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Open Thread with Toppled Pole

tigtog

This highway-blocking blown-down power pole that happened just down the road from me features for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

Hours of traffic blocked during the severe storms that hit the coast of New South Wales this week
Hours of traffic blocked during the severe storms that hit the coast of New South Wales this week

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

46 thoughts on Open Thread with Toppled Pole

  1. Reading mainstream media coverage of B. Jenner and its constant transmisogyny is too much. I can’t even read a full article without having lots of hatred for the author. I almost cried when reading an article written by Linda Thompson (Jenner’s second ex-wife), not because of being touched by it, but because the author misgendered Jenner and masculinized her at every opportunity all while devoting a large chunk of the article to her experiences of motherhood, with explicit references to pregnancy.

    And of course no trans woman who actually points out that many trans women experience dysphoria related to pregnancy is even taken seriously. TERFs and their sympathizers love to frame that specific trauma as an indicator of misogyny and therefore manhood. But really, all I care about is not being constantly reminded that I’m incapable of ever having an experience that is socially designated as the true mark of womanhood – pregnancy and the motherhood that may follow from it. Cis women can talk about whatever they want regarding their own bodies, but they’re no longer solely talking about their bodies when they intentionally use that discourse to remind trans women of their “male” bodies.

    1. Just FYI, Bruce Jenner has actually asked to be referred to with he/him/his pronouns for the immediate future.

      1. AFAIK, Jenner asked to be referred to with he/him pronouns for only one particular interview. So unless she’s made it clear that she wants to be referred to with he/him pronouns, I’m going to stick to she/her. I use she/her pronouns for all women by default, cis or trans, especially for trans women because of the importance of gendering trans women correctly.

        It’s actually a pretty common thing for trans women to do – that is, asking people to use he/him pronouns for them within specific contexts. When I first came out to myself, I asked many of the people I came out to that they continue to identify me as they had before I was out to them. There are plenty of reasons why a trans woman would do such a thing, and of course I can’t speak for all trans women. But it’s not unheard of.

        On a side note – and this isn’t aimed specifically at you – I’ve noticed that ever since Jenner stated her preference for he/him pronouns in that interview, not-trans-women have been strongly emphasizing that she prefers he/him more than I have ever seen not-trans-women emphasize the importance of gendering trans women with she/her. Whenever a trans woman appears to have a preference towards being treated or spoken of in a degendering manner, for any reason, people go out of their way to emphasize that preference. It’s almost as if most people so strongly believe that we trans women are male that they emphasize the words of any trans woman who in their eyes confirms that notion.

        1. On a side note – and this isn’t aimed specifically at you – I’ve noticed that ever since Jenner stated her preference for he/him pronouns in that interview, not-trans-women have been strongly emphasizing that she prefers he/him more than I have ever seen not-trans-women emphasize the importance of gendering trans women with she/her. Whenever a trans woman appears to have a preference towards being treated or spoken of in a degendering manner, for any reason, people go out of their way to emphasize that preference. It’s almost as if most people so strongly believe that we trans women are male that they emphasize the words of any trans woman who in their eyes confirms that notion.

          I hear you, but personally I just try to default to whatever preference someone has expressed, because to me that strategy seems to be the least likely to misgender someone- my political understanding of their gender/’correct’ pronoun as a woman is secondary to their expressed desire. But I get that it’s not a perfect system, and I’m totally open to using a different heuristic if it seems more likely to avoid hurting people.

    2. Also, here’s the article by Linda Thompson that I was referring to.

      If Thompson’s misgendering of Jenner didn’t go any farther than using he/him pronouns for her, then I wouldn’t see the article as different from any other article about trans women that misgenders them. But what Thompson did was beyond that – she not only misgendered Jenner, but she also ended up juxtaposing her understanding Jenner with her own narratives as a cis mom. Which, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t much different from just blatantly telling trans women “Hey, I hope you didn’t forget that I have a body that you’ll never have because I’m a real woman.”

  2. Does anyone know a word sort of in between childless and childfree? Because I agree childless sounds like children are always awesome, which is definitely not the case, but I think childfree sounds like children are always bad, which is not the case either.

    Also, I don’t like it when people use eating metaphors for sex. Talking about a consensual act like it’s consuming an inanimate object makes me uncomfortable. Plus obviously you have to eat to live but don’t have to have sex to live. I wish I could think of a better metaphor. I’ve heard asexual people compare sex to dancing, but that doesn’t get at how strong lust is for most sexual people. Dancing most people could take or leave.

    1. Does anyone know a word sort of in between childless and childfree? Because I agree childless sounds like children are always awesome, which is definitely not the case, but I think childfree sounds like children are always bad, which is not the case either.

      Well, “childless” means “without children”, and “childfree” means “free of children.” The only potentially significant difference in meaning I can see there is that the former is a neutral descriptor of someone who doesn’t have kids, whereas the latter can be either a neutral descriptor or a term of empowerment for the people who label themselves as childless, the suffix “free” possibly implying that caring for children is burdensome. I don’t think either word necessarily implies a judgement on those who do have children – although they certainly can for some people – those words just potentially connote a specific attitude or lack thereof towards raising kids. So really, you can look for another word if you wish, but the choice between the words you mentioned boils down to how you personally feel about not taking care of children.

      Also, I don’t like it when people use eating metaphors for sex. Talking about a consensual act like it’s consuming an inanimate object makes me uncomfortable.

      I think it really depends on the specific use of an eating metaphor for talking about sex. There’s a difference between an objectifying use of an eating metaphor, and using an eating metaphor to talk about certain sexual acts that have nothing to do with objectification. For example, I’m a lesbian who usually talks about oral sex as “eating out”, and even though it’s an eating metaphor, it’s not necessarily an objectifying usage of the term because the phrase just refers to what the sexual act itself resembles and doesn’t really imply anything else on its own. Of course, it can be used as a means of objectifying someone and it can also carry a history of trauma for certain people, but it’s also capable of being harmless like many other sexual metaphors.

  3. Having a really hard time with the Baltimore riots. On the one hand, I care a lot more about police violence against black people than broken windows, and I agree with the criminally under-repeated King quote that ‘riot is the language of the unheard.’ And I certainly don’t want to bolster the racist narrative conservative media is spinning about ‘animalistic thugs.’

    And yet, the fact that many of the rioters are specifically targeting Asian-owned businesses for destruction gives me pause- and coming from a first-generation immigrant family, I’m not totally on board with the cavalier dismissal of property damage. Destruction of wealth can be as vicious as bodily injury, for people who are struggling to make it in the US. Moreover, the fact that black rioters doused a Korean shop owner in gasoline and then throwing matches at him, and the video of a Korean pizza-parlor owner who tried to escape from his store being hit in the head with a brick and then stomped on until the police arrived make it really hard to give a shit about the political ‘message’ behind the rioting. I want the 40-50 people involved with that to spend the rest of their lives in prison, preferably right next to the people who killed Freddy Gray, because that’s what should happen when you intentionally attempt to murder an innocent person.

    So, like I said, having a hard time.

  4. So someone called in a bomb threat to a Gamergate meet up in DC, right after Arthur Chu sent a bunch of cryptic and threatening tweets about it. So that sucks for all kinds of reasons.

    1. That’s about 30-45 minutes from me. I laughed my ass off. I feel bad for the kids, of course, but abstinence does not work here. There’s nothing to do but drink and screw.

        1. Unfortunately, the school is doubling down and adding abstinent based sex ed to high school instead of just junior high. Yanno. Because it’s worked so well so far. -eye roll-

  7. TEOTWAWKI alert: There is an uptick in MRA manbaby poutshoutfesting because a woman (with short hair!) has turned out to be the more central character in the new reboot instalment of the Mad Max franchise than Max, which is obviously a betrayal of a fine “American” tradition [just one link of many]. It has been noted elsewhere that the only movie doing bigger box office than Fury Road this weekend is Pitch Perfect 2, starring a fat woman. So that’s it, the age of the Hollywood action movie as proper mainstream entertainment that can be relied upon as a safe space with zero risk of testicular shrinkage from watching women being more than just trophies and eye-candy is over. The fempocalypse has arrived.

    1. A friend said it was good as its own movie, but it wasn’t Mad Max. The idea that the ” normal” looking ( read pretty) had to be saved played into the only attractive women are worthy or rapable myth so I probably won’t bother seeing it for that reason.

      I’m sure that’s not the complaint of the manbabies, though. Sucks to be them I guess.

      1. FWIW, I certainly didn’t get that impression from it; is anyone seriously arguing Charlize Theron isn’t pretty? I had more of a problem that the ever-contemptible Eve Ensler was involved in its production, and there weren’t nearly enough POC cast, but I still thought on the gender front it was probably the most respectable action movie I’d seen since Alien.

        1. That’s the opposite of what I said. I said the normal ( aka pretty women) were being saved.

          1. The warlord’s enslaved and impregnated breeder concubines asked Furiosa to help them escape because they didn’t want their unborn sons to be raised as future warlords. She didn’t choose them, they chose her. The rest of the subjects of the Citadel view it as their only hope of survival and mostly don’t seem to want to escape.

            The reason that warlord considered those particular women to be the best breeding stock is certainly because of their beauty, but that beauty is shown as something they view as a curse because of how they’ve been singled out for especially unwanted attention, and the long bloody chase to recover them in particular (when other escapees would probably have been left to just die in the desert) shows exactly why they are right to view their trophy status so negatively.

            There’s a lot of complex ideas swirling around in the worldbuilding of this movie regarding beauty, mutilation, abuse, exploitation, cults, domination, revenge and redemption and hope. The ambivalent status of beauty in a scarred world is one that this movie does not treat simply or lightly.

      2. I just know she was put off by it, because the reality of female slavery isn’t ” the hot chicks are the only victims”. Other than that one issue, she enjoyed the movie even though it didn’t have much to do with Mad Max. Mad Max happened as society was falling apart, not after. She said the setting was more Road Warrior and Thunderdome than Mad Max. I still probably won’t see it. I’m fed up with reboots.

    2. The idea that the ” normal” looking ( read pretty) had to be saved played into the only attractive women are worthy or rapable myth so I probably won’t bother seeing it for that reason.

      is anyone seriously arguing Charlize Theron isn’t pretty?

      That’s the opposite of what I said.

      OK, now I’m super confused.

    3. I am going to agree with a lot of what has been said about the feminist overtones in this film. While the wives that were trying to escape did all look like they were models, it made sense in this story in that they probably were a) considered the best “breeders” re: their physical characteristics and b) they were pampered and given the best of resources in a world where everyone else was deprived. And my impression was that Charlize Theron’s character had been one of those breeders, until something displaced her (maybe unable to produce more children?).

      Also, I was impressed with how the wives were portrayed as willing to stand up for themselves when the fighting started, but in ways that were more in line with people who hadn’t been groomed to be warriors. These women did what they knew how to do when needed to help their cause; with no sudden morphing into oversexualized fighters who kick ass, a la many other standard action films. The serious bad-ass fighting was left to Furosia and the older women from her village; and I loved seeing those older women as outstanding warriors.

      And yeah, Max wasn’t much of a character in his own film. He really wasn’t even the main male character to me (I would suggest that was the hanger-on War Boy). As far as it not being a Mad Max film….it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Road Warrior, but this sure had many similar elements to me – tons of action through desert wastelands; post-apocalypse setting; the ultimate in souped-up vehicles; groups of people decked out in quasi-punk/metal costumes; and the occasional Australian accent (although not much of that). I would also say that the fact that the post-apocalypse era appears to be almost all-white is also a holdover from that franchise.

      I assume they are restarting this as a franchise, and the next film will be more about Max and his back story.

      1. Mad Max is the first in the trilogy. Road Warrior is the second. Mad Max is set as society is falling apart, not after. That’s Road Warrior and Beyond the Thunderdome. Which is why she said it wasn’t Mad Max.

        1. Well, I don’t think it was considered a remake of Mad Max, was it? I thought it was just a continuation of the Mad Max saga, which would be after all was destroyed, and he had lost his family.

          I understand your friend’s point about how they portray the sex slaves in this film, but I do think there is some explanation to that in this case, even if it can hardly be considered to encompass all of the sexual violence that is taking place in this type of society (there is also the forced “milking” of mothers that we see briefly, who presumably are also sex slaves, and those women represent a wider range of physical sizes and shapes) . I did appreciate that we didn’t really see the sex slaves until they had escaped, helping us avoid the scenes of sexual abuse presented as entertainment and titillation.

        2. I thought it was a reboot, because the name is the same. If it were a continuation, wouldn’t it be Mad Max – Getting To The Safe Place ( like Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. ..only with whatever they’d use for this film)

          1. The name of this movie is “Mad Max: Fury Road”.

            “Mad Max 2” (1981) was only known as “The Road Warrior” in the USA, because the first movie (1979) was a smell-of-an-oily-rag-budget little independently produced Australian film (edited in George Miller’s kitchen) that surprised the world, and most of the USA only saw the first film after Hollywood threw trucks of money at Miller to make the second film. Then there was “Mad Max 3″ (1985) in which the *Mad Max 3* part of the name was by far the most prominent part of the posters in the rest of the world, with ‘Beyond Thunderdome” as very much a subtitle, while the posters for the USA made it all one title.

            If posters in the USA are not showing the “Fury Road” part of the title just as large as the “Mad Max” part of the title, then it’s just another instance of the USA marketing films in ways guaranteed to generate frustrating international conversations.

        3. Also, in a post apocalyptic world, would model be the only signifier of breeding? Youth, wider hips , health and some extra body fat tends to be the more universal signifier of ” can have lots of healthy babies”. Hollywood and western culture is only ever represented and it’s not even the majority preference.

          The lack of poc is, for me, to be expected unfortunately. It’s par for the course. Sometimes I can ignore that, sometimes I can’t. At any rate, I was already irritated that they rebooted the movie to begin with. I’ve also heard there’s going to be another Terminator reboot, a The Craft reboot, that horrible Jem reboot, another Ghostbusters and I’m getting a bit pissy about the destruction of my childhood.

        4. Ah, I’ve yet to see The Fury Road part. I’ve just heard over and over its yet another reboot. I recall watching Mad Max when I was pretty young , when a cousin rented it on beta…Then having to pretend I didn’t see it because I wasn’t allowed to see those movies. I had to rely on the same cousin to rent The Road Warrior when it came out. And a neighbor kid for Poltergiest….which was an unfortunate mistake on my part because it scared the ever loving shit out of me and I couldn’t tell my parents that I wanted a light on lol

          We go to the local drive in here because it’s cheap, but we bring food in so I haven’t seen a poster for it.

          1. It’s this default theme I’ve switched back to until WordPress gets its crap together regarding the latest glitches they’ve been having. I might change the settings to that there’s fewer levels of nesting, which should display more legibly.

  8. Could someone please post (a) link(s) to (an) article(s) about gender neutral pronouns in English (“He” NOT being one…)? I’m trying to convince a writer I’m beta-reading for that “he” is not the way to go.

    His quote: As for the “he” pronoun, I had “they” but my first pass editor changed “they” to “he” (which in American English at least is the gender neutral pronoun) and I left it the way the editor made it. I pretty much trust my editors on these kinds of things.

    1. I really like this article on the subject: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/

      It’s difficult to find a whole lot of stuff on the gendered aspect of so-called neutral he pronouns, but I can say this: the fact that “he” is designated as optionally gender neutral rather than “she” already indicates that such a usage plays into the universalization of men’s perspective in language. It’s nothing more than an association between maleness and normality. Just because pronoun usage is central to many grammar systems, doesn’t mean that it can’t be shaped by androcentric perspective.

    2. That’s a really archaic thing for the editor to do, anyway. This argument was had and won back in the ’70s and ’80s. I can’t imagine a modern editor doing such a thing, honestly.

      1. The author says he’s going to send my comments to the editor + see what she thinks…which makes me wonder if he even read the part where it says the editor can’t make her own decision if a higher-up company decision has already been made… We’ll see. Thanks, Aaliyah. Strange I never got notification about your comment, EG. Maybe this editor ISN’T from the USA, and believes she has to do this to earn her paycheck? D/K.

      2. EG—The battle you thought was had and won was only won in part. Modern editors can still use old standards. I don’t know if there’s a connection, but I just found out that this author is a graduate and employee of (Jerry Falwell’s) Liberty University [LU], which teaches Young Earth creationism as science…

  9. I finally bought some trans-related books, and have been reading and rereading Whipping Girl, and I keep thinking: I should have bought this years ago (well, maybe not years, since it hasn’t even been two years since I considered the possibility that I was trans.) So many passages where I say, this is what I’ve been thinking (or trying to think) and wrestling with, only she manages to make it coherent, like it makes sense.
    .
    Since this is a feminism blog, rather than (primarily) a trans site, I’ll mention one feminism-related point that made a lot of sense to me and I don’t hear discussed all that often: that “femininity” (that is, the traits, interests, roles, etc., that get labeled “feminine”) is disparaged and treated with contempt in our society. And not just by Teh Patriarchy, but by a large chunk of the feminist movement. This contempt for femininity is a big component of misogyny and transmisogyny. So choices that should simply be perfectly reasonable options (e.g., being a stay-at-home parent, or changing one’s name when marrying) get seen by both sexists and many feminists as debasing oneself. And our sexist/misogynistic society peverts perfectly reasonable traits into forms that denigrate people, such as turning wanting to look pretty into a mandate to be a sex object. And once these otherwise neutral or even positive things get turned into something contemptible, we then make them obligatory if you’re an “innie” and forbidden if you’re an “outie.”
    .
    I think it also perverts the traits that are labeled “masculine,” too, though I have a much harder time seeing that. My experience of masculinity and living as a male has utterly soured me on any part of “masculinity” and maleness. I cannot see them as anything but society’s way of abusing humans to the point that they willingly turn themselves into brutal, oppressive monsters. Yet I know trans men who want to be masculine and evidently see something positive in it. They’ve lived as women and I’m sure they’ve seen the blunt and bloody end of masculinity more than I have, yet they value it. So I assume there must be something positive there.

    1. Hi AMM! I haven’t seen you around in a while. :>

      I definitely see what you mean WRT femininity and how it’s treated as inferior under patriarchy. But I would like to add that butch women (especially butch lesbians) are also targeted with contempt and disparagement by feminists and non-feminists alike, particularly in relation to adherence to standards of femininity. I’m a butch trans lesbian and I can recall several instances in which my expressed desire to care for children someday was received with accusations – by feminists and non-feminists – that I would be abusive, for no reason other than that I was “inherently masculine” and “violent” just because of dressing non-feminine and calling myself butch. And I know many other butch women, cis or trans, who have had similar experiences, often even worse than what I described.

      This is in no way denying or downplaying that feminine women who are SAHMs, women who changed their names upon marriage, etc. – women who do things that are considered traditionalist – also go through a whole lot of misogynistic shaming for their choices and behavior. There’s so much bullshit coming from feminists who think that it’s ok to shame women for wanting to look pretty, as if women trying to look attractive to others is never anything else but an appeal to male desire. I just think it’s important to consider the whole spectrum of misogyny that exists under patriarchy, which impacts both feminine women and those who fail to adhere to feminine standards. Too often, we butch women get ignored in feminist cultural analyses of how women are treated as inferior and worthless under patriarchy and, even worse, get accused of being “just like men” which is really invalidating and hurtful to be told and also just totally untrue.

      The fact that Serano in Whipping Girl doesn’t take into account the existence of butchphobia by reducing all misogyny and transmisogyny to femmephobia is one of the reasons I’m not exactly a fan of that book. But I think it’s still a good book in a lot of ways, especially its parts about transmisogynistic science (like the bullshit concept of “autogynephilia”). And it holds fond memories for me because it was the book that helped me come out to myself and realize that I could be butch and still a trans woman. So with that said, I’m happy to hear that the book has been helpful for you as well (albeit not necessarily in the same ways).

      1. The fact that Serano in Whipping Girl doesn’t take into account the existence of butchphobia by reducing all misogyny and transmisogyny to femmephobia is one of the reasons I’m not exactly a fan of that book.

        To be honest, until I read your post, I wasn’t aware that butchphobia was a thing, so I could imagine she didn’t know about it.

        It’s also conceivable that she knew about it but considered it off-topic for what she was writing about. (In order to be coherent, a book has to have a particular thesis or “thrust” and leave out topics, even important ones, that don’t relate to the book’s thesis.)
        .
        What I noticed is that she doesn’t talk much about trans men, although it’s clear she does know of them. (Since my local support group is more than half trans male, I notice when they’re left out of public discourse.) My assumption was that, not being one, she felt she couldn’t talk all that intelligently about trans men or what it’s like to be a trans man. Probably smart, since my impression is that being a trans man is very far from being a gender-swapped version of a trans woman.
        .
        As for my being around: I visit feministe pretty regularly, but I only post if I think I have something to say, which isn’t all that often, especially since posting and commenting traffic is way down. Much of my free time and emotional energy are being chewed up by trying to come to terms with being trans and to undo some of the damage of my childhood.

    2. And yeah, I totally get what you mean when you say that being forced to live as a man makes it difficult to ever see anything good about masculinity. I didn’t like wearing dresses as a kid and identified with lesbians who wore men’s jackets, had short hair and deep voices, etc. – and solely for that reason, I’ve been labelled as “masculine” in a way that both erases the misogyny I face as a butch and associates my personality and appearance with being an aggressive, violent man (the latter of which happens to all trans women of course). It’s caused me so much grief and to this day I struggle with internalized messages that tell me it’s wrong for me to want physical intimacy, emotional closeness with others, etc. It’s true that lots of butch women tend to go for appearances that borrow from men’s clothing and whatnot, but I think there’s a difference between being masculine (which means adopting the roles and behaviors of being a man) and adopting a personality and appearance that merely resembles outward aspects of masculinity without any relation to actually having male privilege.

      And this is just how I see it, but I personally don’t see anything wrong with just saying that masculinity is founded entirely in oppressing women and in opposition to anyone who isn’t masculine. It doesn’t mean that anyone is automatically incapable of being a good person if they’re male, and it’s certainly no excuse to disparage trans men for wanting to be male – after all, men are entirely capable of unpacking their male socialization and privilege and learning to respect women better.

  11. So I’m done being part of the anti-Gamergate movement. While the GGers themselves remain contemptible misogynistic trolls, the tactics of the ‘good guys’ here have escalated so far I’m not comfortable associating with them. In the last month, the lawyer for Eron Gjoni has been doxxed, a GG meetup has had a bomb threat called in, Zoe Quinn has attempted to SWAT one of her critics, and most importantly the rest of the movement has either excused or ignored these actions. I no longer can see the difference between ‘our’ side and theirs any more.

    Which, to be clear, I find heartbreaking, and very lonely.

    1. Also worth noting that I was always kinda conflicted about the whole thing; GG itself was clearly all about hating women, but at the same time I couldn’t get behind defending someone’s right to prevent their ex from speaking publicly about their abusive behavior, so there was a weird bifurcation of the issue for me anyways. So maybe I don’t have a ton of credibility on the subject in the first place.

      1. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/04/28/gamergate/2/
        The relationship was doomed, but they slept together one last time. Quinn says that’s when Gjoni turned violent. Scared and unsure what to do after Gjoni left, she called her friend Bill Zoeker, a video producer, and asked him to rush over. “I could clearly see bruises on her arm, and suddenly the whole situation became very real to me,” he says. Though Gjoni denies the incident, Zoeker says, “I’ve never seen anybody so afraid in my entire life than Zoe in that moment.”

        Fuck that guy.

      2. The thing is, I don’t support abusing anyone, and Zoe Quinn is absolutely an abuser as well. So I just have a hard time getting really strongly on anyone’s team here.

        Being an abuser doesn’t mean you deserve to get theats or doxxed; being abused doesn’t mean you get to make threats or doxx people. Quinn has been both victim and aggressor here and so it’s tough to sum up in a coherent way, at least for me.

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