I can't believe I have to say this....

Dear Pentagon employees,

Do not try to flirt with me by offering to pass on classified information.

ktnxbye,
themaster

why do I subject myself to this???

I hate this trope:

The goal of this device is clearly to make men stop and think about behaving in such a hateful way. Good aim, but how it accomplishes that is so incredibly off-base it makes me want to cry. You can't use fear of being perceived as gay (rooted in homophobia) to combat violence against gay men (rooted in homophobia). Or, I mean, I suppose you can, but what an awful plan!

Then, to make matters worse, the trope is consistently deployed in a way to excuse the bully and to engender pity for him. He's just another poor lonely gay boy, worse off even than the person being bullied because he isn't out; he deserves your pity, not your scorn. What bull. He deserves every ounce of my scorn.

* * *
And then there came this, from majorly butch football coach Bieste: "I'm not gay you know. I know I can be a little bit intimidating sometimes, but deep down inside, where no one can see, I'm just a girl."

FLAIL OMFUCKINGGOD THIS SHOW IS SUCH UTTER CRAP WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF????????????? "I'm not gay, I'm just a girl"???? Because those are so fucking exclusive???? These writers KILL ME.

* * *
And mind you, this is all in the anti-gay-bullying episode, the one where they so awkwardly try to illustrate Grand Moral Lessons About People Who Are Gay. This show is utter crap. Why do I keep thinking it's going to be better if I return??? It's like a fucking abusive relationship.

---

Overview of Video:
You can see a badly recorded longer version of this scene with this Youtube clip, from 6:18 to 7:22.

(jock bully pushes gay kid Kurt into locker after beating up on him all episode; Kurt is majorly pissed and finally willing to call him out, and follows jock into locker room to tell him off)
Jock: Do *not* push me, homo. (shakes fist)
Kurt: You gonna hit me? Do it.
Jock: (slams locker) Don't push me.
Kurt (continuing to invade personal space): Hit me, cuz it's not gonna change who I am. You can't punch the gay out of me anymore than I could punch the ignoramus out of you!
Jock (increasingly agitated): Get out of my face!
Kurt: You are nothing but a scared little boy who can't handle how extraordinarily ordinary you are!
(Jock kisses Kurt for a full second)

This makes the master despair.

Observe: Hastert vs. Pelosi vs. Boehner. (Click to embiggen.)





4 vs. 8 vs. 3.

Churlish bastards.

OkCupid on Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex

I've had OkCupid's Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex blog post linked to me multiple times in the past week. Now, there are clearly some major flaws in it in terms of generalizability. OkCupid's users make for a very specific sample, the people who answer particular questions make for an even more specific sample, and there's no discussion of the characteristics of that sample outside all the graphs they present. There's also no discussion of what counts as gay or straight, where the bi people are, where the trans people on, and so on. It's shoddy as research and it is definitely a post for straight people rather than a post for the LGBTQ community (but hey, it's OkCupid; we already knew that would be the bias, didn't we?). And even though I don't like some of it straight out -- the Profile Correlation to the Norm in particular is a meaningless waste of space that seems like it should be taken out of a How to Lie with Statistics book -- some is pretty and interesting. Like this:

What are your sexual inclinations? (straights only)

That is possibly now one of my favorite maps. Much more interesting than, say, this one:

What are your political inclinations?

Mississippi is literally unbelievably un-gay-uncurious, and I will be keeping my eye on them for in the next 15 years, as a generation that must be driven by fear and homophobia more than by internal curiosity gains in power. Scary shit. And New Mexico, well, on the basis of these two maps, I may consider moving there. I hadn't realized it was such a bastion of liberalism and open-mindedness. Must be the Western live-and-let-live mentality. Or a tiny sample size left unmentioned by OkCupid staffers.

faith in humanity!

Here are my most recent three attempts to find parking:

1. I've been circling the parking lot for 15 minutes, waiting for a meter to open up. Finally a guy walks up and goes to a car, and it's in my zone! I put on my turn signal and thank god that I will have 5 minutes to walk to my appointment once I park. A guy behind me gets out of his car, knocks on my window, and tells me that he has made a deal with the car pulling out to get the spot; there's some sort of line at the front that he has been waiting in. Yeah, whatever. I let him have the spot and circle for another 15 minutes -- in time to get that same man's spot upon his return to his car -- and a glimpse of his cheeky grin.
2. I park at a meter, already running late, but thankful that the meter gods smiled on me and I was able to find a spot quickly. I pump it full of $1.25 in quarters. It jams. I add another quarter -- still not loosened up. I add another quarter, just in case. Bam, "FAIL" starts blinking on the meter, and I have to go find and feed another one.
3. Today, after I circle around meters for 10 minutes, I give up and drive over to a parking garage where you pay after you park. As I enter, I pause to wait for someone with his backup lights on pull out. That car doesn't move, but a guy walks up behind me and asks if I intend to park. He tells me he had paid until 3.5 hours into the future, but his meeting was canceled. He gives me his parking pass for the evening(!!!!!!).
   

So, today I will not bitch. I am happy. Somehow, it seems, there are still nice people in the world. Thank you, Mr. Kind Man. You made my evening.

*jaw on floor*

This. That. The other thing.

So, again, how are more people not offended by this show? Everywhere I turn they hit another place I can't start believing they went to. (And, ten to one, I bet someone from the show -- and lots of its devotees -- will argue this is female empowerment. *does the flail dance*)

"and my partner"

I swear, the next time some young straight person casually mentions their "partner", I'm going to roll my eyes or shoot a dirty look. The thing is, often they're trying to use that word in solidarity, so it's just not nice to go off on them. But oh, how I want to. Here are the problems I have with it:

1. It's appropriation. (Sure, it's a useful concept, but it's appropriation nonetheless.)
   


2. The concept becomes, by usage, just one more step in the progression between "dating" and "married". (How many straight people do you know who have called each other "partners" for, say, the past ten years, without getting married? The vast majority give in and sign the paperwork.)
• This means that gay people's relationships still aren't equal to straight relationships -- the top tiers are no longer parallel. Gay people end up using the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" longer, and they are cut off from the top two tiers of societal relationship recognition -- engagement and marriage.


3. The very neutralness of the word renders gay people invisible again. Visibility = progress; invisibility = impediment to progress.
   


4. Straights who use the word "partner" seem to want most to look "trendy", to artificially inflate the recognition given to their relationship, or both. These potential motives put a horrid taste in my mouth. They often haven't thought through the full implications for themselves, though they may be trying.

The counter argument, of course, is that "partner" was a second tier word, and the only way for it to become fully respected was for straights to use it. After all, straights are fully respected and gays aren't. I don't buy that. I'm sure acceptance of the word happened quicker when straights started appropriating it left and right (thereby diluting the denotational and cultural meanings of the word), but it seemed to be making significant progress as an acceptable or paperwork-neutral alternative to "spouse" on its own, right alongside the progress that gay people ourselves have made.

I'd love to see a little more critical thinking. I'll stand by your right to choose whatever terminology you want, once I know you've given serious thought to the full implications of your decisions.

I had to share.

Waah. Why doesn't anyone write liberally biased feel-good email forwards?

Bet you can't count the ways the email pieced together below makes themaster uncomfortable. (The email sources do have all the sweetest intentions, bless them.)

where's the LBT in LGBT?

Even when the WaPo has a gay interest article (so edgy!), they ignore the lesbians. Infuriating. And utterly misleading.

Nine openly gay college presidents gathered in Chicago last weekend and resolved to form an organization to provide professional support to "out" presidents and faculty.

I was surprised. No lesbians at the helm of any institution in the entire nation? Now there is a story! But then the article invokes some women. So, WTF. Way to use male-coded words to subsume the female. (The journal Inside Higher Ed isn't innocent, either; that's whom the WaPo was cribbing from.)

* * *

I also now know that the WaPo style guide on the use of "gay" (2006) reads like it was written by a single opinionated individual who was frustrated by a series of insulting articles. I can only shake my head in disbelief at the lack of professionalism and professional courtesy that indicates; I hope mine is a mistaken impression.

so the WaPo can be self-aware with the best of them!

I don't usually say nice things about the WaPo, so here's a link to an article about the new TLC show "DC Cupcakes", based on the Georgetown Cupcake store. I can't help but love this article. Here, from the lead:

"D.C. Cupcakes," which premieres Friday night on TLC, joins a growing number of manic-bakery shows (some with dwarves, some without) and follows the day-to-day operations of Georgetown Cupcake.

Who can quibble with the intoxicating allure of the $2.75 Georgetown Cupcake? Who can articulate a discomfort with the subliminally retro Betty Crocker ideals about femininity (the gyno/Easy-Bake Oven connection!) or ponder the limited entrepreneurial choices for women, even in 2010, when your mouth is full of chocolate ganache?

How great is the tone in this article already? It goes on to snark at some aspects of the show and about our desire for cupcakes, doing a rah-rah from a gender and cultural studies perspective. Despite the lack of real conclusions, it's a tantalizing set of questions and a fun sarcastic read. And hey, maybe some Gender Studies major will actually write a thesis on this stuff and I'll have something fun to read next spring.

Google stalks me!

Google stalks me because I dare to shed light on them! Why else would a random person in the middle of Kansas have read my site? Less than a week after I posted my most recent Google-related fear-mongering essay? Especially someone running the most recent version of Chrome? From a Google ISP?? And then return the next day by googling (literally) the blog name instead of typing it as the URL???

Yuh huh.

And with that bit paranoia clearly stated for Google to notice, I now link you to my favorite letter of the week. It is addressed to The Honorable Jane Harman and admits Googlishess spying... on her.

Transmission complete.

internet safety, the next generation

Oh, wow. The Disney Channel has a "public service announcement" on internet safety, targeting 6-14 year olds. I am shocked at how different these "internet rules of the road" are from the ones I was taught at that age. Mine were limited to "don't give out your name" (presumably with the never-uttered underlying fear: or sexual predators will get you). No one would ever have thought to say "Be careful what you put online; it never goes away, ever" back then, much less make it the first rule of the internet.

This PSA, more than anything else I've ever seen, really brings home to me how far the internet has come. And I'm really, really proud of the people who put it together. They get it, and that's a wondrous and admirable thing.


Unfortunately I can't find a transcription. :( I do recommend watching it for teh nostalgia, though.

At least conservatives are upfront about their provincialism.

Dear "liberal" straights,

I know you try. Or at least, I know that you think you try. I really do. But goddamn, you can make me so nonplussed and frustrated and angry sometimes, and I'm sure you have neither a clue nor ill intentions. So what am I supposed to do? Try to educate you and risk offending you? Or risk having you come back with a snappy comeback designed to break the tension through another laugh -- again at my expense? Should I leave the room? Should I smolder silently, oppressed into silence by friends and could-be-friends?

I see you nonchalantly bringing up your gay friends and family members to play a role in your "I'm not a bigot!" play whenever you know a gay person is in the room. I know exactly what you're doing, too, even if you don't. And it's awkward, and I feel embarrassed for you whenever you do it, even if you don't have the sense to be embarrassed about it yourself. Here's a bit of shocking news: having gay friends or gay family members doesn't magically make you aware, inoffensive, or somehow unable to oppress me.

Instead of protestations that "we're not like that", what would actually help would be for you to show that you aren't like that. Stop following up your diligent assertions that "I'm not homophobic" by laughing at jokes about how anal sex is inherently dirty, gross, or inappropriate. Stop asking pre-school-aged boys whether they have girlfriends. Stop talking about marriages as if they are a good thing or a universal experience. Stop attributing gender-normative or sexual traits to children too young to know what gender or sex is. Stop being shocked when those children are able to accept gay families and you aren't. Stop being surprised at what counts as anti-gay language. Just, stop.

Just because we don't say anything doesn't mean it's okay. It probably just means we aren't comfortable calling you on it. (It's quite insidious, really, the way that straight ignorance of causing LGBTQ people offense enables them sin repeatedly, but LGBTQ awareness of causing straight people offense will stop us from saying anything -- simply because we're more aware than you are about what's going to offend our hosts, friends, and peers. Straight privilege is such an ingenious system. I'd applaud its creator, if I wasn't busy being strangled by the creation.)

If you want to count yourself as an ally and not just another gay-oppressing asshole straight person who wants a PC reputation, then just fucking educate yourself and think a little. It's just a question of deciding that it matters to stop creating environments in which gay people are left out, made to feel guilty or abnormal, and/or positioned as utterly alone against a tide of chorusing problematic straight opinion. You can do it. You just have to care enough to try.

love,
the un-master, very baited

* * *

And god, but I know it's only going to get worse. The straights in my circle are marrying and having babies, which means an ever-increasing numbers of social engagements featuring the scintillating conversational topics of weddings, marriages, and children from a painfully terrible, heterosexist, anti-feminist vantage point. Someday, someday, I will have a utopia of feminist, actually gay-friendly social engagements. I kinda hope some of them can involve straights, but today? It's looking pretty bleak.

aww, melty....

WaPo has a same-sex attraction-and-outing story:

MINNEAPOLIS -- A Lutheran pastor ardently critical of allowing gays into the clergy is on leave from his Minneapolis church after a gay magazine reported his attendance at a support group for men struggling with same-sex attraction.

Lavender Magazine published a story last week about Brock's quiet attendance of the Faith in Action meetings, written by a reporter who falsely posed as a member of the group.

The disturbing and regretful part of this story is not the outing (though the bias in the article against outings is so thick you could cut it, the bastards) -- it's that the pastor in question recognizes and accepts that:

"Every time the Bible mentions homosexual behavior, it condemns it. It never adds, it's OK if you love each other."

It's true, and that's the tragedy here. His religion requires him to hate himself, or to hate his religion. Awww. I melt for him.

* * *

And damn, but I do wish the WaPo even slightly indicated that the blameworthy party here might not be Lavender Magazine. "Newspapers are worth saving because they are our only form of unbiased reporting," my ass.

eye candy, brain candy

I'm too accustomed to good vids to really be able to watch music videos -- music videos are almost always either too literal or too randomly-pasted together, and they rarely tell stories, use any metaphors, or allow for any analysis. Viewer-side thinking just means frustration. Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" vid was the first music video I ever considered art -- more than yet another love story, the video tells the story of a star's relationship with the media. It's intricately put together, pieces of this and that, random snapshots coming together to form a coherent whole; even the randomness is meaningful under my interpretation. Since that vid, I've seen Lady Gaga as an artist rather than just another pop star.

So when people started trashing the new "Alejandro" video, I had to go take a look. It's gorgeous, beautiful eye candy -- and I do too spy a point in the vid. It's an argument about the relationship between repressed sexuality, the military, and the Church.

Snapshot themes:

• Individuals are trapped by a net of religion and militancy that denies their sexuality to them on their own terms.
• "Stripped" religion is only allowed out in as much as it serves militant needs; it will deny your love and your sexuality. Pure religion is utterly impotent (and getting more impotent).
• People have some control over their fate; they are fucked by this situation because they have bought into it and clamor for it. However, we're all essentially puppets of larger forces in the end.
  

"the end of men", guffaw

Sigh:

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences

There is so much wrong with this article that I can't even begin to take it apart. Every point it makes is misguided or inappropriate, or doesn't lead to the point the article pretends it supports in some other way.

I want to rip it apart bit by bit, but I don't want to grace it with the time and attention that would require. Essentially: there's still a serious wage gap. And just because women make up half the work force, they are employed as peons much more often than men. See my lovely sample org chart with women in green and men in yellow that parallels just about every organization I'm aware of (minus maybe some woman-focused non-profits)....

heteronormativity or heterosexism?

This stuff makes me bang my head on the wall:

Valdez and his team of 45 freelance writers do it all: write a client's [online dating] profile, pick out potential matches, send introductory e-mails and message back and forth until a date is confirmed. Then they turn over the correspondence and tell the lucky fellow where and when he's meeting Madame X. (And it's almost always that gender dynamic; 80 percent of the firm's clients are men.)

I feel like keeping this paragraph on an index card in my wallet, ready to be pulled out at any moment, with the line: "Do you really believe that gay people are not discounted or devalued in our nation's 'liberal' media?"

cars that drive themselves!

Someone is in the WaPo suggesting that cars will drive themselves by 2020, but the article tosses out two sentences that indicate this is not as cool of a scifi future as we've all been imagining. Two interesting implications:

1) Privacy. The US and European manufacturers are supporting ad hoc networks for cars on the road to exchange information, whereas Japan is supporting a central repository for particular locations. There are some interoperability issues here, but more interesting to me are the privacy issues -- the US/European system strikes me as significantly less of a privacy threat, since ad hoc networks are just that: ad hoc and non-persistent. I actually suspect in a rousing turn-around of events that at some point our government will start quietly lobbying our auto manufacturers to switch to the Japanese system, if not advantaging that system overtly.

2) Environmentalism & Public Transportation. "Drivers will be able to work, read, watch films or even sleep while their cars are driven for them. 'It will be like sitting on a bus or a train,' says Ekmark." Now, I use buses and trains in order to avoid the scary traffic. But if my car drives itself (and does so presumably more safely than the bus driver drives me today) and I can sleep or read in my own car amongst my own dirt for that time instead.... I'd be very much inclined to stop using public transportation. (Especially if they somehow fixed the parking problem too.) This has major implications for the budgets of the public transport companies and for the mobility of people who can't afford personal vehicles. It also puts the movement toward carpooling and mass transit for environmental purposes back a number of years....

So, I'm curious how much we actually stand to gain from these magic cars (how many fewer accidents? anything else?) vs. what we stand to lose (our privacy? our jobs? mobility of the lower classes? our planet?). I'd love to see someone do a breakdown of this so I know whether my fears are greatly exaggerated.... And I'm sad that the perfect scifi future doesn't look so perfect now that I'm an adult and it's becoming more real.

the gay and the gaga

Everyone still talks about Glee. I decided to give it one more chance. A Lady Gaga chance. And it was so, sooooooo awful. So awful. And there wasn't any real Lady Gaga, so what was the point?

Two gay plots, both ridiculous and awful and really horribly offensive. Best line: "My dads can't sew; I really need a mom right now. Can you help?" What absolute bullshit. If the gay plots were decent, I'd be willing to let that go as character development of Rachel, but as it is? Jesus fucking Christ, no! *silent scream*

There was more than the bullshit regular Glee awfulness, though. It went beyond the terrible, unrepresentative gay representation and the pregnant girl who looks like she aborted 6 months ago even though that word will never pass through anyone's lips, ever, and Schuster taking on an inappropriate father's role in apparently all of their lives, and all that other normal Glee crap.

They decided to include this (no spoilers; 1.20):


At first, my inner femslasher squeed like mad -- Rachel's mommy is a lesbo and her dads are fags! How perfect! (While thinking: there's no way they did this on purpose, or it wouldn't be so understated and inoffensive.)

Then the newly reunited mother/daughter pair started singing together, looking deeply into each other's eyes, singing from the soul, and grinning goofily. Rachel even provides an O-face.

OBSCENE. My jaw was on the floor. Did the authors not realize that that particular song just screams "LESBIAN SEX!!!!"? (And the genetic sexual attraction bit makes it all the better....) The right fan communities (read: not like the 99% of Glee fans who are homophobes and don't even know it) must be having a field day with this.

reverse discrimination

I work with a scholarship committee. Recently there was some confusion regarding the barely-gendered language in one of the eligibility documents: the language seemed to indicate that men were eligible for a scholarship, but the scholarship was clearly intended by and for women. Someone else responded with an explanation for how it was phrased:

It was always the intention that the award(s) go to a female applicant(s). But back when we first starting administering the scholarship, the powers-to-be were afraid that making it a "females only" award might lead to some sort of legal proceeding against us, as a body or as individuals. So it was decided to make both females and males "eligible" with female applicants receiving preference. Some time later on, people wanted us to tip the scales in favor of female applicants studying [XXX]. So the maximum preference was always given to females studying [XXX]. We have never seriously considered male applicants studying [XXX].

Because having "females only" awards is so uncommon, and so very likely to induce a suit! If that's what really went down, it absolutely reeks of faith in the reality of reverse discrimination....

I see two possible explanations for the original committee's desire to publicly cast the award as open to everyone:

1. The committee was unable to distinguish between "appropriate" and "inappropriate" groups to institutionally advantage/give a chance to. (I find this unlikely since the categorization is so much a part of the fabric of our culture today; everyone can rattle off the common "protected" categories, regardless of their rhetorical purpose in doing so.)
2. The committee wanted to register a protest against (or at least was unwilling to kowtow to) affirmative action programs -- specifically against the idea that women must be explicitly advantaged in certain cases because men are unexplicitly advantaged in all cases. (This seems much more likely to me, but I'm not sure how to further unpack it except to say: ick.)
   

Their fear of being explicit with a "females only" requirement implies something else as well: The original committee believed there would be male applicants who were so entrenched in the idea that intending to fund only women is "reverse discrimination" that those applicants would actually bring a suit. That potential outcome never even crossed my mind (presumably because of the naturalness in my mind of supporting institutionally-disadvantaged groups in equally institutional ways). I think this given explanation is the most likely motivator for the current phrasing, but the reverse discrimination aspect is an interesting, more fundamental motivator.

I keep churning over this last aspect in particular in my mind.... Huh. Fascinating insights into the manifestations of socially conservative thinking.

can we stop desexualizing teh gheys yet?

I love Modern Family -- it's the best sitcom on TV right now by far. I don't think I've ever watched an episode where I didn't have to actually guffaw at something, and I've never, ever shouted at the TV or hit my couch in uber-frustration (unlike Glee, V, and all the rest).

The cherry on top is that two of the main characters are gay fathers (it's not why I order the dessert, but it makes the experience ever so more delightful). The show manages to give both men well-developed personalities, and it puts forward a very solid portrayal of the stereotypes that gay people/couples face without ever caving in to those stereotypes. I'm very happy with the show.

So, this was disappointing (8 seconds at end of episode 1.22; slight spoiler):



I don't blame ABC, not really, not after all they're giving me with this show. But it's kinda like the lasertag place -- a tragic flaw in the midst of something that could have been perfect. I'm just so grateful that anything exists that I'm willing to forgive that which under other, better circumstances would be unforgiveable.

Namely: the gay couple is sexless, not even allowed to kiss when deliberately set up in a precise visual and content parallel to the straight couple. The gay men's story revolves around their child and social life and work lives. The two straight couples, on the other hand, are characterized with references to sex with each other in addition to their lives -- this particular episode ends with references to "alone time" and a "topless beach" between one straight couple, and the previous episode had involved a flashy bra and "catching her in a good mood for Something Else" between the other straight couple.

Now, maybe I just can't remember the gay sex references right now.... But I'm pretty sure the gay in this show has been mostly neutralized to "flamboyantly happy", a "safe" characteristic that avoids the fact that not being straight is actually defined by who you want to have sex with. Damn white-washers. Accept the whole damn gay person. Don't focus only on the parts that have no bearing whatsoever on sexual desire (which is the category you problematized in the first place, Mr. Straight Person).

But hey, two steps forward, one step back is better than the reverse.

juxtaposition love!

God, how I love displays of conservative consumerism in the States: disrespect toward female sexual autonomy at the right hand of Christianity.


The best part of these displays? When you go to the register and buy the stuff they only ever intended for teh mens. Neutralizes some of the offensiveness that way, you know. (At least up until the high-water mark of a "free breast exams here" cap. Nothing can neutralize that one.)

trany plugs

I do not understand this sign:


I do not think it means the same thing in my world as in theirs.... In fact, I am not at all sure what it means in their world. (Any help for the weirded-out?)

so I wasn't really baited....

And I'm really loathe to drop lasertag from the "most recent post" position... But this may actually cause some eventual 'bating:

Is this garage hot, or what?

lasertag

So I went to lasertag recently and the place exhibited a really strange juxtaposition. It was crazy-inclusive, such that the header image on the website/the safety briefings/the paintings on the walls all featured people of all genders and colors and body types....

main banner on website

So yay, applause!

The scoreboard inside occasionally advertised "Ladies' Night" on Thursdays from 7-10 pm, with half price games for women. Again, yay, applause! They are encouraging and enabling women to run around and play with guns!

And then a few minutes later, I saw the fine print beneath the advert: "Ladies in groups not eligible."

WTF.

Skeeved. Out.

So now it all sorta comes off like ... some big trap. It seems just as predatory as ladies' nights at bars, which are designed to over-serve women and under-serve men (thereby facilitating impossibly-consensual sexual activities). The lasertag goal seems to be "increase the number of women without any support structure who come to a dark, male-dominated, testosterone-fueled environment, and make them feel comfortable in doing so, in such a way that the men know which day to go to have their choice of women to hit on."

I want to love this place, I really do, but, wow. With that one condition, they managed to twist all their fabulous female empowerment into male empowerment instead.

one woman's evil...

I generally despise the WaPo comment section, especially the On Faith section. It's full of raving lunatics spouting drivel without any grammar or thought.

However, I skimmed a comment that provoked actual insight in me today: Deepak Chopra was defending Westerners' right to detach yoga from any semblance of Hindu religious thought (with the cynical view being: he was asserting his moral right to make money off Westerners). On the whole, it was an interesting and well-reasoned article, and it had me half-convinced. The comment section was its usual cesspit. One commenter, however, wrote:

People are upset because this follows a pattern of 200 years of British colonialism when a systematic attempt was made to demean and diminish Hinduism by Christian missionaries and colonial rulers. ... A dishonest & cynical recent attempt has been to create the narrative that Yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism.

Bullseye! First thought: So that's what's going on here. Second thought: Damn, the claim that "yoga isn't Hindu" is inherently evil.*

Part of the reason that it is Not Okay to divorce yoga from its context is that its context has been purposefully stripped from it, for hundreds of years, precisely to make Westerners feel better about themselves by putting down Indians and Hindus. This piece by Deepak Chopra is just one more piece of the racism-fueled border work that Westerners have been doing for ages to separate themselves from India and especially from Hinduism. It adds to the cacophony of Western voices that shout, "Oh, Hinduism doesn't have anything to offer the world**. Yoga? No, we like yoga. Yoga does have something to offer. So yoga isn't Hindu. That'd be crazy. Yoga is Some Other Category."

The article itself is a textbook example of how to resolve cognitive dissonance ("redefine one of the dissonant categories so they are no longer in opposition to each other"). However, there is a really fundamental problem here: redefining yoga allows the people who have the hardest time holding "yoga" and "Hindu" in their head at the same time to avoid ever having to deal with their real root issue: their racism. Cognitive dissonance arises because in these people's heads, "yoga=good; Hindu=bad". Rather than encouraging people to explore their unvetted intuition that "Hindu=bad", the article and the movement simply encourage racist Westerners to redefine their world to avoid dealing with the implications of their racism. The problem is, redefining terms doesn't make the racism go away. Redefinition is just a surface patch for your brain in one of the many thousands areas where the bug is going to cause shit, instead of an opportunity to understand the bug better and start working on fixing it. Chopra, at the very least, should know better.



* For me, knowledge, especially knowledge about the contributions of weaker groups, is one of very few fundamental goods. So, the ease with which Chopra ignores this important aspect of the issue (and thereby contributes to a world in which racism prevails and Hinduism's influence on the world is eventually forgotten) means his argument is inherently evil -- or, at least, just as evil as I will ever label anything.

** the world -- read "us white Westerners who think we are the world"

teh googles

I love when I'm proved right, except when the implications are horrifying.

Google is so effing sketchy.

Everyone knows Google drives down streets to collect images for Street View. Then they tag street addresses in those images, and link them to street maps. Sounded sketchy -- especially when you first looked up your cousin's house and saw they bought a new car, right? At this point though, people are mostly okay with it, because the end product makes for an incredibly useful tool for figuring out how to get somewhere new. And it's all publicly available information, right?

Well. In Germany, Google is also logging your home's wifi network and MAC address(es), which get associated with your street address and thus with you. Now, there is definitely an argument to be made that this is publicly-available information (psssst, smart people hide their SSIDs!). But it still makes me squirm, because this data? This data has all kinds of second-tier implications for privacy on the web that the facade of your house never, ever did.

The article points out too that this is exactly the sort of information that China and Russia should be collecting on us, and vice versa. And, you know, if they aren't already, now all they need to do is hack Google (again)....

I'm not sure that this is "just as public as a house facade", frankly, and the implications are certainly more disturbing, especially on this massive of a scale, and especially in the hands of Google, which already knows so much else.

I went to the toy store!

The gendering was really obscene on this one in particular. Bright pink... "Housekeeping" in big letters... "Toys" in tiny ones. Since, you know, the toy eventually becomes the reality. For people with vaginas (only). Which are pink inside.

FLAIL.

The colored gendering of all the "girls" aisles really pisses me off, even beyond the crappy gendering of which toys were on them/which toys girls are allowed or supposed to want. I know people discuss this time and time again, but why do we insist on marking the stuff for "girls" so that boys know not to go near -- even before they get close enough to see what's on the shelves, or are old enough to read? It twigs me.

---

More gendering.... even of something as simple as musical instruments. Clearly only girls play piano and only boys play drums. Because girls are classy and delicate and smart, and boys are loud and like to bang on things. Yeah. Further underscored by having multiple representations of girls liking piano (and no boys doing so), and multiple representations of boys liking drums (and no girls doing so).

---

There are three different boys used for marketing guitars -- one white boy with dark hair, one white boy with blond hair, and one black boy (diversity!). Almost the guitars have one of these three boys, with the white boys dominating, of course.

One guitar -- on this shelf of eight stacks of guitars -- portrays a girl. She is white. And she is dressed in pink, as if to assure, "I'm REALLY a girl, even though I play guitar!".

This shit is horrifying.

---

I am so effing disturbed. Barbie's target market is 3 years and up. Where does this ripped near-naked mantoy come in??

The only thing I can think of is that Mattel is marketing to the Twilight fangirls (who are happy adults).... on one of the Pepto-Bismol pink aisles of Toys"R"Us. Or, alternatively, Mattel is super smart and knows that their 3-8 year olds know that older women think about shit like this, and therefore will think having a mantoy of their own is cool -- even if they don't "get it". WTF, Mattel. I'm creeped out in either case.

(It also leaves me wondering: are the Ken-like series still eunuchs beneath their shorts? How deep are they willing to take the fanservice?)

no, really, I don't think I'm reading too much in....

This cup's imagery has to be as phallic as McDonald's could possibly get away with:

Lordy. It's like they took some phallic imagery and twisted it just enough to be inoffensive...

• "Long" and "tall" in big type (inoffensive by way of including "cool", albeit in super tiny font)
• Long skinny thing poking up into the air (but pyramidal, not cylindrical)
• Two balls beneath it (but squarish, not round)
• Liquid being splashed out (but spread out, not a single stream)

So, being who I am, I burst out laughing and took a pic of this random man's cup. Yeah.

I am probably the only one who thinks my interpretation is legit. But, I swear it is an example of our indoctrination to think of long things as penises, and that the indoctrination is so subconscious that we don't even notice when we're drawing on the tropes.

fooooooooooul

So I have a sketchy older man asking for my number, my email address, looking at me sideways at inappropriate times, asking me how he can best learn English, asking what there is to do in the area, or asking what I'm doing tonight, or when I'm returning to my home city and if he can visit me later this week, or if he can have my cell phone number (after I'd already given him my work business card, which has a phone number itself), or or or!

And then, I have this other older guy who comes to visit me, offers to let me sleep at his house, organizes a series of meetings so they better fit my schedule (and confuse other people), collects my different phone numbers and the contexts for them, remembers pieces of previous innocuous conversations and quotes them back at me, wants to give me free old t-shirts from volunteer events, when I refuse to accept the free t-shirts, looks up my mailing address and mails them to me in a package, adds me as a friend on IM, comments on the fact that I seem "unhappy" in messages that were never addressed to him and wants to know why, and and and!

Fucking scary shit.

It's fucking unfair that there is no socially acceptable way to respond to this bullshit with a "HELL NO, get away from me, you're fucking weird and scary and I DON'T LIKE THIS!" as long as they keep all their comments in public, their hands to themself, and act like they just want to be "helpful" or in need of "help". Do they even know that their behavior is shockingly out of line???

I call (scream) gender norms foul.

my new favorite commercial!

I've never seen this one before -- but it was on about 3 times in an hour in a bar with a sports channel, and it seems to have fansites.

Chortle.

damn yankee

Guess what happens when I start having time to read the news again?

April 2010 is now Confederate History Month in Virginia!

But I'm left floundering on these points -- why exactly do I need to understand the sacrifices of (only) Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens? And why again is it worth celebrating that "all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed, [they gave in]"?

Apparently it's a tourism stunt. A really, really awful, self-centered, short-sighted, but very earnest one.

Lakoff : women :: Herring : the internets

Lakoff 1975 was the first big work on women's/gendered language, and is still often cited despite some serious flaws, lack of connection to current context, and lack of any meaningful content.

Her generalizations may have been true at the time, but certainly aren't now, and were only correlated with rather than caused by gender even at the time, although that point isn't really stressed.... The vast majority of Lakoff's signals arose simply because of her time period: women were powerless and/or had little to use their attention or brains on but "vapid" topics (which itself buys into a sexist trope when positioned as such). She also focuses entirely on upper-class white women, although clearly "women's" language was much broader even in the early 1970s. Yet Lakoff is still cited and recommended....

My favorite parts of her "womanly" language: Women tend to...

1. Lack a sense of humor/be poor at telling jokes
2. Use empty adjectives (e.g., "charming" and "adorable")
3. Use specialized vocabulary for things like colors
   
4. Speak in italics (e.g., "sooooo" and "verrrry")
   
5. Use direct quotations (e.g., "Hannah said that he said ...")
6. Invoke question intonation in declarative contexts
   

And they say things like:

1. Oh fudge, I've put the peanut butter in the fridge again!
2. Isn't that absolutely diviiiine?
3. Dinner will be ready... around 6 o'clock?
   
4. I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't please close the door?

Even if these factors were actually intrinsic to how "women" speak, Robin Lakoff phrases them in very anti-feminist ways (women are poor at telling jokes?). And then she actively argues women are "deficient" in their linguistic behavior as compared to men.

I flail at the memories.

And it reminds me all too much of how academics (especially linguists) and the media portray The Internets for their audiences. Oh, academia, why do you cause me this pain? Just because someone was "first" in a subject area doesn't make their work relevant or insightful -- usually it means their work is simply cited often, whenever other people have (un)interesting insights and need to cite someone to get taken seriously. Yes, this means you, Herring.

marital status? for reals?

I hate when people on LinkedIn put up their marital status. "Single" people look like they are hoping their resume will get them a date. "Married" people look like they are needing to announce that they are successfully straight and paired off -- with presents.

When I look you up professionally, the number of people you're having sex with just really isn't germane.

Victoria's Secret has nothing on the fire department....

So, visiting someone's house last week, I saw the figurines at left displayed in the living room. I blinked a bit. And then realized that the best and most impressive one was actually NOT either of the BDSM ones, however overtly hot they are. The best one is the Fire Department girl. Who is sitting on a fire hydrant. That is bright red. Gigantic. Slightly bent. And that has a perfectly-sculpted head that is distinct from the rest of the "fire hydrant" shaft. She is sitting with her legs open, balanced with the opening to her vagina on top of the head. And she's holding a long snake that spews powerful liquid.

All I can say is: Wow. I'm not sure you can get more explicit in a visual metaphor.

hrmmm... foamy...

I got the catalogue, was looking forward to flipping through the pictures in a spare moment, and then someone pointed out the very bottom of the image. Where she is basking in white foam that covers her crotch.

Ew. That's nasty even without what it's referring to. Who wants dirty foamy stuff that's been expunged from the sea anywhere near their twat? Way to encourage infection and illness.

Never before have I been more struck that they are marketing more than underwear, and marketing it to more than women...

History lesson

Look what people learn in History!



Clearly I have some favorite themes.... Still can't resist pointing out the theme explicitly here though: look at how male-, Christian-, and white-centric our history is! ("A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything", indeed.) This is a glorious exemplification.

(Beautiful presentation, though -- I really have to applaud the artist at the same time I deride his/her teachers.)

so that word actually does imply those things you say it doesn't...

Sometimes I think the Washington Post prints bullshit just to get hits (read: ad revenue) from people saying, wow, that's crap/offensive/terribly inappropriate. (Wait, did I just say "sometimes"? I think I meant "often".)

Most recently, they had some asshat talking about why we should all use "retarded" as an insult, to you know, protect our right to free speech. Or something. His argument hit all the great topoi with barely a glancing blow at substance.

• Words mean different things! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)
  
• Word meaning will evolve! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)
• Offense is inevitable! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)

He also gets the dumb-rhetorical-question prize. Rhetorical questions are the last refuge of the incompetent. Arguers use them in order to shift the burden of proof when they can't pull together a cogent argument.

• "Should certain groups of people, to the exclusion of others, be allowed to reclaim certain words?" (ummmm.... yes?)
• "So, if there are readily identifiable alternate meanings, what is the reason for censorship?" (ummmm.... it's not actually censorship when it's voluntary, and good people don't like to cause others pain?)

His thoughts about our liberties I didn't actually treat seriously until I went investigating for a photo of the man and found a bit more context (wanted to see if he was as white, stuck up and male as he sounded):

Restricting speech of any kind comes with a potential price -- needlessly institutionalized taboos, government censorship or abridged freedom of expression -- that we should be wary of paying.

(I ignored that point as soon as he followed it up with:

For example, stigmatizing the N-word has elicited new problems, including an overeagerness to detect insult where none is intended and the use of excessively harsh punishment against those who use the word wrongly.)

But looking deeper into it (and perhaps I'm looking so deeply that I'm reading in), I think he's trying (badly) to argue that restricting any speech, even voluntarily, enables small segments of the population to manipulate the rights of everyone, through claims of consensus and moral right. When I think just in terms of the MPAA,* I almost have to agree.

Except, somehow, I still can't get on board with phrases like "don't be so retarded" or "that's so gay" (examples from his op ed of dangerous-to-restrict speech). Those comments are designed to cause pain; they are tied intimately together with disgust; their effect is to make people even more uncomfortable for being who they are (and don't have a choice but to be), or for loving someone the speaker finds so distasteful.

The MPAA doesn't fall even close on that rubric.



* The better scene is the one where the filmmaker compares gay sex scenes and straight sex scenes. He uses examples of the same sex acts shot exactly the same way, and then provides the film ratings. It's MPAA gold, but apparently too gold to be available for free on the internets.

dick much?

This is so perfect:

(1:34:04 PM) DUDE: why lesbian bar?? 5 inches snow??
(1:34:15 PM) DUDE: r u lesbian
(1:34:18 PM) DUDE: ??
(1:44:33 PM) ME: yep
(1:48:44 PM) DUDE: oh ok
(1:55:49 PM) ***** DUDE LOGGED OFF *****

Can I lodge one more complaint?

I am staying at a nice hotel, and although I have ample reason to complain about other aspects of this trip (I hate travel), there's one in particular that leaped up and bit me when I retired to my room this evening.

There are 154 channels on the TV. So, it's the perfect opportunity to play the "count the representation!" game!!

Explicit marketing to majority groups:

• 31 channels marketed explicitly to men (Spike, ESPN x15, Big Ten x6, Speed, FSN x5, NFL, Golf, Sci Fi)
• 12 channels marketed explicitly to Christians (TBN, EWTN x2, Daystar, INSP, The Church Channel, FamilyNet, BYU TV, JCTV, The Word Network, World Harvest Television, Smile of a Child)
• 11 channels marketed explicitly to women (Lifetime x3, SoapNet, Home Shopping Network x2, E!, QVC x2, ShopNBC, Jewelry TV)

Explicit representation of minority groups:

• 3 channels marketed explicitly to people of color (BET, Telemundo, EWTN Espanol)

I couldn't identify any other group-specific targeting (with the exception of children, who had 8 channels but don't really have a sustained social identity as children).

IN SUM: 30% of programming available deliberately excludes minority groups. An additional 68% effectively ignores minority groups (the channels are "mainstream", i.e., straight white tacitly-Christian middle-income nuclear families). That means only 2% of the TV bulk remains to represent minority groups as something more than stereotypes.

(Psst! I think I see your value system showing!)


(Sideline: I more-than-half expected to see Logo on that 18-inch, two column, 8-pt font list, especially since I'm in one of the most-gay-friendly cities in the entire country. No dice. What would Logo be playing here, if it could play here, you ask? Would it be particularly offensive or even particularly gay friendly? No. It would be Buffy. And contrary to straight belief (and Joss's own beliefs), Buffy is not actually very supportive even of lesbians. Buffy is straight-up straight media. It doesn't even pose the threat of empowering teh gheys.)

Electronic Surveillance, v2.0

Not baited, but vindicated -- it has indeed come to pass!

The world's most powerful electronic surveillance organizations will join forces. NSA gets additional data on the cyber-attack against Google, to further strengthen its own information assurance activities, in exchange for sharing some of their lessons learned with Google. I can't fault that; there is positive benefit to both sides (though the pact is probably better for Google than for NSA).

It seems like a small thing to get so many words in the WaPo, though (two pages on). I get the impression it's ringing privacy nuts' bells all over the country.

I, of course, am one of them-there privacy nuts, and I've been tooting one particular horn for ages: there is no free lunch, so what pays for all those free and nifty Google services you use?

• Google has deeper access to information about you (more than digital trails of say, what you buy with your credit card: Google knows things like who you talk to, how often, and exactly about what; it knows where you live and where you go; it knows which stocks you own; it knows what kinds of porn you like.).
  
• Google is both allowed to and wants to collect directly on every US person who lives.
  
• Its motive is profit.
• It is right now building up a profile on you that includes every aspect about every facet of your life (so it can serve you appropriate ads) -- it doesn't have to show cause in order to collect on you.
  
• Most devastating, Google's isn't a purely passive collection system. You actively feed Google information about the most important aspects of your life -- and you actually have a choice.

NSA: paid by our taxes, to protect.
Google: paid by our information, to spy more thoroughly.

This is scary shit (says the woman with the Blogger account).

Natural History Museum!

Successfully baited by the Smithsonian Natural History Museum!

First, the homages to evolution were overwrought as always. (This time, though, I saw the skeleton of a few-week-old fetus -- which I found ballsy. The "fetuses look just like you, only smaller" message was a nice counterbalance to "and apes do too" -- now if only they moved the fetus exhibit out of the corner and repeated it as many times as they repeated the evolution message! Boo, indoctrination.)

But yeah, no, neither the over-inclusion of evolution or the secreting of fetuses in corners was my problem with the Bones exhibit. Instead it was them completely missing the boat on portraying the underneath-the-surface-we-are-all-equal message -- hopefully, in any case, subconsciously. Here, a sample:


The explanatory plates read:

• Left: Individuals with Native American ancestry have proportionately wider faces and shorter, broader cranial vaults.

• Center: Individuals with European ancestry tend to have straight facial profiles and narrower faces with projecting, sharply angled nasal bones.

• Right: Individuals with sub-Saharan African ancestry generally show greater facial projection in the area of the mouth, wider distance between the eyes, and a wider nasal cavity.

Now, it's not the content I object to. It's all well-enough true, as far as generalizations go. Can you guess what I do object to?

Look at the language. The Native Americans and sub-Saharan Africans get a series of "-er" adjectives. Every time a "distinctive feature" is mentioned, it is as a comparative (to something else that goes unnamed).

Now look at the European language. That description has only one comparative, and the other two or three adjectives in the description go untouched -- even though another purely-comparative phrasing would be perfectly acceptable and not even noticed by the audience. "European" is the default to which everything is compared, and "European" itself goes almost unquestioned and uncompared. (This is echoed by the visual design, which uses the (white!) European skull as the centerpiece.)

C'mon, Smithsonian. It isn't like it'd be hard or noticeably liberal to use, y'know, actually scientifically neutral language when discussing dry bone.

Avatar fail

I never thought I'd agree with the Vatican, but ... "Vatican says 'Avatar' is no masterpiece". Now I love the Vatican (though the WaPo article is awful).

"Avatar" is wooing audiences worldwide with visually dazzling landscapes and nature-loving blue creatures. But the Vatican is no easy crowd to please. ... They call the movie a simplistic and sappy tale, despite its awe-inspiring special effects.

"Not much behind the images" was how the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, summed it up in a headline. "Everything is reduced to an overly simple anti-imperialistic and anti-militaristic parable," it said.

Some American conservative bloggers have decried its anti-militaristic message; a small group of people have said the movie contains racist themes. Blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have criticized the film, with some calling it "a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people" and that it reinforces "the white Messiah fable."

Okay, here we go. WaPo's editorializing on and minimization of legitimate concerns (that movie SO had a race problem -- and more than just the Messianic one) and the Vatican is highly disrespectful and rubs me badly. The movie, of course, upset me more than the WaPo article.

The Vatican has legitimate concerns about the overly-simplistic portrayal of everything. So do the anti-racists. And so, as much as my saying so might confuse some people, do the pro-militarist conservatives -- and in fact, that aspect of the film bothered me even more than the racial ones.

Avatar flattened the world into a black/white, right/wrong world; it portrayed military leaders as utterly ignorant; it featured ignorant natives (all speaking in their finest hybrid black-Latino accents) that a white man reaches out to; and it implied that Native Americans would have been a-okay if there had just been a white man there to lead them out of their hairy situation. I went into that movie with no expectations, the movie's first 15 minutes set up some great expectations (great premise, treated all characters -- even the military men -- with some respect), and then it was just downhill with nothing but special effects to keep it from sinking it into I-need-to-walk-out-or-I'll-claw-my-eyes-out hell. Even so it was significantly too long for its vapid and trite plot.

No cookies, James Cameron. No cookies.