may have carried the amusing conversation a bit too far. I am honestly not suggesting that maternal inheritance of mitochondria implies that cellular respiration is a gendered activity.
+++
I think this is a good time to leave the conversation. Good night!
Shit. Sorry for macerating your ‘nym, Louis. My bad.
PS But Louis I was totally serious about being grateful for that article you linked. Very interesting and all the more so to me because I understood it all.
That is all.
Oggie,
’tis totally okay, old bean. I mangle stuff all the time. And I was talking about respiration as in cells, not respiration as in breathing. But I do agree, breathing is, in the original sense of the question, gendered. Which sucks.*
Louis
*Incidentally is “it sucks” a gendered expression? I’ve often wondered if it follows the route suck>fellatio>women/gay men therefore bad.
As to non-gendered activities, and as seen as an outside observer, what about…
**looks around carefully for cicely**
…equestrian.
A google search for “horse” autocompletes to “horse games”, and the second result is “Horse games for girls”
So…
rq,
YOU GET BACK HERE NOW!!!!
:-)
Sarcasm/irony etc doesn’t always come across well in text, we all do it, it’s not a failing of yours per se. What I love, love, LOVE about people like you is misunderstandings are just that, misunderstandings. Not evil, but natural limits of communication. I miscommunicate and misunderstand all the time, it’s no big deal as long as the all involved, myself included, are dealing with each other charitably and in full awareness of their limits.
Please to be accepting this large drink.
Louis
Orange Utan:
Even a Scotsman in a kilt will not ride sidesaddle. So, I disagree about equestrianism being non-gendered.
Louis
I doubt a very large drink is what I need before heading to bed, but thank you. I shall chug it back at leisure. ;) (And yes, I’m not flouncing well right now.)
Ogvorbis
Ever heard of riding side-saddle for the wimminz? Yeah, equestrian = totally gendered, because a woman riding astride a horse is a no-no.
Currently, piano-playing seems to be the best bet, on a hobby level, although I am clueless about the current statistics of internationally acclaimed professional pianists (I know the current Latvian wunderkind is a man).
Ehhhh sorry Ogvorbis I miss-replied and yes, I saw your reply. My @1216 under the heading of Ogvorbis was actually for Orange Utan. Apologies.
It really is late.
That was my point, rq. It was Orang Utan who suggested equestrianianianismism as being non gendered.
When I took beginning piano lessons way back when (last century, in fact), we all used the same books. I just looked on Amazon, though, and there are many, many piano books for girls. So I think it is becoming more gendered. At least in the USA.
Interestingly, apparently being groped by old ladies is something of an accepted hazard for male ambulance crews.
I am unfamiliar with this phenomenon.
Equestrian sports also follow the “for women unless well paid” tendency – most casual riders are female, and horses are generally pretty solidly positioned as a “girl thing”, but pretty much all racing jockeys are male.
Portia
Are you a male ambulance crew? ;)
Louis:
Re: suck.
Two big disclaimers: I haven’t researched this and English is not my native.
But for me at least, suck is, if not gendered, so sex-negative that I choose to avoid it.
This is reinforced by the fact that (at least in my native) reinforced by wee-wee, dick or arse.
Which of course makes me a hypocrite since I use “fuck” unabashfully. And if we go deep enough, isn’t fuck a gendered slur? After all – it’s all to often (and in the original sense of the word) fuck or be fucked…
Jockeys being male annoys me so much. Women already are smaller and lighter on average, what the frick? (Also one of the very rare cases, along with pro boxing and maybe wrestling, where *men* go on starvation diets to be competitive. *headshake*)
rq
Ha, no, I’m not. I’m just interested in the basis for such a broad claim.
I knew guys who wrestled in high school who almost certainly had eating disorders, if not just severely unhealthy eating regimens. And it was sanctioned, encouraged, and rewarded. Another of the ways I have seen sports be affirmatively bad for adolescent participants.
Still reading Manhood in America. It seems there was a small group of men seeking an alternative masculinity and those pesky men were *gasp* abolitionists and Woman’s Righters! Eek. After a speech given by Frederick Douglass in which he talked about the importance of women having full autonomy, the papers (Syracuse papers) broke out in a fit of calling him an Aunt Nancy Man. Back in the day, it seems Aunt Nancy men and manmilliners were the precursors to the current mangina.
Gnumann+,
Yup.
I can give up many things, but “fuck”? I think that would take a singular effort of will. I’m not sure I’d manage that one.
Louis
Something sucks
Portia
I’ve seen it in the movies, where it’s funny when the grannies do it. Supposedly.
Ogvorbis @1218
I know, I tried to rectify the situation immediately after posting by posting again. Sorry again for mis-replying to you when I meant someone else.
Pteryxx
But a smaller, fit woman can in no way control that giant animal, not like a half-starved, undersized man could!
+++
And yes, this time I’m really going to bed. Good night!
Sorry, I was sort of thinking of the actual sport of Equestrianism in the context of 3 day eventing rather than anything horse-riding activities that would also come under equestrianism.
I was thinking of the fact that both sexes competed equally (hopefully) in the same competitions.
Orange Utan:
Nope. Women do jumping competitions. Men do steeplechase. And so on. I used to own horses, equestrianism is absurdly gendered.
Also, riding side saddle wasn’t just because of those inconvenient dresses – it had to do with a belief that any sort of strenuous horse riding while sitting astride would break a young woman’s hymen, thereby removing the proof of her virtue. Can’t have that, oh no. There are still idiots who believe that.
John,
Oh bollocks! That’s another one I’m going to have to watch out for.
I mean Oh bugger…oh balls…oh cock…oh shit!!! Yes Shit!!!! Finally!
Louis
rq:
No problems. I replied while you were correcting yourself. C’est kewl.
Orange Utan:
There are specific parts of general areas that manage to be non-gendered even within a gendered activity?
Women doing equestrianism are allowed to, but they must be Ladylike: dressage and the like. And they must be Dainty, and preferably ride side-saddle.
Men are allowed to do “athletic” stuff, and stuff that earns money and beyond local fame.
Caine:
Was unaware of that. Thanks.
And this talk has also helped me remember the historical sexist link of the term ‘riding academy.’
I’m also watching the US football playoffs (yeah yeah, I know) and side-eyeing the commercials for fried chicken and cured-meat-laden pizza (y’know, MAN foods) right alongside Viagra ads. Hey, football-watching dudebros, did you know atherosclerosis contributes to erectile dysfunction? Eat more of those long, rigid, oh-so-phallic vegetables! (and orchidic tubers!)
(honestly, *dried seahorses* are supposedly wonderful penis-empowering foodstuff, but zucchini the size of a horse’s wang isn’t? Come ON guys!)
Louis, that blows.
;)
I’m a member of St John ambulance, and have several friends who work for various ambulance services. It’s something fairly regularly mentioned in discussions about the job, and I’m told it’s basically a weekly event – just one of those things, like the “collapsed, unconscious” that turns out to be “drunk, fell over, then buggered off”, or the people demanding ambulances for sprained wrists.
Louis:
Poot, darn and heck? (Actually, I’m usure about the “poot”)
Poot – feminized version of fart.
@Esteleth
I specifically mentioned 3 day eventing. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eventing,
I use ‘stinks’ a lot. And ‘cheese balls’ rather than ‘Jesus’. And ‘sugar’. But only when I feel I have to. And shit and fuck. I like them very much.
Thanks Caine. I was of course going for maximum sillyness, forgetting that in our lovely culture maximum sillyness has got to have a strong connection to feminity. I should have learnt by now…
This is it. Time to come out of the closet as a radfem. Let’s take patriarchy out back and shoot it in the neck.
Orange Utan:
You still don’t fucking get it – eventing is highly gendered. There is still dressage, and a woman will lose serious points if everything isn’t up to standard. Did you know for a particular event, one of the standards is whether or not a woman competitor will be proper Ball material? FFS, if you don’t know the ins and outs of such things, don’t talk about them.
Gnumann:
Aaaw. I have a shotgun, but I also have a lovely recurve and a variety of sharp, pointy items. Couldn’t we be creative?
…Oh nads. I wondered why it was so quiet around here, and then realized – all the mansplaining douchebags are at their playoff parties or sports bars, watching the same football I’m watching. EEEEWWWWWW….
Well, at least I watched MLP this morning. in lieu of church. <_<
Also bodybuilding. On that note, I suspect that the female ‘bodybuilder’ who was photographed for the Salon shoot above is actually a weightlifter/powerlifter. Bodybuilders, male and female alike, tend to have disturbingly defined muscles with bulging veins. Part of this effect is caused by the fact that they routinely starve themselves for days or even weeks before competitions/photoshoots, and the bodybuilding competitions are entirely aesthetic events. Weightlifting competitions, on the other hand, are about how much wieght you can move vs how much you actually weigh, and the people who enter them are usually stronger and healthier but much less defined than bodybuilders are (mostly because they don’t tend to starve themselves. Quite the opposite, if anything.
FossilFishy 1126
The dérailleur bracket is bent, I can’t fix that myself, I need the shop to do it. After that, I already know how to change out my wheel, and I’m pretty sure I can work out the dérailleur replacement from the bike repair manuals I’ve got. Thatk you for the offer, though.
Pterryx:
That’s unfair. Some of us manlymen patriarchs (like meself) can watch football (real football, not that round ball stuff) and type on a keyboard. At the same time.
Oggie: I know right? Hmph.
Caine:
I’m not sure if it’s a rancid zombie or not, so better go with the blowing it’s head off with a shotgun. Just in case… (Of course, afterwards it’s lemon, salt, stake, silver and hiding it’s left sock, just in case).
I’ve seen Zombie Strippers.
(One of those movies where the title perfectly sums up the movie rather than misleads)
I prefer my zombie braised in Borolo with some parsnips and thyme.
Insofar as the innocent etymology of other words isn’t regarded as a defense, I wouldn’t say so. Chest wounds suck too, and those aren’t really gendered.
I hear Electrolux suck as well.
Kittens and puppies suck.
Thumbsucking.
What in the hell did people say prior to “that sucks”? I’ve been trying to remember and all that comes to mind is bummer.
“Zombie Strippers” is fucking hilarious!
@Caine
“That blows”?
Couldn’t resist.
Vacuum cleaners are like guitars. Plug ’em in and they suck.
From my movie watching experiences I’d say “that’s lame”? Personally don’t like either term.
*ironic amusement*
I followed the link from Janine’s extended EW above to a page about Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln”, and noticed the link at the bottom of the page…
The writer-producer of the upcoming film Killing Lincoln says infamous presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth could be a “poster boy for the tea party.”
Owlmirror, what for did you use a cite tag?
Michaeld:
No, I’m trying to think back to the early ’70s. I’m coming up with nothing besides bummer.
Based on Bill-o’s book?
Hasn’t tht been criticized for the amazing collection of historical errors it contains?
Hmm ok yes that’s farther back then most of my movie experience…
There used to be that bites, but I haven’t seen that in a long while.
I’ve been using “that sucks” since forever, my parents used it.
Chigau:
Hmmm. I just don’t remember it being used in the early ’70s. If A ever used it, it wasn’t in front of me, but I rarely lived with her. My grandparents certainly didn’t, they didn’t approve of the cussin’.
It’s probably regional, and was definitely short-lived, but in the early 70s, all the kids around me said ‘That’s sad.’ In pretty much exactly the way we now use ‘that sucks’ or ‘that’s lame’. I’ve never read it anywhere, and have always wondered how widespread it was. When I met my future wife in the late eighties, I found out that it had been used in her school/family,neighborhood, too, and she grew up in a suburb on the other side of the Twin Cities from me (I grew up in the middle of St. Paul).
Otherwise, all I come up with is ‘that stinks’.
In my neck of the woods* it was a shortened form of “sucks the hind teat”, meaning getting a raw deal.
I think it’s quite recent that other things are being sucked.
—-
*trying for a rustic mood
Here’s an interesting theory that seems reasonable (and allows me to keep using the phrase without guilt):
And I recall reading, or hearing, the phrase ‘that sucks hind tit’ before. I’m pretty sure it was something a friend in high school, who grew up in rural Texas, said occassionally.
That quote comes from here: http://askville.amazon.com/origin-phrase-blank-sucks/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=33065909
chigau (違う) beat me to it!
Hmmm. Seems to me that sucking no tit is much worse than sucking hind tit. So…”that doesn’t suck at all!” would be the worst. ;)
Aaaaand for what it’s worth, I grew up in SoCal, beach & stoner cultures.
Is it adult hour in here?
All this SUCK and FUCK and now TIT. My tender ears cannot handle such.
Ha! Today sucks so much less than yesterday and especially the day before!
Suck it, viral scum!
–
Plus, of course, they are Eeeeeevil!
–
I’ve always assumed—lazily, without evidence—that what sounds like “willy-nilly” started as “will he, nil he”, meaning “whether he wants to or not”.
–
And then Dalillama promptly confirms my “intuition” (or a close approximation to it). Score!
:)
–
Non-gendered chemical interactions on the cellular level?
–
Agreed, in all respects.
–
Funny, I think I posted a comment about “sucking the hind teat” just yesterday… :)
And, I’m happy everyone enjoyed the conversation I sort of accidentally started.
cicely
You’ve been ‘lesser’ long enough.
Embrace your Greatness!
Used to be strongly stereotypically a woman’s job—one of those jobs that were “respectable”, like nursing, or teaching. In fact, I think the word “secretary” picked up considerable genderization thereby, since the “secretarial pools” tended to be full of women.
Nowadays, maybe not so much since it isn’t typing so much as it is “key-boarding”; and since Teh Tech is the province of Men (okay, maybe Nerdly Men, rather than Manly Men), it is being assimilated into Man Country.
In fact, this looks like an example of a larger phenomenon, to me—women can have “it”, so long as the men don’t want “it”; but when they do, they pee on it and claim it. Stereotypically-speaking. Also applies to the professional-level flutists being male, and something I read about in researching something for an SCA project—that brewing used to be an “in the home”, housewifely thing to do…until the time came when some men wanted to make a living at it. Then, suddenly, it was a man’s job, with apprenticeships, and guilds and such.
–
@1249, Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Derailleur hangers can sometimes be straightened with a suitable adjustable spanner after you undo the derailleur off it. However they are considered to be a “fuse” to prevent the frame being wrecked and are easily broken. I’ve had to strighten a few out in the bush and snapped a couple more. It is a good idea to obtain a matching spare hanger to put in your tool kit in any case.
cicely:
This reminds me of names, only in an opposite way. If men felt that something was not absolutely theirs, they also peed on it and threw it away. Carol, Meredith, Marion, Beverly, Evelyn; all used to be ‘boys’ names, until they weren’t, and then, fairly quickly, they were only used for girls. Times have changed with names, though: Austin, Jordan, Sydney, and lots of others, are used by anyone now.
Cicely, it was a serious fight for women to break into secretarial jobs – that was strictly the domain of men to start with and they weren’t at all happy when women wanted in on the action.
As for brewing, yes, being an alewife. It was one of the few alternatives to prostitution for a woman to make a living. However, the penalties were incredibly harsh if you were found brewing substandard product – imprisonment with the possibility of hanging. Them there men took their ale seriously, ya see.
Whoops
“Playing” with handcuffs
Aw damn. I missed a great discussion of gender expectations in different activities. Is it too late to add a personal “women don’t have bodily functions” story?
lofty
My tool set is a socket wrench set and a fold out Allen wrench set.
Jessa
We’re listening.
Jessa:
Please do. We are still discussing the topic.
****
As “evidence”, someone should bookmark this iteration of the Lounge for PZs next evo psych post.
Here ya go.
Knock yerself out.
–
The Horses are known to specifically target young girls.
My Little Pony is proof of this.
–
Just a sec; let me go get my recurve and sharp, pointy items. Don’t start without me!
–
…and pack it in garlic, and bury it at a crossroads….
–
“Sucking hind teat” isn’t gendered, and has a similar “getting stuck with the less-favorable end of the stick” ambiance as being the sucker, as opposed to the suckee.
–
Jessa
It’s Never Too Late In The Lounge™
:)
I recall an actor named Klaus Maria Brandauer. So in Central Europe “Maria” has not necessarily been gendered.
— —- —- —- —- —-
Stanislaw Lem’s visionary “Summa Technologia” from 1965 is apparently available free on-line in Russian: http://lib.ru/LEM/summa/summtitl.htm
A guy named Prangel has translated segments of it into English, but the whole book has never been translated.
—- —- —-
I am not certain cats are gendered. The bigger ones push the smaller ones around regardless of sex. And all of them spread mayhem when they are playful.
Greebo would beg to differ.
My contribution to the “women don’t have bodily functions” mindset. It’s hilarious now, but was infuriating at the time.
A college boyfriend who had been working the night shift asked if he could crash at my place because he was too tired to drive to his place, which was another 30 minutes drive further. We both climbed into bed and fell asleep. About 4 AM, he hopped out of bed and said that he had to go home.
Later that day, I asked him why he left so suddenly.
Him: “I left because you farted while you were sleeping.”
Me: “You left because of that?”
Him: “Yes. And I think it’s over between us. I can’t go out with a girl that farts.”
Me: “You realize that all girls fart, right?”
Him: “[Last Girlfriend] didn’t.”
Me: “[Last Girlfriend] did, she just didn’t do it around you.”
Him: “No, [Last Girlfriend] never farted. Ever.”
To this day, I wonder if he ever found a magical non-farting woman to marry.
@caine
Asked a couple people older then myself out of curiosity they both said bummer but also “that’s a drag”.
cicely: oo, thankee! I don’t sign in but I found a naked skydiving video that I could watch anyway!
youtube video with bits blurred out
and yes, just about everything ripples in the wind blast, with bonus naked heel-kicking for joy after landing. ♥
Michaeld:
Oh gods, that’s it! Thank you, that’s been making me nuts. How the hell did I forget that? (Nevermind, don’t want to know, getting old is scary enough.)
What a drag it is getting old…
isn’t there a song?
Chigau:
I seem to recall…
…paging Janine!
Jessa
Wow…just wow. That’s pretty epic level of Wimmin Aren’t People!
Portia:
Why? We know what it is – Chigau was teasing me.
NSFW
completely unrelated to anything ‘cept that I love to mention penis at every opportunity… I have a new hero. Kristen, inventor of The Hammer, bestest dildo ever. It’s lovely… *snif*
http://www.toymakerproject.com/hammer/
must-see gif
And just in case, it’s Mother’s Little Helper by the Stones.
Caine,
As usual, a joke whooshed over my head. Sorry!
The last time I heard the phrase “what a drag”, it was Alice Cooper. Teenage Lament ’74 — “What a drag it is, in these gold lame jeans/Is this the coolest way to get through your teens”
…what? I kinda like me some schlocky shock-rock. (And someone needs to write an updated Teenage Lament.)
but I bet Janine knows which is the best youtube video.
I ♥ Alice Cooper.
WMDKitty:
Alice was okay in the ’70s. He hadn’t gotten stupid yet.
Here’s something that just happened that I found kind of cute. I’ve been on Pharyngula more than usual in the past couple of days, and my son was curious about what I’m up to. He’s not that into computers, or screens in general, which is fine with us. But he’s heard the adults talking, and a little while ago, he asked,
‘What’s a sock-monkey, again?’ He finds it funny that this is something other than an actual monkey made from a sock. After I reminded him, he said, ‘And aren’t there also billygoats that cause a lot of trouble?’
It took me a second or two to see where that came from, and I said, ‘You mean trolls?’
Yeah, he’s kind of innocent.
Come on, Caine, the dude wrote a whole song about how he couldn’t sleep because clowns!
(And yes, said song was inspired by “The Simpsons”.)
Honestly what draws me in is the fact that he is obviously having fun with what he’s doing — and that fun is kind of infectious, whether the music is “stupid” or not.
WMDKitty, true enough. :D
Vasco took a seriously bad scratch to the eye. He’s been on antibiotics (much to his dislike) and we have an appt. for early Monday. I hope he gets to keep his eye.
Gentle scritches for Vasco.
Confession time.
I have no idea. Most time when I link to a song, it is the first time I have seen the video. I stopped watching videos on a regular basis back in 1984.
For example, one of my very favorite albums of the nineties is Cuckoo by Curve.I did not have cable during that decade and did not have regular internet until about five years ago. I had no idea what Toni Halliday.
As much as I love PJ Harvey, about the only video of her that I saw more then once was Fifty Ft Queenie. That was because it was being played on a loop at Tower Records.
As it stands, most videos do very little for me.
I would like to point out that my #1278, with its “Suck it, viral scum!”, was posted before I read the part of the thread dealing with the subject of suck.
We now return you to our regular program, already in progress.
–
chigau
I can’t! Not until I’ve bludgeoned this theme to death!
:)
–
Poor Vasco :(
G’night, all.
Tomorrow be Monday Morning.
Ugh.
Janine
My gob is smacked.
Caine, I’m sorry to hear about Vasco. Hoping for the best.
–
Whatever treat Vasco prefers, for Vasco.: (
Thanks, all. Yeah…the lens of his eye is visibly torn and he still has a lot of blood in it. No sign of infection yet, which is good. I just really, really don’t want to hear “that will have to come out”. Sigh.
Poor Vasco! I hope the little guy is OK.
Pteryxx
That. Is. Amazing.
Want. So. Hard.
Pun. Intended.
—
Caine
:-( Tummy scratches for Vasco if he likes that sort of thing.
Can’t sleep, clown will eat me
Caine
“That needs to come out” are the five words nobody wants to hear from a doctor. Of any kind.
Give the critter extra loves and noms, man; he’s earned it.
Some songs where I also enjoy the video.
The Rip-Portishead
Labrador-Aimee Mann
Sugar Water=Cibo Matto
God’s Away On Business-Cookie Monster
Sugarcube-Yo La Tengo
Rev. Bigdumbchimp:
Eating the zombie brains of patriarchy might lead to a really bad case of kuru.
Caine: so sorry to hear about Vasco. Would he like a small piece of viritual roquefort and a gentle scratch on the head?
Thank you all, scritches and love have been delivered. Vasco mostly wants me to leave him be – he doesn’t want to see that syringe.
Oh, and Gnumann? Love the new nym addition.
Caine: Thanks!
I just hope the theory that the old one was a warding spell is wrong.
Though for that individual I think perhaps “radfem” is just as good as a deterrent as “mansplaining”.
Jessa:
I would have been laughing so damn hard during that exchange I wouldn’t have been able to talk at all.
I guess I wanna tell a story that is related to the Matt Dillahunty thread but doesn’t quite fit there. Lounge fare it is (while not as funny as I contemplate that idiot dude’s stupid retreat from a sleeping Jessa’s fart).
I received a D on my first college essay. It was later changed to a B-, but I didn’t have to change a word of it. So why did it get a D in the first place? I had tried to explain an encounter with arrant stupidity. When I met with the professor, he said, “Well, it seems as though you’re saying X happened.” And when I said that he was correct and that X had happened, he was agog. Ever since then, I’ve prefaced all such stories with “Now, this is arrant stupidity.” If I ever explain jacksul from the Dillahunty thread outside this crowd, I’ll need that preface.
But it happens elsewhere. My mom and her neighbor were having a right-of-way spat. He had his surveyor block their one lane road with his truck when he knew mom was leaving. When mom pulled to a stop, the surveyor jumped out of the ditch he’d been hunched in, slammed a hammer into mom’s windshield, and then called 911 to report that my mother had committed assault with a deadly weapon–to wit, a motor vehicle. The neighbor just “happened” to drive down the road just behind her to block her in. Mom (72) was arrested, fingerprinted, photographed…whole nine yards. It looked pretty bad because the surveyor had his two assistants saying that yes, she had driven into him. He went on about having his back to her and falling across the hood so that his arm flung back and smashed the windshield. Then, he said, he’d slid down and collapsed in front of the car.
Mom, however, had been taking pictures of surveyor and neighbor for several days due to this tiff. She had her disposable camera on the passenger seat when she stopped, and during the time the surveyor jumped from the ditch, she had picked it up to take a shot of the road being blocked. Shaken, she still took pictures of his truck, her smashed windshield, the uninjured surveyor, the assistants arrival (nope, they hadn’t been there in the first place). Then, when we got the prints back, it turns out that in her startled response to the smashing of the windshield, she also got a weirdly tilted and blurry image of the surveyor standing beside her car with the hammer in hand. She had thought that she had to advance the film because she’d forgotten to do that after her last picture before the incident.
How does this tie in with Nice Guy Syndrome at this level? A month later and while the case was still pending, just days after my mom had come home from a hysterectomy, she saw surveyor and neighbor on her property again. She sent my uncle down to tell them to get the hell off. The three men chatted for a while, then my uncle came back inside. Neighbor and surveyor stayed where they were! Uncle said, “Aw, they’re nice fellas; you don’t want bad feelings with your neighbors!”
I’m bored, I want to play a game — console, computer, hand-held, don’t care, just want to immerse myself in another world for a while, you know? But I have too many things to choose from and can’t decide! Final Fantasy? Elder Scrolls? LotR Online? D&D Online? How about Solitaire? Or Bejeweled? Or, or, or, or…
Fuck… is this how other women feel when trying to decide what to wear?
And on a slightly embarrassing personal tangent, does anyone know how to get one’s bum to stop breaking out in spots like a teenager’s face on Prom night?
Athyco: PLEASE tell me your mom’s neighbor, the surveyor, and his assistants all served jail time for that.
It was pleasantly tangled once they realized that we had the upper hand, Azkyroth, although it took a little more than the photos. We got forensic work done on the windshield to prove that it was a blow from the side. There was the math on how fast he’d have to be hurled backwards to smash it in to the depth that was achieved (turning out to be impossible without grievous injury to him, and he had not a scratch or bruise).
The surveyor, since he could have implicated the neighbor in a conspiracy, got him to sign documents that released mom’s land from the right of way. If the road is ever widened to two lanes, it’ll all come from his side. In order to keep mom from pressing her case, the surveyor paid all expenses for her car and paid her an additional five grand over the five grand her attorney charged. The assistants paid her a grand each. We believe they got it from the neighbor. Surveyor and assistants pled down to a misdemeanor charge, but it was enough to make sure they won’t work government contracts.
Jessa
Good story! You have since learned not to fart, right? ;)
Pteryxx re: THE HAMMER
Sounds like a lot of fun and experimentation. ;) Thanks for the link!
athyco
I like the ending to that story. :)
+++
Another day of just plain waiting on tenterhooks. Tomorrow should come faster.
Topical antibiotics if it’s real bad (I don’t know which one’s used, so talk to a good physician).
So… stock up on, and regularly apply, Neosporin or similar product. Doable. And I need to keep the claws trimmed way down so I can’t scratch new holes in me. I’m “ass”uming that minimizing time in a seated position is also of the good.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning),
Umm…is this a recent occurrence? Happened to me once when I switched to a new laundry detergent.
“recent” as in “hasn’t been a lifelong issue”, yes, I’d say it started in the last few years. I’m in a wheelchair, I spend a lot of time sitting, and I’m guessing the lack of airflow, coupled with marinating in my own sweat, is a big contributor to the issue. And it doesn’t help that I’m completely OCD about scratching itches (hence the now nonexistent claws). I’ll check, but I’m pretty sure we’re using the same detergent we were using before this started.
Good morning
Caine
Best wishes to Vasco
+++
Ehm, no.
Maria as a first name is exclusively female.
But in so-called “Marienjahren” (Mary-years) all catholic children get “Maria” as a second name. Mr.’s uncle is “Hans Maria”.
Naming rules in Germany are a mess. There are no actual rules but guidelines and it’s uo to the individual state servant to decide. They have to be unmistakingly male or female, but that can be achieved via first or second name.
So when Mr.’s cousin was born they wanted to call her Marion. Never met a guy called Marion, but no, the idiot in office said, that’s not clearly female, you need a second one. So they decided on Marion Maria, Maria after her long dead grandmother. No, the idiot said, Maria can also be a second name for a guy. Still not enough.
It’s really funny because they also have to accept foreign names, even though nobody knows whetehr they’re male and female, but somebody who lives there would have to be able to recognize it…
The actor John Wayne, his real name was Marion.
WMD Kitty,
I’m a bit of a compulsive scratcher too. My hands have been looking horrible for a month or two, but I keep scratching them. Whatever it is flares up a couple of times a year and doesn’t go away until I reach the appropriate proportion of medical cream and less scratching.
It probably has a lot to do with nerves. At least it’s not too cold, so there aren’t any open bleeding cracks on my hands.
I hope you get rid of your spots soon!
—-
Caine,
Poor Vasco. Holding thumbs that everything goes as well as possible.
From way back in the thread…
–
Portia – It is so great you made the Fire Dept. take the course about sexual harrassment. And you did not apologize. Excellent!!
–
rq – Yikes! and Hooray! (as needed). So happy you’re close to getting a House. Because, House!
–
Tony – Loved hearing about your new job. Please feel free to update us as things get going. : )
–
Caine – Please give Vasco gentle scritches from me (if he likes that).
Improbable Joe – Enjoyed the pictures of your new home. It’s just so great that you and BossNurse are there. : )
betelgeux @ 1198 – Thank You for the link.
I signed the petition to strip Michael Nodianos (the Steubenville, OH student seen bragging about rape on video) of his scholarship to Ohio State University.
Thank You, Horde, for the discussion about gender identity. So helpful. So enlightening.
Caine
Scritches for Vasco, even though he don’t know me.
Also, re: John Wayne: really? Ha. Middlechild’s name is the (Latvian) version of Marion… And there’s the hockey player Marion Hossa, for what it’s worth!
WMDkitty
I’ve heard that sheepskin/lambskin is good for such things in wheelchairs. A former neighbour swore by them, considering she spent all of her time in a wheelchair, for reducing such itchinesses in uncomfortable spots. It won’t do you much good if you’re allergic to sheep, but…? Also, it may be the same detergent, but they may have changed a few ingredients (new formula?). They do that, sometimes. :/ Good luck!
ednaz
Thanks for the thoughts! Currently scrambling for the down-payment, which would have all been there in two months, but needs to be there now. Ick. :)
Toddling in briefly to say that Marion is a male name and Marian is a female name.
Pronounced the same, IIRC.
Rather like the Francis/Frances names.
And how has anyone not linked to Marian the Librarian?
Esteleth
Indeed. I’ve always heard it the other way around.
Ogvorbis
Due to my love of reading, middleson is actually named after this Marian ‘the Librarian’. ;)
Wow, Giliell, those naming ‘rules’ sound more like arbitrary laws. This is another topic I’ve never given much serious thought to; it would not have occurred to me that anyone would give authority to a government official to tell a parent what they could name their child, especially to the degree you describe. (At least in Minnesota, even the last name is pretty much completely up to the parents.)
But, now that I am thinking about it, changing your name here is not a simple matter. It seems to be up to (almost) arbitrary authority in many places, and lots of them require you to give a compelling reason (a reason the arbitrary authority finds compelling) for changing your name. I guess the reason for this is to prevent fraud or other attempts at escape from justice, but it gets stupidly judgmental and arbitrary, and sexist and patriarchal, too.
I’ve just read through the sex/gender stuff – all very interesting, and I’ve certainly learned a lot about such issues here over the years. I usually say little or nothing in such discussions, because as a heterosexual cisgender man, conventionally masculine in appearance and moderately so in behaviour, I probably have less in the way of personal insights to provide than people who don’t slot so readily into the socially-approved categories. But a few things do come to mind:
1) I agree with whoever it was said the “genderbread person” text having man/woman for biological sex and female/male for gender identity seems the wrong way round. We refer to non-human animals as (fe)male, and decide which they are by looking at their genitalia/gonads/chromosomes. They don’t have gender identity in anything like the human sense.
2) Are there any aspects of woman/man gender differences (I know there are cultures that have more than two genders) that are found in all known cultures – e.g., men being more likely to use violence, or being more interested in police cars than in pans*?
3) A point about the biology/culture divide: it is part of human biology to be cultural, so it’s at least possible that all human cultures (at least until we change biologically in this respect) will have genders, even if there are no such aspects as referred to in 2.
4) While current notions of masculinity/femininity have considerable toxicity, there are aspects of the scale that seem like matters of style or personal expression, not necessarily connected either with sex, gender identity, or status.
5) Would it be problematic if, in the non-sexist, non-essentialist culture of the desired future, most people still fit into the current socially-approved categories? If I understand correctly, radical feminism would say that as long as the latter is the case, we can’t reach that desired future. (As a side note, I often see assertions that most people are basically bisexual, or would be bisexual if there were no social pressure against it; I’ve not seen any evidence for that claim – or its negation.)
6) There was some discussion of furries in relation to bodily dysmorphia. Possibly more relevant to discussion of trans* people’s dysmorphia (and I note in passing that I’ve read that there are quite a few transwomen and transmen who don’t feel the need or desire for surgical intervention) are physically healthy people who feel that they should be amputees, sometimes even engineering injuries that will lead to amputation. Stroke patients also sometimes feel that a limb no longer belongs to them, and have been known to try and throw it out of bed.
7) An interaction between orientation and gender role that I haven’t seen much discussed: whichever gender(s) you’re attracted to, there may also be patterns in your preferences for gender role in a partner. As far as I recall, all the women I’ve been seriously attracted to have been “moderately feminine” in appearance, demeanour and interests – neither “butch”, nor “very femme”. (The terms “butch” and”femme”are used in the genderbread person text, so I assume they are not considered disparaging.)
*See the famous “vervet” study.
Ace Of Spades as played by a band of robots.
Nick Gotts
To answer, with great ignorance:
1) Animals have no gender identity that we know of, and yes, we label them male/female, not man/woman (man = human male, woman = human female, in bare, dichotomous terms…);
2) [Skipping because don’t know but that’s a very interesting question… Perhaps violence for men, but I know certain other things, even such as peeing while standing, can vary from culture to culture[citation needed, I know, memory is poor]]
3) Is biology cultural in any way? Which aspects? I’m curious as to your deeper meaning here. Intrigued, actually – to my mind, biology, in and of itself, cannot be cultural. But. You say it could be. How? (Please elaborate.)
4) Granted. I think that’s what it should be brought down to, where the non-toxic aspects of masculinity/femininity can be shared among everyone (or at least, for everyone to have a real choice in participating in certain non-toxic aspects of masculinity/femininity, even if certain activities are dominated by a particular gender), and the toxic aspects are eliminated as any kind of positive ways of expressing masculinity/femininity in any kind of way (such as, eliminating violence as a real masculine trait or large breasts in all women as a real feminine trait).
5) I think my answer here more or less follows from #4. I think, while radical feminists might disagree, there is no problem if this activity or that is in any way dominated by any one particular group – as long as all groups have real choice in whether they participate or not. How to guarantee this real choice in the face of (subconscious) peer pressure to conform because everyone else like you does this, I don’t know… A bit of an idealistic answer, I suppose.
6) Interesting point. Is the issue, then, neurological in nature?
7) Please elaborate – do you mean that, perhaps, whether I’m attracted to men or women, I’m actually attracted to people exhibiting a certain type of activity, like, say, a preference for neatness and cleanliness? Am I understanding this correctly?
Apologies in advance for any wrong phrasing or wrong wording that may be offensive. If I have phrased/worded something offensively, please let me know and I will correct myself in the future.
I think in Germany the Italian “Mario” took the place for male, leaving “Marion” for women. Hardly anybody would see Marion as the actual male equivalent of Marianne.
Paul K
They are. They are guidelines on basis of which the individual clerk decides whether a name is OK or not.
They have to be unmistakably male/female
They must not shame the kid or expose them to ridicule (so, no, Kain, Judas and Rainbowblossom Sparklepoop are out of the game).
They must be names.
No more than five.
But they can also be foreign names, of course, which kind of renders most of the rules above invalid.
So I kow a Jersey (shörrsee), a Chelsea (shellsee) and a Brooklyn*
BUt yeah, the fucking clerk wields a lot of arbitrary power. Even better, fathers used to be able to register their kids alone, so there’s a bunch of people where the father either forgot the agreed upon name, simply changed it to the one he preferred or couldn’t spell the name…
*Serious stigma attached to English first names in Germany unless you have a legitimate excuse like an American/British parent)
We’ve gone through some big naming changes here in the US in the past few decades, and I’m sure there was real social stigma against anything at all ambiguous before then, since most folks older than about 40 have pretty ‘normal’ names. But I wonder now if there was ever actual legal authority to tell people, no, that name is right out. In the 80s, we had a girl in our daycare center whose first name was ‘Tomorrow’s Sunshine’. Everyone, including her parents, called her Sunny.
/delurk
@Esteleth
Do you mean historically? Because there are plenty of female Marions in the English speaking world. Off the top of my head, the athlete Marion Jones and the Master Chef Australia contestant Marion Grasby.
In general, I am against giving some clerk arbitrary power over names, but what to do when parents want to name their children Smelly Sparklepoop and Adolf Hitler?
Beatrice
Appeal to the parents’ sense of taste? Although it looks like they don’t have any.
Naming rules are pretty arbitrary here, too – they have to follow Latvian language laws, etc., etc., no ridicule and all that wonderful stuff.
Which is kind of amusing (if it weren’t infuriating), since last year the Language Commission came out with an edict that consonant combinations foreign to Latvian (-tt-, -kk- etc.) are no longer allowed, excepting in cases of compound names – which promptly eliminated the traditional, German-derived ‘Otto’ from being allowed (have to spell it Oto). As a matter of fact, any boy names not ending in -s should be eliminated, yet they’re still allowed to be used.
And no particularly strange names, although the lists of weirdest names they publish each year are quite interesting.
So yeah, a lot of arbitrary power, depends on the officials in your region. Some of them have great tolerance, others have none. Others enjoy chocolate boxes or money to increase their level of tolerance.
Interestingly, English (or other foreign names) are to be Latvianized – that means good old Brian becomes Brains, and Wayne becomes Veins (a la Veins Greckis). You tell me what’s wrong with that scenario…
well… my knee-jerk response is, how do you make a distinction between what gender you’re attracted to, and what gender role you’re attracted to? Say if someone dresses and acts just like gender A, but has the genitals that go with gender B, how would that affect anyone’s attraction when they don’t actually know what the genitals are? And if you have to choose one or the other, which is more important? (Generally one makes an assumption, and usually that’s a safe assumption – but it still doesn’t follow per se.)
Personally, for me it’s blurred: I’m most attracted to genderqueerness, in whichever direction, alongside a middling preference for male-shaped bits. (Which fortunately are available to anyone in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, and some even light up. <_< )
Beatrice
Yeah, that’s a tough one. You really have to wonder about what’s in the minds of parents like that, but I know some are out there.
Let them? Hopefully it’ll be a good incentive for the kids to learn to hate their shitty parents sooner rather than later.
The more I learn about gender, gender roles and sexuality, more I’m convinced that heterosexuality wouldn’t be so common if it weren’t for socialization.
Ing,
Not much use in hating them when you can’t leave them.
@Beatrice
yeah but if you’re arguing what say a judge can do without over stepping into authoritative authority. Other than ear marking them for a dyfus check in the only thing I can see is hoping that the selfish jackholery of the parents makes the children more likely to reject the world view they’ll be raised with.
And trust that the kid will shortly develop a nickname to hide behind. My school had poor Richard “Daniel” Seamen
In a scifi setting I’m thinking about writing if I can overcome self esteem issues and convince myself it might be worth anything that was one of the background details I thought up. Gender and sexuality is a lot less rigid due to both cultural drift and contact with aliens irrevocably changing the entrenchment of binary gender. In the one super society that most of it takes place in humans are the only ones that have a culturally significant divide between male and female: one species is near humanoid but hermaphroditic and thus monogendered, one has an alien view of self that has a group being a ‘person’ rather than an individual so they lack a concept of gender, one is a race of synthetic androids and if they had any dimorphism long abandoned it, one starts out as male/female larva but lacks the distinction in the adult stage due to anglerfish like mating, and one has male and female sexes but due to a lack of dimorphism lacks a concept of gender.
The end result is that human gender roles are blurred a lot more and sexuality is less labeled and more fluid. One joke element I was considering using was have the LDS Church still exist, but having changed so much from modern day that they consider polyamorous bisexuality their traditional values with most members ignorant or apathetic to the earlier stances of the church
Ing,
Yeah, I realize it’s better to err on the side of letting people name their kids whatever they like. I still feel sorry for the kids that suffer as a result.
There was an Adolf Hitler in the news last year, if I remember correctly. Although, his parents were neonazis, so even if they had not been allowed to give him that name, he would still be indoctrinated with the same shit.
@Caine,
I think the fact that finishing schools never apply to men pretty much indicates why this is the approach to take. There are manners, which one hopes we all have, and there is blind conformity to some stereotypical ideal, which I can certainly manage without.
Nick @1354:
Your entire post was interesting, but this part really struck a chord with me.
I’ve often wondered in the past exactly what qualities in a man that I’m attracted to. When I first came out of the closet (and for years after), I was attracted to some ideas of masculinity. I liked muscular guys. I liked guys who didn’t display femininity (whether through their speech, mannerisms or poise). I used to have a negative opinion of gay men who displayed {what I thought of as} feminine traits. When people would guess what my type was, often people would say “jock”, which brings to mind a very traditionally masculine image. Yet even back then, I wasn’t always interested in someone of that nature. I’ve dated guys who physically do not match the image of a jock and been very attracted to them. Looking back, one of the most attractive men I ever dated, MH fit the jock image to a >T<. We didn't last long because I found him terribly boring. He never wanted to talk about anything. He rarely discussed his opinion of anything. Getting him to open up about where he wanted to eat dinner was a grueling task (his favorite response was "wherever you want"…ARGH). I didn't feel any chemistry with him outside of the bedroom and it bothered me (this was probably when I started paying more attention to how many qualities and interests I shared with someone, which meant I had to engage them in conversation before we jumped into a relationship).
As I've gotten older, and more importantly, as I've been educating myself about toxic masculinity, sexism, patriarchy, misogyny, et al, I have come to expand my horizons with regard to the type of man that I like. I don't think it has been conscious either. When I briefly dated K, I remember thinking "he's got several feminine mannerisms, yet they don't bother me like they would have in years past." I've also come to value an individuals' ability to converse effectively and have an informed opinion about a variety of topics.
This shift from valuing the physical 'jock' image to valuing intellectual pursuits has been gradual, but has opened me up to different types of men. I *do* still value physical appearance. I do still love looking at men who are physically fit (though that has more to do with me being interested in fitness, and wanting to share that interest with someone else).
Gosh, I love this thread.
Waiting for the first child to be named Pinky Pie.
Or has that already happened?
Pteryxx:
If I’m understanding you correctly (which I could very well NOT be)–If I encounter a man who dresses and acts like a woman, but has the genitals of a man, I do not think I would be attracted to them.
Likewise, there are some women who have small breasts, who dress and act in ways that are masculine, yet I don’t find myself attracted to them either.
But now I’m wondering what it means to “act” like a man or woman…
And I’m wondering if toxic masculinity has influenced which kind of men I’m attracted to…
cicely:
Actually, the genderization reversed after WWI (IIRC). Until the late 1800’s, only men were secretaries, because of course, feeble lady brainz couldn’t handle “real” education, much less complex business and technical knowledge. It provided income and access to the rich and powerful for men who had the right education but whose circumstances required them to find a source of income.
The first women secretaries were seen as unwomanly and decried for entering the “male sphere,” which would coarsen them and leave them unfit for marriage and motherhood. As more began entering the field, it became a job with less status, and men began leaving/choosing not to enter it. Once it was considered unimportant and seen as “taking care of” a powerful man, then it became one of the acceptable jobs for women.
—
Caine:
More scritches for Vasco.
—
rq:
Best of luck with the house!
—
Paul K:
It took me 16 months to get a MN driver’s license because one can’t just transfer a license from another state if your birth certificate doesn’t match exactly.
My PA license had [First Name] [Birth Surname] [Married Surname], but my birth certificate had [First Name] [Second Name] [Birth Surname]. Even though every other ID and document has my current name, I couldn’t transfer without either showing “a clear and direct connection” between my birth certificate and ID or using my birth names (which I haven’t used in 25+ years). My divorce decree wasn’t acceptable because it only had [FirstName] [MarriedName], so they wanted my marriage license, which I could only get by going to the PA courthouse where it was registered (and showing photo ID) — which I finally was able to do during my summer visit and cost me $18. Ridiculous!
In PA, both names are yours for life and you can use either on official documents.
—
Giliell:
I wish there were some controls on naming, just so kids aren’t given truly hideous or wildly inappropriate names (like Adolf Hitler), but…wow, that’s a lot of power for a low-level clerk!
—
rq:
O.O I would so have named my kids Brian and Wayne just to end up with Brains and Veins.
I would love to know what Ryan, Patrick, and Melanie would be in Latvian….
Pteryxx, #1302,
THAT IS BRILLIANT!!!!! I showed my wife, she was suitably impressed.
Caine,
Give Vasco my best. I hope he survives the experience as unscathed as possible.
Louis
Tony
I sincerely recommend you read some of Natalie Reed’s blog. She has a great post (which, I am sorry to say, I am too lazy (and busy) to find myself) about what you comment here – one’s changing view of what counts as attractive, and how that ties in with preconceptions or stereotypes held, and what happens when those stereotypes are broken down and perspective is widened.
Alright, since I’m actually procrastinating here, I’ll see if I can find it. She says it much better than I ever could, anyway.
Tony
Oh, look! It popped right up as if called by name. :)
Tony: for what it’s worth, I’m damn sure that toxic masculinity has affected which kind of women I’m not attracted to. I’m a loud brash jocky type, I tend to like other loud brash jocky types, but I overestimate the guys and underestimate the gals, if you see what I mean.
(Like Louis. I figured he’d appreciate that light-up programmable dick. <3 )
rq:
Thank you.
I’m reading it now.
Already I have new questions percolating in my noggin.
I’ve come to realize that many of the friendships I’ve made over the years have been with women, more than men. A few weeks ago, I noted that it was funny how so many women I’ve worked with over the years feel comfortable talking to me about various topics. Moreover, a great many of them have expressed happiness at working with me (going so far as to check the schedule to see if it’s me they’re working with). I don’t know if I bond with women better or faster, or if there’s some other kind of connection, but I wish I could encounter more guys who I’m attracted to, but can forge a connection with, as I do with many women.
Tony
It may also be the lack of toxic masculinity within you that makes you easier for women to be with – non-threatening, as opposed to trying to enforce some sort of rigid gender-identity out of women. Possibly because you have no demands of them (sexually speaking). You come across as someone easy to be with – and that’s just your online impression. ;)
Socio-gen:
That’s just stupid! I grew up in Minnesota, but haven’t lived there in about a decade (though I still cross the border every day to work there). Imagine the nightmares if the voter ID amendment would have passed.
You brought up surnames. When we married, my wife did not ‘take my name’, mostly because I didn’t want her to. She was much more traditional (at the time) than I was. It just seemed wrong to me. Our kid also has her last name, because she carried and birthed him; I didn’t. (My first name is one of his two middle names. Hyphens are a pain; and again, she birthed him.) We lived for a year in New Mexico, and many people there felt very free to challenge my wife (never me) about her name, to the point of questioning whether we were ‘really’ married, or if she was ‘committed’ to me. Folks also asked if I was my son’s father (which made a little more sense, I guess, until you see us together).
We found out later that Minnesota has one of the highest (the highest?) rates of women keeping their names at marriage, so it was just not questioned there.
Gaaaaaah.
I am awash in confusing thoughts now.
I’m starting to wonder about sexual roles and how they’ve been gendered. For most of my sex life, I’ve been a bottom (some of the times I’ve tried to top, I’ve >ahem< lost interest…) I've shocked quite a few people, because they assume that since I'm a muscular guy, that I'm naturally the top. I haven't had much interest in being a top. At times, I've thought it was too much work (not that I'm inclined to just lay there).
But now I'm wondering if there's any connection between being a top/bottom and sexual gender roles. Can I change? Do I want to change? What influenced me to be more comfortable in this sexual gender role over another?
rq:
It’s funny you say this, because I’ve had people (usually men) allude to the opposite. Usually it’s people I don’t know who approach me.
Scenario:
I’ve just gotten off work at 1230 and stop by Emerald City (I tend to prefer going to gay bars over straight bars). I sit at the end of the bar, with my drink in hand, by myself. Sometimes I play the video poker machine that many bars have. Whatever I’m doing, I’m minding my own business. I have had many people approach me and tell me I’m being arrogant or standoffish or stuck up. Every single time, I’m taken aback. I’m just trying to unwind after work, and I’m being attacked with accusations of arrogance?
Have a laugh.
From the same pastor who declared that masturbation is homosexual behavior because you have having sex with someone of the same gender.
um, Tony, just my three cents here, but as long as you and your partners are fine with it, why worry about whether you need to or want to change your own preferences by an act of will? It’s kind of circular, no? My preferences have kind of migrated a bit along with my partner’s, with talk and experimentation and learning to be more accepting of ourselves (much like Natalie describes, I think). Maybe being accepting of one’s preferences, and shifts thereof, is instrumental to permitting such shifts to occur. (The Zen of sexuality!)
Tony
Hmm. Very interesting (@1383)! I’ve been attacked the same way (stand-offish, arrogant) simply for wanting to be alone… Maybe you have a stern I’m-relaxing face, and that, together with appearing in a location where many might assume you should be approachable, is what provokes (unintentionally) these kinds of comments. Like how women are supposed to be approachable anytime, anywhere, and when they aren’t (i.e., aren’t smiling, aren’t laughing at someone’s jokes, aren’t chatting to everyone in sight), they’re labelled as stuck up, arrogant, and stand-offish.
Also, glad your brain is getting a work-out. ;)
Tony, Also, what Pteryxx said. :)
Pteryxx:
I feel somewhat limited in sexual options, and I wish to be able to experience and enjoy a greater variety of them.
Part of my inability to do so (I think) is that I’ve never had a consistent sexual partner for longer than 3 months (and the last time was 10 years ago) to really explore with. One night stands and Friends with Benefits don’t seem to lend themselves to the type of sexual exploration I’m thinking of (which isn’t extreme by any means).
When I see candid photos of me just sitting by myself, even I think, ‘damn, what was I so ticked about?’ I’ve been with her for 21 years, but I still sometimes ask my wife ‘Are you okay?’, based on her relaxed, I’m-just-sitting-here-thinking face, because to me it looks sort of sad. She does not like this, and always puts on her oh-you-idiot-Paul face.
I also agree with rq about the setting. Tony, do you get this reaction very often elsewhere?
Paul K:
I worked really hard on the vote no campaign. Mostly by telling people that, if it did, I would have been one of the people prevented from voting (if I hadn’t been able to afford a trip to PA).
What really ticked me off was that, when I finally had all the documents they wanted, I got lectured by the clerk at the DMV for not doing it sooner. Apparently, the state could fine me some ridiculous amount for not doing it within 30 days. I told the clerk to do it, because I would take it to the Supreme Court before I paid a dime. Their stupid rules were the reason I had to wait so long because I would not use a name that would utterly fuck up and make useless every other piece of identification I carry.
Um, right, because changing your name is a sign of how committed you are to the relationship? If that were the case, every marriage license should include a space to enter your new “couple” name which is different from (or a combination of) your birth surnames. That way both parties have to prove their commitment.
Probably because they have to go to court to change their names back, in the event of divorce. I was boggled when a friend explained she had to do this to retrieve her birth surname, as if she were completely changing her name. From what I understand, a lot of women here keep their name to avoid the hassle and use their married surname only socially.
In PA, you just go to the DMV with your birth certificate and they re-issue your license/photo ID with that name. Then you have photo ID to use to change everything else.
Guys, a question: How do you submit suggestions for site alterations/functionality issues? I mean, is there an admin email address or something?
Paul:
No. I suspect that’s partly because in most other locations I’m engaging people, whereas, at a bar, I’m often running solo and keeping to myself.
It’s like there’s an expectation that if you’re at a bar, you’re supposed to engage people.
We had no idea about this at the time we got married (in 1998), but it makes sense. That is just fucked up.
Tony: yeah, I don’t think I can offer any insight there, because I’ve no experience of casual partnering. On reflection, what wanderings I’ve done were only possible in a relationship with enough trust to express doubts about our sexualities in the first place. (Hasn’t ‘Questioning’ been a sort of orientation sometimes?) But my fantasies migrated also, for what that’s worth.
…are we ever going to get a new lounge? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one get this big.
I don’t see the problem with that tweet, Janine. God did not give us a mind – true. So we can use it to question and deny his…
Oh.
I see. He accidentally missed a vital piece of punctuation, and it’s funny because that leaves one space to interpret the tweet as saying something extremely stupid? Right? No? Shit.
rq:
I think you’re probably right. It seems like certain locations cause more of the “what’s wrong” or “why aren’t you having fun” reactions from other people. I notice it most often when I’m sitting in the coffee house up the street, having some tea, and enjoying the music. People will ask what’s bothering me, or say something like, “If you don’t like the band/musician, you can leave” when actually I like them quite a bit and was just listening intently. I guess my I’m relaxing face looks sad or annoyed to other people.
I have had people tell me that my I’m concentrating face looks angry. If I’m studying in my office, people will be timid about knocking on the door or will apologize for interrupting me, and then they’re confused when I greet them with a smile and am happy to see them.
Whoah! Long Lounge!
‘Rupt!
But I couldn’t not drive by and remark that I liked SG’s ideas about the “food-touching-food” yuk that some people have. Also, there was some talk about duck and goose cooking. I find duck gives you not all that much meat for the effort it takes, though I’ve only done it once and would surely do better the next time. I didn’t cause any fires or other disasters on my attempt; OTOH, I felt all greased up in duck fat for the next day or so. Oh, and on the AA thing, I believe the benefits my brother gets are the frequent socializing with people who aren’t going to tempt him into drinking again rather than any particular AA component. He goes to meetings several times a week, and has fallen off the wagon only about three times in the past fifteen years.
There was something else, but I fear portcullising and have to go get my four daily shots of espresso (yes, I’m quite late today!), so: toodles!
@Janine
Driscoll? That name sounds familiar. Am I supposed to know him?
The only time in my life when I spent lots of time in bars was when I was a bouncer in college. People didn’t usually want to engage me ;)
(I only hit someone once, even though people hit — or tried to hit — me lots of times. I hit him because he and two friends had me on the floor, and he was hitting me in the face over and over. It didn’t really hurt; he was too drunk, and in too poor a position to cause pain. I only hit him to get his attention, since yelling in his ear wasn’t working. I found that people who were drunk enough to try to hit the bouncer were almost invariably too slow and clumsy to do much damage. But this was a college bar, not a rough place, really, [though when I started, there were a couple of fights per week] and most of the patrons knew I had the power to ban them if they went too far, and I used it.)
Oh, and that bar was in Morris, Minnesota.
Paul K
re: neutral faces
I still ask the Husband from time to time if he’s pissed off, because that’s what he looks like when he’s a bit tired. Yeah, he doesn’t like it!
@LykeX
Mark Driscoll is a well enough known conservative pastor says a lot of stupid stuff that gets picked up in the atheist blogosphere. I’m sure you’ve seen something about him or his church before.
Pteryxx
Personally, I don’t, because it’s pretty much irrelevant to me. Crushes and lovers have ranged from hyper femme women to standard issue dudebros*. I’d like to see other people’s reactions to this, because while I can sort of get gender presentation preferences, I really don’t understand genital preferences. (Not that I judge. I mean, some people eat olives for crying out loud…. okay, I sort of judge olive eaters.)
*Clearly I have made some bad decisions.
Socio-gen
I’ve been told I look downright intimidating, when thinking or concentrating or reading (people sometimes think I’m always reading terrible, serious books). Combine that with a preference for dry/sarcastic humour and a belief that I have a terrible smile (hence, a dislike of smiling), and it’s no wonder people believe me to be hostile and anti-social… ;) Keeps the rabble away! :)
Socio-gen:
I meant to respond to this earlier. We would sometimes come back at them with ‘well, he didn’t change his name for me, either’. To which we would get looks of confusion or anger. They never confronted me on this issue, but I was often with her when they did (which has its own weirdness), so we both got to enjoy their looks.
Not sure if it’s helpful to the discussion but just chiming in that to my POV the question just feels so strange. Ever since I’ve felt secure with sexuality the idea of gender not matching parts or anything like that doesn’t arise to me.
rq
Weirdly, when I read, and especially when I watch TV, I often have a stupid-looking grin on my face. And I really don’t like most of what I see on TV.
Whoops. NEW THREAD, at last.