Memorable from Larv.
It's certainly nice and warm. A little too warm...
OK. Who hasn't done that? Well, regardless, the comments are open down below.
pissing in the pool
Jan 12, 2008 by libjpnComments
Jan 12, 2008, 02:40:52 john miller wrote:
I have to admit, the Ugh thread and theGender thread have really been a couple of the most contentious threads I have seen at ObWi for a while. Even Gary and I had a short disagreeable period yesterday, which I think is unheard of.
Not I having a disagreement with someone or Gary having one, but toward each other, remarkable.
larv's comment is right on, however.
The politics of personal destruction was hitting particularly hot levels. And part of the problem is that Xeynon, byrningham and Jes (the main culprits, though not alone)were doing a lot of talking past each other.
Jes was accusing xeynon of saying things s/he didn't say, and xeynon was utilizing phraseology which was counterproductive. Even when Xeynon made an apology, which Gary accepted, Jes refused.
Then byrningham started using terms for Jes (like Bikeshed) that was totally inappropriate. Actually, Jes' telling that story from her childhood was very illuminating in terms of what she was talking about at the time.
Of course, the whole issues of racism and sexism are charged subjects anyway.
BTW, if this is Friday's open thread, go with the Giants, Packers, Colts and Jags.
Jan 12, 2008, 02:47:11 Slartibartfast wrote:
* and Jes were talking past each other, in general, is a true statement.
Ordering food would be a major problem if that were so, so it's probably not a _globally_ true statement.
Jan 12, 2008, 02:52:26 libjpn wrote:
Well, one small correction, Jes accepted Xen's apology, in the Ugh thread.
Certainly one problem is that the conversation in the two threads is getting conflated. And the addition of 'bikeshed' to the mix makes it explosive, which is amazing, because here is a simple word that, because of the context of the conversation, becomes a really sharp and pointy insult.
There's a lot of other things I might mention, but I will leave it at that.
Jan 12, 2008, 02:53:42 Slartibartfast wrote:
Just to crossthread things a bit, I found this part of Derbyshire's obituary particularly relevant:
"Des and I were quite appalled, and we both sent letters to the editor. Mine was a polemic condemning the critic as a evil and ignorant racist. Des's letter was very different. He wrote movingly of having lived among Brazilian Indians and having valued them as friends and teachers and learned a great deal from them, and concluded simply that the reviewer was mistaken. There was no bitterness in it. The Sunday Times printed Des's letter but not mine. Des liked to tell this story (so Dan Everett tells me) because was proud of having emerged (to his surprise) the winner in a straight contest with me. I like the story too: I felt that it was the right decision for the Sunday Times to print Des's letter, with its first-hand experience, generosity, and calm reason. And it taught me a little about the power of Des's quiet and gentle manner in dealing with people and issues."
Dunno why that seems relevant, though.
Jan 12, 2008, 02:55:36 Slartibartfast wrote:
...but I'm guessing that if hilzoy were to adopt Jesurgislac's tactics, she'd have a hard time convincing anyone of anything. Even though she's nearly always right.
Not that any of this will change anything at all, and I hope we won't see hilzoy trading thoughtfulness for brickbats anytime soon.
Jan 12, 2008, 02:56:25 libjpn wrote:
One more thing I would note is that with Gary's description of his Typepad problems (which do not afflict me, which is not to say that I doubt them, but that he seems to think it is the general case, where I don't think it is), I am doubly astonished by the work he must have done to add links in the Andrew thread(s).
Jan 12, 2008, 02:58:06 john miller wrote:
lj, my bad, thanks for the correction.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:01:31 john miller wrote:
Speaking of the Andrew thread(s), which I intentionally did not comment in due to its personal closeness to my situation with my son, it is interesting to see the sidebar at ObWi for recent comments. In the midst of all the back and forth commenting on Gender and UGH threads, you will usually find one or two comments recently posted on one of the Andrew threads.
Considering Andrew's attempts to get past the personal and into substance, and to maintain civility (right up to his death) there is some irony there.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:12:41 Jesurgislac wrote:
<I>Even when Xeynon made an apology, which Gary accepted, Jes refused.</I>
Even when I accepted Xeynon's apology, rather less snarkily than Gary, john miller didn't notice that I had. Interesting, no?
Jan 12, 2008, 03:20:20 Jesurgislac wrote:
<I>And the addition of 'bikeshed' to the mix makes it explosive, which is amazing, because here is a simple word that, because of the context of the conversation, becomes a really sharp and pointy insult.</I>
Yes. And noticeable, too, that while people screech and rage at me all the time for being what they think is unduly critical, no one <I>but</I> Gary said anything to Byr for calling me "Bikeshed". No one a-fucking-tall.
Gotta admit: the pack mentality of most men when one man insults a woman is really, really interesting, in a distasteful kind of way. I'm glad Obsidian Wings is a virtual community: it had long since got to the point where if it were in the real world, I'd have quietly left, without saying I was leaving - unless to any other women who were there and looking nervous - and got a cab away <I>fast</I>. Because I wouldn't have felt safe. Men and their buddies ganging up against a woman are about the least safe group to be around, and why I use a pseud only.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:24:10 libjpn wrote:
Speaking only for myself, there are three reasons why I didn't say anything. The first is that given the volume of comment in that thread, it was way in the rear mirror by the time I saw it, and two, your skin seems thick enough that you could take it.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:26:30 Jesurgislac wrote:
And, in fact, while agreeing with Gary that now is not the time to bug Hilzoy to do her usual kitten-duty, I think I am just going to bug out of Obsidian Wings until there is an active moderator again. And this blog too, come to that. There are more important things in life than blogging.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:26:32 libjpn wrote:
Whoops, and the third reason was that trying to get at why bikeshed was problematic would entail a whole lot of meta and I was feeling a bit hesitant to do it off my own back, but when Larv suggested it, it relieved me of the notion that I was dictating what would be discussed here.
btw, Jes when you said earlier in that thread how you were struck by having to report SoF's incursions into the Andrew thread to Hilzoy and how it seemed strange cause you generally agreed with the points he was making, I thought there was some understanding and so I resisted the temptation to write 'now, you know how we feel'. Is the notion of a "teaching moment" something that only educators talk about or something more generally known?
Jan 12, 2008, 03:31:02 Slartibartfast wrote:
I actually didn't get the whole "bikeshed" thing, and missed that that was any reference to you at all, Jesurgislac.
If I had, I might not have said anything, though, given the frequency with which you manage to insult others. I'd given up being the civility police on OW quite a while back.
FWIW, it's not that you're unduly critical, it's that you frequently assault the people behind the statements rather than the statements themselves.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:32:09 Slartibartfast wrote:
Oops, and now it's all going to go unheeded. Ah, well.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:33:58 DonaldJ wrote:
Wow. I picked the right time to abandon ObiWi myself, it seems. Not that I intend to do it long term, but I was reading the political thread about New Hampshire even before it apparently blew up and decided there were 10,000 more interesting things to read about than the stupid trivialities in an American Presidential campaign.
Which I write here mainly to exonerate myself of any charge of not saying something about bikeshed. It took me a few minutes to realize what that meant, reading it in this thread.
Jan 12, 2008, 03:53:03 john miller wrote:
Jes, in case you are still around.
I apologize for not seeing your acceptance. I went back after lj corrected me and acknowledged it above.
I believe you will notice that I have not been one of your detractors as a rule. Trust me, please, not seeing something is not evidence of malice.
Jan 12, 2008, 04:14:30 DonaldJ wrote:
Lord, I just skimmed the two threads in question. Blogreading is definitely an unhealthy addiction and ObiWi flamewars are no more worth reading just because the people involved are so articulate.
Jan 12, 2008, 04:21:05 Larv wrote:
I almost posted this in the thread over at ObWi,but decided to take my own advice:
Jes, don't try and play the victim here. It's not a role which suits you. You did your fair share of pissing in those threads. FTR, when a thread goes downhill over there, often as not it starts with one of your "you must believe X" formulations. It's not my intention to attack you, I think you're one of the commenters who most contributes to ObWi's unique flavor. That said, there's a reason people from across the ideological spectrum get fed up with your argumentative style, and its got nothing to do with your sex.
Jan 12, 2008, 04:26:55 ActuallyJakeB wrote:
I haven't been looking in those posts, mostly because of still feeling sort of washed out from trying to read all the Andrew threads, but I wonder if part of it is a sort undamming of certain things put on hold for a few days because of the unusual nature of the memorial threads? I offer this as the merest conjecture.
Jan 12, 2008, 04:27:15 ActuallyJakeB wrote:
sorry, "a sort of undamming"
Jan 12, 2008, 05:27:16 nous wrote:
Classes just started up again and I'm tteaching and have qualifying exams this quarter, so my participation is spotty all around.
Did just finish Russ's _The Female Man_ last week and thought it should be required reading for all Freshmen.
Still no time to go through all the comments on those two Charlie Foxtrots or to comment.
Jan 12, 2008, 06:53:00 libjpn wrote:
ActuallyJakeB, I did a reset on your old password, let me know if it works.
Jan 12, 2008, 07:47:32 OCSteve wrote:
I haven’t been back over there in hours. But obviously my plea this morning fell on deaf ears. I knew it as I typed it…
Knew it was going this way, and spent the time anyway. I’ll never get that 10 minutes of my life back…
Jan 12, 2008, 08:07:25 john miller wrote:
OCSteve, although last night a played an admittedly minor role in the negative direction (rapidly corrected by the master of correction Gary), I saw your comment and thought it might have been appropriate, but unfortunately unobserved by either new or old posters.
Sometimes we have too many dogs who won't drop the bone, and it would be best to just back away.
I want to say that Gary, without taking sides, made some extremely important comments on those threads, and is continuing to do so.
Unfortunately, like yours, they are not being heeded.
Jan 12, 2008, 09:16:08 libjpn wrote:
I understand your feeling OCSteve, but there are a lot of interesting points to take away from that thread, even if it doesn't straighten itself up.
The first is John's point about jes' anecdote about herself. I think this is the first time she's related an anecdote about herself where she wasn't in control, but had to rely on outside help, which seems telling. If I had read more closely, it would have been obvious that a comment denigrating that would have stung, (and it obviously did), but it's only after re-reading everything and seeing it in light of John's point does it fall into place. Jes might interpret this as me seeing (or not seeing) what I want to, but I would disagree.
Second, I personally think that Jes got stiched up by Xen over the discussion of the gender card and a number of telling points were made against her. This seems to have led her to be even more jes-like than usual, and had her taking shots at everyone (I want to say everyone and their mother, but with Redstocking's revelation that she's Katherine's, the joke takes on too much meaning) I know she has issues with me, but avoiding calling her out by name about Jeff (who I hope hasn't been chased off) seems to have been taken as a snarky way of attacking her rather than a way of saying calm down.
Third, it really clarifies for me what the rhetorical strategy for Jes is, which is to knock people off balance with a strongly worded statement to try and get them to lash out. In judo, this is called kuzushi, which is often translated as unbalancing, and the application of a technique requires that you do this, but it is often taking as merely the application of force by the thrower. This neat quote from Neil Ohlenkamp at
http://www.judoinfo.com/kuz...
discusses kuzushi and if we translate that to verbal give and take, I think we can see how it applies to ObWi
"Kuzushi is very often thought of as simply pushing or pulling. At more advanced levels however it is much more than that. For example, kuzushi can also be achieved by breaking the opponent's rhythm, fake attacks, strikes, changes of body position or grip, kiai (a shout), or a sudden change in speed or tempo. A critical element in kuzushi is that it should disrupt more than the body. Kuzushi is very much a mental thing. Kuzushi should always disrupt the opponent's concentration, resulting in a momentary opportunity for an attack."
When the situation becomes one with multiple participants, it increases the possibility of miscommunication, but since we have a number of new people, we may have to deal with that as an outgrowth.
I mentioned in a different thread that Slart picked up about Geoff Pullum's obituuary for Desmond Derbyshire. Pullum is someone who can be really acerbic, but (I think) the habits of an academic, with the referencing and quoting, can provide a useful DMZ.
Anyway, the children are clamoring for Nick Jr, so I have to relinquish the computer.
Jan 12, 2008, 09:30:55 marbel wrote:
I had to leave (friends took us out to a really nice restaurant) and haven't read up since. But I'd like to add that I did tell byrningham that he should stop the namecalling before I left.
And I didn't even comment upon the fact that Slarti is not really pro-life because he is in favour of contraception and that I appearantly am pro-life because I have a problem with third trimester abortions...
Now I'll start reading ObWi for all the relevations I've missed.
Jan 12, 2008, 09:33:33 john miller wrote:
lj, now that Nick Jr is over, a couple comments, not only about Jes, but also more generalized.
Everybody as some things that, at the least, emotionally, they react strongly to. With Jes this most specifically relates to abortion, women's rights and racism.
When anything is said that challenges her own belief system she will tend to lose her cool, so to speak, and lash out, specially if someone has made a somewhat logical point.
Thuis anybody who is against abortion, even if they believe in choice, wants to force women to be pregnant, anyone who criticizes immigration, or feels the incident inthe Minneapols airport was handled correctly, or points out that some welfar recipients may use cash for drugs is automatically a racist, and even an elitist.
She is not the only one to do this, however, but she tends to be the most frequent displayer.
Almost allof us want to believe our belief system is the right one and have a certain amount of defensiveness. OCSteve has already said that his response when he senses his defensiveness overwhelming his r4eason is to walk away for a while.
That may well be the best response.
Last night, in my brief run in with Gary, I felt I was making a valid point, Gary contested it, and I agreed I saw his point. I still felt my point had some validity, but his argument outweighed mine. Because I was tired, I decided not to discuss it a further. Just as well, because this morning I realized that what he was objecting to did have more pertinence than what I was trying to argue.
And that can happen. Two people can be making valid but not compatible statements, but sometimes it is important to recognbize that the other point is more important than the point you were making.
Regarding Jes' anecdote. I was extremely moved by that story and it helps me understand Jes more. Thus, in the future, I may still disagree with her reaction, but I will at least have a better understanding why she reacts this way.
The unfortunate thing is that many at ObiWi and here agree with much of the principles that Jes articulates, though neither with the intensity nor extent.
It is just unfortunate that Jes makes such sweeping statements about anyone who disagrees with her. It tends to reduce the meaning of her basic arguement.
But like I said before, she is not the only one who decides attacking the messenger is more important than attacking the message.
Jan 12, 2008, 10:23:30 OCSteve wrote:
It’s kind of a perfect storm I think.
At the same time that the regulars are somewhat (very) emotional, the site gets worldwide attention. I think Hilzoy said on NPR it was up to 240,000 hits per day from 4,000 average. God knows ObWi got linked from everywhere in the known universe and I suspect beyond.
Speaking only for myself, after the outpouring of grief and community I witnessed, I have *no* heart to argue with any regular. I’ve strayed into other threads the last few days, but I haven’t wanted to post anything too opinionated. I’ve only made a couple of comments lately, and I made sure they were pretty non-controversial.
I may be mistake, but I think that the regulars have given each other a lot of leeway this week. We just don’t want to mix it up with each other. Totally understandable. I called Gary on what I thought was unwarranted LGF bashing the other night, then saw that Seb and then Hilzoy had right before me. Then I felt guilty.
There have been days (past) when I logged on and saw a new post, and absolutely *knew* that my comment would set someone off. I’ll use Jes as an example, because that was most common. I’d hit Post knowing the reaction it would get, and knowing that I was in for a day long, hell 2-3 day long battle. And relishing that…
Right now, that feeling is not there. I don’t want to argue with any regular. What I want is to sit around with all of you in front of a roaring fire, put our feet up on the coffee table (OK big damned table), sip some good wine, and talk smack about Andrew. (I’m not drinking Coke Andrew, sorry!) (Oh yeah – they had music in the 80s?!?)
So a bunch of newbies show up. Some decide to stick around. It’s totally understandable that we lash out at them. There is a shit load of pent up emotion. It’s been just under the surface in every thread for days. Lashing out at a newbie is much preferable to lashing out at someone who just went through this God awful experience with us.
It’s just a bad damned time.
I’m not sure what this means for the future. I’m sure I’ll work past this. I’m sure all of us will. But right now I can’t possibly argue with any ObWi regular. Not after what I saw and felt in the last week. You all get a free pass right now, which I know you wont’ use.
I’m so God-Damned pissed I can’t handle it. Mad/Cry/Mad/Cry/Mad/Cry. Yeah – that’s going to work… I’m so God-Damn proud at how ObWi handled this…
It’s Friday night, a week later, and I am crying in my beer… Time to shut up.
Jan 12, 2008, 10:46:43 JakeB wrote:
OCSteve--
You've put it very well, I think. I find I've been regretful this week that ObWi isn't a RL group that meets in some tavern somewhere, just 'cause I'd really like to be able to clink glasses with folks and look them in the eye.
Jan 12, 2008, 10:47:07 JakeB wrote:
btw, thanks lj for the reset.
Jan 12, 2008, 11:12:40 OCSteve wrote:
JakeB: *clink*.
Jan 12, 2008, 14:38:35 JakeB wrote:
OCSteve: *clink*.
Jan 12, 2008, 20:32:28 Jeff wrote:
I haven't been chased away, I was doing other things.
I expect stupid and nasty from Jesu, but don't understand why Gary would (seeminly deliberately) misunderstand what I was saying.
If anyone is interested, here are some of the cards that Gary and Jesu think is so obvious is here:
California: http://www.ebtproject.ca.go...
Mississippi: http://www.mdhs.state.ms.us...
Colorado: http://co.larimer.co.us/hum...
Florida: http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/...
Maryland: http://www.dhr.state.md.us/...
I wonder if they Googled or Wiji'ed EBT at all before saying I was a liar.
Jesu: Fuck you -- I'm glad you're gone.
Gary: Try again, 'kay?
Jan 12, 2008, 20:34:32 Jeff wrote:
OCSteve said "I may be mistake, but I think that the regulars have given each other a lot of leeway this week."
Yrah, I've just been called a liar about the work I've been doing for the past 10 years. Thanks for the "leeway", Jesu and Gary.
Bitter? Who, me?
Jan 12, 2008, 21:53:16 libjpn wrote:
Well, Jeff, I'm glad that you didn't get run off, and I'm pleased that you seem to seem to see a difference between the two people you are angry with. I wish there were a way that I could drain your anger, not because I don't think it is undeserved, but because I think it can be so corrosive not only to you but to the people who are basically bystanders.
If you are angry at the folks at ObWi in general or at me in particular for not standing up for you over a longer term, I can understand why you feel that way, but I'd ask you to understand that our own ability to be neutral referees is impaired by what has happened.
Anyway, if you feel like you want to discuss/thrash out/engage in a cage match concerning something that arises over there, that's part of the motivation for the name of this place. Please note that while I'm pretty sure that Gary reads this stuff, he does not comment. And everyone will weigh in with their opinion, but if things get too tedious (like they did in the RIP Andrew thread) I'll just close the door to that room, though I think that time was the first.
Finally, if you'd like to write a post that details your experiences because you feel it that people may have gotten the wrong impression from what Gary and Jes said (and this is not just a special offer to you, anyone who wants to expand on something that came up over at the mothership is welcome), please feel free. You can touch base with me at my gmail account (libjpn).
Jan 12, 2008, 22:10:17 john miller wrote:
Jeff, I think one of the differences between Jes and Gary is that Jes will frequently react back to the other commenter in a way that tends to judge the commenter rather than what the commenter is talking about.
If I remember correctly, which at my age is not a guarantee, Gary was more reacting to what he saw as overly gerneralized statements you were making about how the users of the EBT cards felt. Gary is that way. He is against over generalizations and definitely against one person describing how others feel. And he admits he can be a littkle too sharp when doing so.
Jan 12, 2008, 22:17:45 Barnabas wrote:
Jesurislac: as an inexperienced noob I am still stuggling through the volume of the original thread, but I have been in entirely in agreement with you in everything you have said that I have currently read. (up to jan 10 0510)
The complaint "if I criticise HRC I shall be called sexist" was repeated ad nauseam, but not justified by anything I read.
Visceral dislike of anyone can occur, but should always be critically examined and for women in or aspiring to positions of power, as Shinobi elegantly stated, behaviours that are ok for men are strangely not-ok for women. I have had to do some learning myself in this regard: the programming runs deep.
We will not always agree, but I value your insight.
Jan 12, 2008, 22:20:30 OCSteve wrote:
Jeff: Fair enough. I stopped following events over there when it started to go downhill. And I have no desire to catch up now.
Jan 13, 2008, 00:17:41 libjpn wrote:
"the programming runs deep"
This phrase catches my eye a bit because I think it gets to the heart of the problem. I agree with the point, but if it is programming, how do we apportion responsibility for it? The discussion (to simplify enormously) revolved around the presence of sexism in wider society as evidenced by the individual attitudes of people towards HRC. But if it is 'programmed', how can you accuse people of being sexist? To be sure, one can embrace their programming or reject it to different degrees, but there is an important element of intent that is missing, which is why, I think, a lot of us don't accept the argument that if you say X, you must believe this. Hilzoy, being a lot more knowledgeable about free will, might have a much more thought out answer, but I think we are lacking the important element of intent.
Jan 13, 2008, 00:27:18 marbel wrote:
I thought intend would be the difference between sexism and mysogeny. Problem with sexism and racism and lots of other badisms is that it creeps up on you. Quite often you are not aware of your own preconceptions or idea's or, as shinobi put it, visceral reactions. If you refuse to acknowledge that something you see or feel might be a badism (because decent folks don't do badism and I am a good person), you will not be aware and thus not chance.
That doesn't mean that it is not there though.
Jan 13, 2008, 00:28:03 marbel wrote:
ideas, not idea's. I try to watch out for that mistake now, but it still slips in.
Jan 13, 2008, 01:33:01 john miller wrote:
"ideas, not idea's"
marbel, only Gary cares.
Jan 13, 2008, 02:06:43 Barnabas wrote:
lbjpn: I think adulthood is largely composed of a negotiation between older and newer programming. I have spent most of my life fixing the "bugs" and of course discovering new ones... Other people telling you are wrong is the most useful input there. Having certain base reactions "programmed" does not absolve anyone of responsibilty to evolve, behave better than the minimum, adapt.
For me, responsibility is only a useful concept in terms of deeds, at which point your conscious choice/free will is in play, what Covey calls "integrity at the moment of choice".
Jan 13, 2008, 02:17:55 jayann wrote:
I'm another one who couldn't work out 'Bikeshed'. I think that's because I didn't expect to see anything that childish on Obwi. It was stupid, nasty, vindictive, yes; but it's the childishness that strikes me most.
barnabas, I agree with you about the
"if I criticise HRC I shall be called sexist" charge. It just is not justified.
Jan 13, 2008, 02:36:58 hilzoy wrote:
I think that intent (in the sense of a specific racist/sexist intent) is sometimes relevant, but more often the problem, for an individual, is less actual intent than failure to work hard enough to root racism or sexism out. (Negligence, not fully intentional action.) Preemptively: by this I don't mean to suggest that anyone has to spend literally every waking moment trying to identify and get rid of his or her residual racism or sexism; just that it's surely good to try to do so to <i>some</i> extent, though we can debate how much; and that if so, someone could fail to do it <i>enough.</i>
I often find myself thinking, when someone says something like "oh, we are totally past racism now": I don't think that person necessarily has any specific, active racist thoughts, but surely s/he has not really done enough thinking about this to say any such thing. (Example chosen for obviousness; the more usual case involves someone saying something that *someone* could say perfectly innocently, but that *this particular person*, I suspect, is saying because of not having thought hard enough.)
I think that's one reason why these arguments tend to go all personal and vituperative: they tend, more than most, to involve what essentially amount to accusations either of bad faith or of personal negligence; or (as directed to the other side) of obsessiveness, monomania, "playing the victim card", etc. Which is a pity: I love the kinds of conversations in which two people who are convinced of one another's good faith can explore their different takes on these issues.
Jan 13, 2008, 04:35:33 Jeff wrote:
libjpn said "If you are angry at the folks at ObWi in general or at me in particular for not standing up for you over a longer term, I can understand why you feel that way, but I'd ask you to understand that our own ability to be neutral referees is impaired by what has happened."
I'm not mad at anyone save Jesu (which was long coming -- her denigrating my experience just set it off) and, to a lesser extent, Gary (who couldn't seem to get the idea that having a card, and not having to travel dozens of miles every time you needed funds was a Good Thing). I don't expect everyone to comment on all threads, much less all side-discussions on all threads -- that would be pretentious and silly.
He (???) went on: "Anyway, if you feel like you want to discuss/thrash out/engage in a cage match concerning something that arises over there, that's part of the motivation for the name of this place."
I saw I was not getting anywhere and was becomming angrier and angrier, so I felt this was the place to go. I probably should have moved my comments here earlier, but I felt I wasn't being personal in my remarks, unlike, as usual, Jes.
Jan 13, 2008, 07:02:31 Phil wrote:
<i>Gotta admit: the pack mentality of most men when one man insults a woman is really, really interesting, in a distasteful kind of way.</i>
If you think that any significant proportion of what happens to you at Obsidian Wings is down to you being a woman, rather than down to you being an asshole, you are even dumber than I thought. If you treat people in real life the way you do there, I have to imagine you spend a great deal of time wiping people's drinks off your face.
If you *don't* treat people in real life the way you do there, ask yourself why you feel you have license to be an abusive jerk online to what are, after all, real people.
Charles Bird doesn't get treated any differently than you do (have you seen any websites once called "Hating On Jesurgislac" lately?), and last I checked, he doesn't have a vagina.
To behave as you do towards people with whom you disagree -- behavior that's absolutely, 100% to cause offense and draw opprobrium, and in fact is that way by design -- then turn around and say "All those *men* are attacking me because I'm a *woman* and nobody's doing anything about it! I don't feel safe!" is the most cowardly thing I've seen in a long time. It's passive-aggressive bullshit of the worst kind.
I may have a tendency towards being a jerk, but at least I *own* it, and don't blame others for it.
Jan 13, 2008, 07:12:14 Phil wrote:
The flipside of my comment would be that we never -- or rarely - see hilzoy get "ganged up on" in the way you seem to think you do, and she's just as much a woman as you are. Why do you suppose that is?
Jan 13, 2008, 08:08:31 libjpn wrote:
Well, there's an interesting discussion brewing with Redstocking over at the mothership. I do have to say that I don't think most of the people who Jes got angry with said '_we_ are over sexism', and I don't think that they even said something as baldfaced as 'I am over sexism', but the transposition from 'I am an Obama supporter' to 'you must believe that we are over sexism' seems to be really problematic.
Barnabas, the Covey you mention, is that Stephen Covey? thanx
Jan 13, 2008, 08:11:31 nous wrote:
Jes and Charles do have one thing in common -- they were coming to the discussion from a different set of assumptions and underlying paradigms and they are willing to fight for the value of those without compromise. I don't blame Jes for challenging the tacit patriarchal presumption or for not backing down. She's taking on some pretty deeply ingrained cultural prejudice head-on.
And I *do* think that the urge to pile on is motivated in part by a sort of cultural rhetoric of politeness that overwrites those on the margins with few allies. Just ask OCSteve or Slarti or Seb.
It's not that you all aren't responding in-kind, it's that you are doing so en mass from a position of privilege and power and that's not fair. It's not a proportional response whatever you might think.
Jan 13, 2008, 08:40:10 libjpn wrote:
Nous,
good point, and that's why I'm considering avoiding putting up a thread here as a safety valve off my own back, but wait till someone asks for one. This is because I wonder if the urge to move things over here might be, or might be seen as, a way of marginalizing Jes. I'll try and write a TiO policy post that is a little more thought out on this.
Still, what I see you as saying is that ANY minority is going to faced with that challenge, so to me it makes no sense to be recalcitrant all the time, though there should be times when recalcitrance is necessary to move opinion. This is a point of disagreement between me and Jes, but when that disagreement is fashioned into an argument that I am sexist, it seems much more like a cheap rhetorical trick rather than a true discussion.
Jan 13, 2008, 10:09:02 Slartibartfast wrote:
"And I *do* think that the urge to pile on is motivated in part by a sort of cultural rhetoric of politeness that overwrites those on the margins with few allies. Just ask OCSteve or Slarti or Seb."
Can you rephrase that? I have no idea what it means. Thanks in advance.
"She's taking on some pretty deeply ingrained cultural prejudice head-on."
Possibly so, but she's doing so in a way that's practically guaranteed to, as hilzoy has alluded to elsewhere, do at least as much damage to her cause as it does help it.
I don't see this whole thing as marginalizing Jesurgislac, personally, so much as marginalizing Jesurgislac's tactics of marginalization.
If that makes little sense, I blame one too many 90-Minute IPAs. Curse you, Dogfish Head!
Jan 13, 2008, 10:10:40 Slartibartfast wrote:
"And I *do* think that the urge to pile on is motivated in part by a sort of cultural rhetoric of politeness that overwrites those on the margins with few allies. Just ask OCSteve or Slarti or Seb."
Can you rephrase that? I have no idea what it means. Thanks in advance.
"She's taking on some pretty deeply ingrained cultural prejudice head-on."
Possibly so, but she's doing so in a way that's practically guaranteed to, as hilzoy has alluded to elsewhere, do at least as much damage to her cause as it does help it.
I don't see this whole thing as marginalizing Jesurgislac, personally, so much as marginalizing Jesurgislac's tactics of marginalization.
If that makes little sense, I blame one too many 90-Minute IPAs. Curse you, Dogfish Head!
Jan 13, 2008, 10:11:05 Slartibartfast wrote:
Ah, crap. Curse you...
Jan 13, 2008, 12:39:34 nous wrote:
Sure, Slarti...
By cultural rhetoric of politeness, I mean that anyone who takes on something deeply woven into the thread of a society is expected to express his or her self in a way that does not seem to attack anyone who is empowered by the structure being attacked. It's bad for a non-white to express anger at whites or a woman to express anger at men because it's seen as 'intolerant' of the people who are within the power structure but who are sympathetic.
You and OCSteve and Seb are treated as 'good conservatives' because you will listen and engage, but when you express frustration with some liberal paradigm head-on you get landed on just as hard.
And it does tend to make you keep your head down and be quieter. You've all said so.
I imagine it's much more frustrating when one is part of a group that is more often than not outside of the power structure, but who is expected to grant exceptions to anyone on the inside who chooses to help and not call attention to the privilege they enjoy.
Is that better?
Sorry, wasn't trying to be opaque.
Jan 13, 2008, 14:15:41 Slartibartfast wrote:
I didn't think you were being deliberately opaque; just asking is all.
Thanks for clarifying.
Still kind of unsatisfying. I don't do the power structure thing. I don't use political leverage for personal gain. I don't even vote my wallet, which is probably yet another thing I'd get scolded for. Same at work: I've fairly recently accumulated some small amount of authority, but I'm very careful about actually using that authority. It's fairly common for people to get territorial about their particular area of expertise; my primary concern is that whoever does the work does it right, and that things I KNOW need to be done get done, by someone.
And, sure, I'm male, and white (although my older daughter once described me as "brown"). I don't see that there's any need at all for me to apologize for being white, or being male. What irritates me is when being white and male seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that I'm oppressing nonwhites and females. It's as if being strong meant that I was physically abusing those weaker than I, just because I could: it doesn't follow. It's just as prejudicial to leap to the conclusion that I, as a white male, am leveraging off the existing power structure at the expense of others, as it is to adopt any other prejudicial viewpoint at the expense of any minority.
Thanks again for clarifying, nous. I do think that these are all things that need to be discussed, which is why I object so vigorously to the reframing of the opinions of others that Jesurgislac indulges in.
Or, stated in the way that Jesurgislac likes to state things, LIKES to indulge in.
But I don't bear any particularly intense animosity toward her. She's mostly annoying, when she does what she does, in the way a pathologically lying relative is. Mostly, I just tend to look the other way and abandon the discussion for a while, because it's a dead certainty that it's headed in some direction perpendicular to "conversation".
Jan 13, 2008, 19:07:00 marbel wrote:
@nous: I agree (and tnxs for explaining, I didn't get the first description eiter). I often feel that there are limits to what I can say as a non-American. Any 'outsider' will have that with any group I think - but we aren't used to explicitely seeing the other gender as 'outsider'.
I'm not sure that is why there is a pile on on Jes though. Though there might be a 'male vs female' effect; a lot of what she said I recognized and I agreed with. Due to her way of phrasing things it can be hard to agree with Jes too.
"What irritates me is when being white and male seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that I'm oppressing nonwhites and females"
No, it doesn't. But as a woman I have reglularly noticed that men don't realize what goes on, don't recognize it. *They* feel they are convinced of the equality of women yet still when they have to come up with candidates for an authoritarian function they will mention many more men (and sometimes only men) than women. They'd still characterize the men as leaders and the women as bossy so to speak - but would not be aware of it. When I point simple things out they are slightly miffed, because they feel they are accused of a bad intend. But it isn't the intend or the person I want to change, it is the mechanism and you first have to make people aware.
Jan 13, 2008, 21:28:15 libjpn wrote:
Dutch,
nice points, but I think there are a few wrinkles that are worth noting.
The first is that the relationship between men and women places the viewing of women as a minority in a location different from viewing, say, African Americans or the poor, to take two examples. This is because it is quite possible to have an existence where you don't come in contact with a particular minority or with people of a different class, the same is not true (or at least very rare) of coming in contact with the opposite sex. Everyone presumably has a (birth)mom and it is the general case that most men have a female significant other (more about that contorted language later). Slart has two daughters, as do I, so starting off with an accusation of sexism is not an optimal way to get our attention, and if we made some statement that denigrated women, it would be far more effective to simply ask if we would want our daughters to be placed in the pale of our comments. (an aside, an acquaintance of mine lived in Turkey and, being female, was often harassed quite a bit. Her response was 'would you talk to your mother like that?', which immediately stunned the harassers into silence.)
With racism, the invisibility can be more of a possibility, though I think that the blog comment cardinal sins of doubting someone's comments or experiences without proof and mindreading serve as a firewall from accusations of racism. I would note that those sorts of accusations really get under DaveC's skin for one, and a ObWi commentator who often takes a hard line on immigration and is apparently married to a minority is another, and it's that same dynamic that is at work, I think.
Classism and homophobia (interesting that there isn't an ism for that, I think) are more hidden, and I think that Jes probably has more grounds to complain in those cases about insufficient attention being paid to those, but being on the internet, we automatically create a gatekeeping mechanism for class, in that not a lot of people below the poverty line are going to be able to surf the web and toss in blog comments at all hours.
Ironically, Jes accused people of racism, classism and sexism, completing a trifecta of sorts.
And going back to the problems of language and terms, and my contortions to get around them (female significant other instead of wife/girlfriend), this paper by Douglas Hofstader, which seems to adopt the same notion that Jes seems to use, but does it in a way that addresses the problem rather than making any claims about specific people (unless the 'William Satire' label is related to that, but he talks about that in the postscript). The other books he mentions in the postscript are also worth looking at.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/...
Jan 13, 2008, 21:44:54 Barnabas wrote:
Libjpn: yes indeed Steven Covey, but looking carefully at what he actually writes I realize that I conflated the concept of Integrity at the moment of choice with his ideas on being Proactive (buzzword, ieuw). I am something of a GTD/Personal Effectiveness wonk...
Jan 13, 2008, 22:04:19 Barnabas wrote:
Slartibartfast: You do not need to apologise for being white and male. You do need to be keenly aware of the fact that both of these attributes, over which you have not control, are highly advantageous.
Where I go along with Jesurislac is that I personally experience difficulty in judging when something will be perceived as denigrating when it does not apply to me. Accordingly, I attempt to be sceptical of my perceptions in these areas.
Jan 13, 2008, 22:26:05 marbel wrote:
<i>Slart has two daughters, as do I, so starting off with an accusation of sexism is not an optimal way to get our attention, and if we made some statement that denigrated women, it would be far more effective to simply ask if we would want our daughters to be placed in the pale of our comments.</i>
My mother had two daughers and loved them dearly. When she strongly advised me to not take up math because she had heard it was difficult and she wanted to make sure I'd get a proper highschool diplome and a nice job... was that sexism? When she adivised me to stop using difficult words because it'd get me teased at and it would make it harder for me to find a boyfriend, didn't she have my intrests at heart?
<i>Our language owes an incalculable debt to these whites for their clarity of vision and expression, and if the shallow minds of bandwagon-jumping negrists succeed in destroying this precious heritage for all whites of good will, that will be, without any doubt, a truly female day in the history of Northern White.</i>
The piece made me laugh, but I am less sensitive about English than about Dutch. I do know that when a lot of men enter a profession that has a very female name the name usually changes to a more neutral form, but when women enter a profession with a more male name it doesn't. Nurses used to be called 'verpleegster' ('ster' is the feminizing end) and though there is a masculine word 'verpleger' these days we usually refer to the whole group as 'verpleegkundigen' ("care-enablers").
Sometimes the male and female form actually refer to different professions; the male form of cashier means someone working in a bank, whilst the female form means someone working behind the till.
I've been in sales, with ICT companies in a business-to-business environment. All sales staff was referred to as 'salesmen' ("verkoper" in Dutch) and if I called myself a 'saleslady' ("verkoopster" in Dutch) my collegues would get terribly upset because it denigrated their profession. Salesladies work in shops, they don't sell expensive technical solutions.
We had discussions about things like that and they all thought I was just making a fuzz and that women all had equal opportunities so why were feminists still bothering? They would all have been terribly upset if I had called them sexist.
I was accountmanager for government and big corporations, because you have more time to build up a relationship with the customer and they get to know and trust you. If I went to a new customer it happened quite often that they would ask me simple technical questions first, to establish that I had the technical knowledge - none of that ever happened to my male collegues. I would take male collegues who knew less and I would tell them in advance that even though I would answer all the questions, most customers would still ask them whilst looking at the male collegue. They wouldn't believe me in the morning, they would justify it at lunch, but they usually had to cave in at the end of the day...
On the other hand: I've been to furniture shops with male friends, where he wanted a new sofa and I was looking for a new table. All sofa remarks would be directed at me, even when I didn't look back at the salesperson but just looked straight at the male friend. I doubt those people would have called themselves sexists.
Jan 13, 2008, 22:50:01 libjpn wrote:
I wouldn't say your mom is sexist, Dutch, but some people might accuse me of sexism if I tried to limit my daughters choices.
I find that living here in Japan, I bristle at certain things, especially in regards to the way woman are views, but I just have to bite my tongue. As a simple example, when I talk to one of my colleagues about my wife, the term that is often used is kanai, which means 'inside the house', but I reject that, cause even though my wife is not working, I really don't like the unthinking sexism of it. I make a conscious effort to use tsuma, which has the meaning of spouse, though I have been told that it is a bit of a marked expression, and it then comes across as a marker of poor Japanese rather than of respect for my wife. The other alternative is to use waifu, which is the borrowed word from English that many people use to get away from the problematic nature of the Japanese words (tsuma also has the meaning of garnish or embellishment for a sushi plate, though I'm not sure if the same chinese character is used) but using that would really mark me as being unable or unwilling to use correct Japanese.
Of course, more generally, moving here may have simply been to give myself the excuse of not acting, because I can always claim the role of outsider. I often don't feel like I had a lot of choice in the matter, but someone could say that it is the unthinking choices that are most revealing. I've certainly wondered about that a lot, but I still have no answers.
Jan 13, 2008, 23:10:44 Slartibartfast wrote:
"You do need to be keenly aware of the fact that both of these attributes, over which you have not control, are highly advantageous."
This seems to presume that I am not _already_ keenly aware of the advantages.
"I personally experience difficulty in judging when something will be perceived as denigrating when it does not apply to me. Accordingly, I attempt to be sceptical of my perceptions in these areas."
Me, too. I'm so suspicious of my own judgement in these areas that I didn't, long ago, vote to permanently ban Jesurgislac from OW, even though I felt she had earned it many, many times.
Jan 13, 2008, 23:25:06 marbel wrote:
<i>I wouldn't say your mom is sexist, Dutch, but some people might accuse me of sexism if I tried to limit my daughters choices.</i>
But she *was* sexist. It improved, and she was quite emancipated for her age-group (as was my father) but she definately had some oldfashioned ideas about gender roles left.
I regularly find that I'm more prejudiced about something than I thought I was, but I don't think that makes me a bad person ;). It means that I should keep on trying to be aware of them and acknowledge that I might have them.
I don't know about the outsider role LJ. Isn't your wife Japanese? I always assumed that you moved there because of her. I'll ponder some more about it.
An unrelated and possibly dumb question; do Japanese use the Chinese alphabet and call it that too? I thought they were maybe related but different - but now find that I actually never thought about it.
Jan 13, 2008, 23:29:30 Barnabas wrote:
Slartibartfast: This seems to presume that I am not _already_ keenly aware of the advantages.
I expressed myself poorly. You=one. I myself sometimes forget that I have had a leg up in life.
PS Nice fjords.
Jan 13, 2008, 23:46:18 libjpn wrote:
To say I live in Japan because my wife is Japanese has the advantages of brevity and clarity, but I didn't have to look for a job in Japan, my wife wanted to come to graduate school in the states, and I think she might have done better than me in terms of the academic grind, and become the professor and me the house husband. And I can see her sometimes feel limited by being here. She's incredibly sharp and I, not denigrating being a housewife, but it requires a lot of work that, even if I praise, is not taken as seriously. And I have to ask myself if I wasn't able to make other relationships work because it is a whole lot easier being 'enlightened' when everyone around you (I exaggerate but only a bit) is a neanderthal.
About Chinese characters, they are basically the same, but there were some simplifications and divergences, but for the most part, a Chinese person can get the gist of an article in a Japanese newspaper, and vice versa, but not with any sense of confidence. The word for Chinese character in Japanese is Kanji, and the first character means China or Chinese/sino. I put it below
漢字
Jan 13, 2008, 23:46:37 libjpn wrote:
but it doesn't appear. Oh well.
Jan 13, 2008, 23:47:13 Slartibartfast wrote:
Heh.
Going back, though, it's certainly true that there are levels and levels to awareness of one's actions and their consequences. I don't pretend to lay claim to ultra-high awareness, nor do I spend a great deal of time and energy dwelling on such things. If I did, I'd never get anything done.
Jan 14, 2008, 00:00:10 Barnabas wrote:
I changed country for my waifu and she is certainly smarter than I am (on IQ tests genrally 5-10 points), but circumstances (and our mutual decision not to swim against the tide) have left her "kanai" and me bringing home the pork-products.
Fortunately I get to work four days of nine hours, so I have been able to combine work with children, to some extent
For me, now, emancipation has meant that my sons have a strong image of active fatherhood: I am very present in their lives and intensely proud of the fact that they have run crying to me just as often as to Mama.
Jan 14, 2008, 03:41:53 nous wrote:
Slarti -- "I don't pretend to lay claim to ultra-high awareness, nor do I spend a great deal of time and energy dwelling on such things. If I did, I'd never get anything done."
I definitely understand this, and I find myself in this particular position a lot (being a white male in academia, but one from a relatively disadvantaged background). I do recgnize, however, that just being able to not dwell upon such things in order to get things done is a reflection of my relative privilege. It's not something I do, it's just a feature of our world.
Jan 14, 2008, 04:54:37 hilzoy wrote:
I also think -- though this is sort of obvious -- that it's hard to overstate the effect, on men's and women's views of sexism, of the fact that it only takes a small minority of men to make a woman's life miserable. That being the case, I think it's natural for men to think: hey, everything is pretty good (on the grounds that neither they nor anyone they know is in any way obviously sexist), while women think: the hell it is (on the grounds that things still suck for them.)
This is compounded by the fact that the effects of the actions of a small minority of men can have systematic and pervasive effects on women's lives. Minor example: the way the actions of a small minority of vile men mean that I can <i>never</i> go walking late at night without fear. (I love going for walks, especially at night.) Bigger example: the ways in which women have to watch themselves, but men do not, in e.g. job interviews: it's just because of a minority of interviewers, or so I think, but we don't know who they are, and so have to be cautious and guarded in ways that guys do not have to be.
Jan 14, 2008, 05:05:22 JakeB wrote:
Here's a brief example of different treatments that really struck me. Since it happened about 10 years ago, I can't remember the speeches exactly, but:
A female friend and I were out at dinner one evening and ordered, and then, as the waiter walked away, she said, "Excuse me, I'd like to change my order." I thought, 'is K. having a bad day? She sounds a little upset.' She changed her order, and then, after the waiter had left, said to me, "I realized that we are generally expected to speak differently to service people, and it's another form of sexism, so I've been trying recently to speak more in the same way that X (her boyfriend) and the other men I know do in these situtations." (She really does talk like that, although she puts things much better than that.) She added, "You might notice I'm not consistent about it though, I chewed on the end of my braid while I was changing my order." Of course, drawing attention to such features is something women commonly do when talking to men, as a sort of gender marker.
Anyways, I replayed the encounter in my head and realized that indeed, if I or a male friend had addressed the waiter the same way she did, it would have seemed totally natural. And I wouldn't have chewed on my hair, assuming it had been long enough.
Having been a conscious believer in the equality, at least wrt opportunities and abilities in general, of men and women for many years before that, I was a little surprised.
By relating this I do not mean to suggest that others think they see and are failing to. Only that such attitudes were ingrained startlingly deep in me, and I even read some Mary Daly once. :)
Jan 14, 2008, 06:32:49 OCSteve wrote:
“I think it's natural for men to think: hey, everything is pretty good (on the grounds that neither they nor anyone they know is in any way obviously sexist), while women think: the hell it is (on the grounds that things still suck for them.)”
I guess that’s where I fit in. I just honestly don’t know any women who complain (at least to me) about sexism. I just don’t see it, and I don’t hear about it. Obviously that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen… I can certainly understand that a few assholes are all it takes to make a woman’s life miserable.
All the women in my life (wife, mother, grandma, sisters, sisters in law, etc.) are very very strong women. They don’t put up with anything from anyone. I have one sister who has problems finding a job. And that is because she has had 4 kids in the last 16 years. She is an awesome mother, and stays home to take care of her kids. She is a great worker, but her resume has these huge gaps… When she gets a job she is lucky if it pays for day care. So there is really little reason for her to work… That is a problem.
BTW – I wouldn’t go for a walk after dark in Baltimore.
Jan 14, 2008, 06:38:10 Barnabas wrote:
I must admit that as a noob (gamerspeak I admit) at ObWi I was shocked at how childish the exchange in the thread became, down to a level of playground namecalling...
I had some interaction with Jesurgislac in the "abortion" thread and she drove me nuts by categorising me and taking issue with things that I did not think I had proposed, but I did feel deeply uncomfortable, almost ashamed, of the way she was treated by several posters.
I assume that such venomous exchanges are rare?
Jan 14, 2008, 07:18:53 Phil wrote:
" I have one sister who has problems finding a job. And that is because she has had 4 kids in the last 16 years. She is an awesome mother, and stays home to take care of her kids. She is a great worker, but her resume has these huge gaps"
That's actually part of the ongoing sexism problem that a lot of women I know talk about. They're encouraged not to leave the care of their children to "strangers" -- i.e., day care professionals -- and when they don't, they're punished for having gaps in their resumes during the time they took care of children.
Jan 14, 2008, 07:53:25 OCSteve wrote:
Phil: Objectively though, is that really sexist? Those gaps are a problem – and if I interviewed a man and a woman with similar gaps both would be a problem for me. What if a man takes time off to be with a newborn, or take care of an elderly parent?
I guess it is sexist that it falls most often to the woman to interrupt her career to take care of children – that part I get. But what if she really thought about it and decided that is what was most important to her?
Now day care is a real problem. It’s not that my sister can’t get a job – it’s that she will pay as much in day care as she will make. Now that’s worthwhile to some extent, as it gets her out of the house and she spends time with adults for some hours each day. But she never feels that she really is making a contribution. It’s tough, I admit…
Jan 14, 2008, 08:42:36 Phil wrote:
I think it is sexist to the extent that it's still *expected* that women will take time off for childrearing and childcare, and not at all expected for men to do so.
Everyone always asks expectant mothers in the workplace, "So, how much maternity leave are you taking?" I never, ever hear the same question asked of expectant fathers, and I'm willing to bet that you don't either.
If we had a more European-style system for giving new parents -- men and women both -- the ability to take time off for newborn children and not suffer in their careers because of it, things would be a lot different, I bet.
" . . . if I interviewed a man and a woman with similar gaps both would be a problem for me."
I don't doubt that that's the case, but who would you be more willing to take a chance on, especially if the woman was still of childbearing age and might want more children?
Jan 14, 2008, 09:14:13 OCSteve wrote:
Phil: “I never, ever hear the same question asked of expectant fathers, and I'm willing to bet that you don't either.”
True. OTOH, there is an *expectation* that dad will take at most a long weekend for the birth of a child. A few days at most.
“I don't doubt that that's the case, but who would you be more willing to take a chance on, especially if the woman was still of childbearing age and might want more children?”
You got me there. I have to admit I would go with the man. It’s a really valid point I will think about…
Jan 14, 2008, 09:24:31 john miller wrote:
BArnabas, such exchanges are rae. Although on certain topics they can rear their ugly heads now and then.
However, it is interesting to follow the last few threads at ObWi. There is quite a bit of contentiousness, disagreement, arguing, etc. But not one (with one exception) incident of name calling ar the vixciousness we saw on the other two threads. I think this may be due to the fact, in part, that they were the first two threads after the Andrew threads and there was some pent up frustrations that needed an outlet.
Jan 14, 2008, 10:32:13 hilzoy wrote:
Barnabas: I think it's rare, though some topics bring it out more than others. If you don't want to provoke one, do not, under any circumstances, ever say anything about who won the 2000 election in Florida. Abortion also tends to bring it out.
I think a lot of it had to do with Andy. Also, I usually try to head this stuff off, to some extent, but I just could not read any political threads for a while. There are a number of reasons why I compiled the enormous list of links, but one was that I really couldn't do much else. I would normally have shut it down long before it went as far as it did.
Jan 14, 2008, 13:50:14 Slartibartfast wrote:
"They're encouraged not to leave the care of their children to "strangers" -- i.e., day care professionals -- and when they don't, they're punished for having gaps in their resumes during the time they took care of children."
My wife, oddly enough, didn't have that problem at all. In fact, she more or less had to be dragged back to the workplace; she wasn't looking for a job. The job found her.
I guess being fantastically competent at what she does probably weighs heavily in her favor.
She and I both grew up dirt poor, so the privelege bit doesn't resound with us so much. I do realize that we probably had an easier go of it, both being white and of above average intelligence, and furthermore not satisfied to settle for manual labor. But we both put ourselves through college.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes: the child-rearing thing. She chose to leave her job because a) she was becoming unhappy, working for dickheads, and b) she wanted to be the caregiver. It was something we talked about, and it was something I was completely willing to do, but she wanted it. And she's better at it. Really: lots better at nearly every aspect of it.
"You got me there. I have to admit I would go with the man."
We're not even allowed to discuss that sort of thing, where I work. Seriously, we're not allowed to even initiate that sort of discussion. In the other direction, though, women in my line of business tend to pull more than their weight, and also tend to come back after their child has reached an age where daycare is possible. I do, though, have some appreciation for losing the employee, because what I do they don't teach in college, at all, and so when I hire someone I have to invest no small amount of time training them; at least 18 months before they start being a substantial producer.
And of course the flipside has a flipside, which is that training is actually fun, and that occasionally I get to hire someone whose capabilities wind up to be completely at odds with their resume. My latest hire is a guy just out of college (last May) and he's doing work that I don't know how to do, at present.
I haven't had any female employees for a while, but mostly that's a matter of timing and proportion. There are still relatively few women in engineering, and I pick up new employees fairly infrequently. The relatively few part is changing, but it's changing slowly. Maybe women tend not to have The Knack (http://youtube.com/watch?v=...), so much.
Kidding, there. But I do wonder, sometimes.
Jan 14, 2008, 16:34:35 marbel wrote:
<i>If we had a more European-style system for giving new parents -- men and women both -- the ability to take time off for newborn children and not suffer in their careers because of it, things would be a lot different, I bet.</i>
Slightly different I think, not a lot different. Till my second child I still worked three days but the cost of daycare for two kids were as high as my salary for a three day job. So I had to either go for the full careerjob, find a cheaper way of daycare or see the job as an investment for the future - or stay home for a few years.
We took time to decide, because it had long-term consequences. My spouse was much more tied to his job (less opportunity to take risc or switch) if he became breadwinner. I'd have a pension-gap and we allready have one because my husband didn't grow up in the Netherlands. Changes of me ever getting back at the level I was working at at that moment would be slim after a few years at home. I'd become more dependent because of that (what if we divorced?). How would we deal with my frustration (lack of acknowledgement, less adult interaction, less satisfaction, less appreciation)?
I think the effect is more that fathers are more involved in the kids. I see more fathers at school to pick up the kids, care for them, participate in school activities - being part of and responsible for the daily life with kids.
Jan 14, 2008, 20:41:09 libjpn wrote:
Barnabas,
I want to agree with John and add one more point: I'm almost positive that Andrew's death affected Jes as strongly as it did anyone else, even though we didn't get a lot of posts about it. To me (and I have only been able to see this by stepping away from the computer for the day to attend to RL), what she did this time was a lot more frantic and frenetic than other times, in a way that made it seem like she was just reacting to people and lashing out. As Hilzoy said, she is going to give anyone a pass for what they may have said this past week, but the question is whether other regulars are going to cut Jes the same slack. We will see.
This sort of thing is something that we don't often see or admit to, but one thing I tell student teachers is that they have to understand that the students they teach bring in so much from outside the class that it is not very healthy for them to look at the reaction to their teaching as the sole cause. We have the same thing here, and you can almost see when some people are having various problems by how they interact with others on the list. I tend to view the 'culture of politeness' that nous mentions above as a way of trying to prevent people from bringing too much of any problems they are on the receiving end into ObWi.
Jan 14, 2008, 21:06:32 libjpn wrote:
Sorry, that wasn't John Miller, that was Hilzoy. that's what I get for coming in with a full head of steam after a 2 hour drive.
Jan 14, 2008, 21:07:20 libjpn wrote:
Ahh, now I see it was John and then Hilzoy. Well, they are (as usual) both right.
Jan 14, 2008, 22:29:15 john miller wrote:
Remember, nobody has seen us in the same place at the same time. I represent the less eloquent side of hilzoy.
Jan 15, 2008, 02:01:46 Barnabas wrote:
I must admit that I find the "thread derails" bits actually the most engaging: as a Urupeen I tend to glaze over a bit when people get into tremendous detail about the US elections... when things curve round to death, sex and morality I have the opportunity to stick my oar in.
Jan 15, 2008, 02:37:24 Jeff wrote:
Barnabas said "I had some interaction with Jesurgislac in the "abortion" thread and she drove me nuts by categorising me and taking issue with things that I did not think I had proposed, but I did feel deeply uncomfortable, almost ashamed, of the way she was treated by several posters."
Jes gets treated the way she treays others. She goes out of her way to malign others for their views (and, as noted above, she is the only one who is not sexist, racist or classist).
I didn't see, nor will I look for, the posts in question. But this is Jesu's standard behavior, and only ObWi's posting rules keep her even somewhat in line -- on other blogs she's even worse.
Jan 15, 2008, 03:25:43 nous wrote:
And despite this Jes manages to add something to the discussion with links and perspectives that aren't being supplied from anywhere else. I'd rather have her signal, despite the noise, than a bunch of people complaining about her and trying to drive her off or constrain her input.
Going back to LJ's martial arts analogy, often Jes pushes to try to knock you off center. Rather than pushing back, try yielding (by acknowledging her good and valid points) and redirecting (by expanding on your main points).
The same holds true for other ObWi regulars on a fairly stable and predictable list of topics (abortion, Israel, grammar). You just have to be patient and let them find their own new center. It does shift, just very slowly.
Jan 15, 2008, 03:29:20 nous wrote:
And, you know, sometimes Jes or Gary or Rilkefan or Seb (or even OCSteve and Slarti) are right and I'm wrong. It's like aikido -- being thrown is a privelege because it teaches you to yield and fall more softly.
Jan 15, 2008, 05:07:10 Larv wrote:
I'm with nous. As frustrating as her tactics can be, Jes adds a perspective that nobody else at ObWi provides. It's good to have an actual leftist around. And when she's not hurling accusations and unfairly pigeonholing her opponents, she's pretty likable and good-humored. I just wish she could see that she's hurting herself more than others by arguing the way she often does.
Jeff, I understand that you felt attacked in that thread, but I really think you were all arguing past each other. You made a fairly extreme claim that there was nothing about the EBT cards that a user might find embarassing or stigmatizing. This is almost certainly wrong, and Gary pointed out that it was. I think you took it as an attack on the cards themselves, got defensive, and made several other rather sweeping claims and appeals to your authority (hint: I suspect someone on that thread has a lot more experience actually using the card than you do). Had you contented yourself with the argument that EBT cards are the best we're going to get given the political realities, I doubt you'd have gotten many objections, but you came off a bit panglossian. I note that you're still insisting that the alternative would be "travel(ing) dozens of miles every time you needed funds," which isn't helping your case. In any case, I'm not trying to resurrect the argument, just pointing out that there were legitimate points of disagreement. Unfortunately, the thread got heated and nobody was willing to see that or find common ground. Okay, Gary probably was, but with Gary it can be hard to tell. He's sorta easy to misinterpret.
Jan 15, 2008, 05:26:13 john miller wrote:
For all the people who have criticised Jes, myself included, few of them have complained about her, or even her basic viewpoint. They have however, at times criticised her technique. Larv is correct about the perspective she brings to the site.
Unfortunately, she can become very excitable, and that is when discussions tend to get away from the point. And sometimes that can blind someone (such as myself, i.e. see above) from something that she says which is extremely approrpiate and well said. Which is unfair to her.
All that said, I still prefer ObWi with her rather than without her.
Jan 15, 2008, 05:58:17 OCSteve wrote:
"All that said, I still prefer ObWi with her rather than without her."
Ditto.
Jan 15, 2008, 06:26:19 libjpn wrote:
"It's good to have an actual leftist around."
Here's where I depart just a bit and agree with Hilzoy's alter ego, John. I feel like the majority of the folks at ObWi are pretty strongly attached to precisely the same principles that Jes espouses. The challenge seems to be not to permit ourselves to be moved, but to create an area of consensus where everyone knows what the other is doing and we can work towards common goals. Perhaps that is one of the things that the blog really lacks, which is that there is no outlet for us to work on something and therefore, it becomes more important to try and take out a perceived opponent or try to silence someone with a display of knowledge that suggests the person doesn't know what they are talking about. I think this is really marked in the Obama vs. HRC threads that have been raging of late.
anyway, ditto the ditto.
Jan 15, 2008, 07:11:05 Barnabas wrote:
"Perhaps that is one of the things that the blog really lacks, which is that there is no outlet for us to work on something..."
Short blunt human pyramid..? I do sometimes feel as if Internet debate needs a Socrates. Or a least an espresso machine if we are just going to sit around and put the world to rights.
I /am/ learning a lot about yer colonial politiking, but despite all the HRC and BO (?) selling points zipping past I still have no clear picture of either of them.
Jan 15, 2008, 07:11:35 Jeff wrote:
Larv said "I note that you're still insisting that the alternative would be "travel(ing) dozens of miles every time you needed funds," which isn't helping your case."
That was the alternative before EBT. And the miles had been reduced just a year or so earlier. Originally, you had to go to one of the District Offices to get Food Stamps. A year or so before EBT, the county established satellite offices that could distribute them.
=======================
I think the best way for me to deal with Jes is to establish a GreaseMonkey script in my head: If she's being a concern troll, just replace the comment with "Jes eats pie", and DNFTT.
Jan 15, 2008, 07:14:49 Jeff wrote:
"I still have no clear picture of either of them."
http://www.fiveanddime.net/...
http://blog.kir.com/archive...
Hope that helps. [/snark]
Jan 15, 2008, 07:16:26 Barnabas wrote:
I work for a european bank and we have many customers who's welfare is paid by direct debit and who use normal banking facilities. Until recently our EBT card was entirely free of charge.
Such people are entirely equivalent to and indistinguishable from customers in employment, except that our profits are much better on people who regularly deposit a salary.
Jan 15, 2008, 07:36:18 Larv wrote:
Jeff,
Sure, but just because that was the prior system doesn't mean it's the only alternative.
And lj, I wasn't intending to imply that the rest of the commentariat were inauthentic lefties, just that Jes is a bit more...radical than the norm.
Jan 15, 2008, 08:49:10 lowlyadjunct wrote:
Ditto on the ditto on the ditto, fwiw.
Jan 15, 2008, 08:53:11 john miller wrote:
BTW, lj, please don't tell hilzoy about my presumptions to be that close to greatness.
Jan 15, 2008, 08:54:13 libjpn wrote:
"Or a least an espresso machine"
There's an idea.
I was trying to find a way to give a bit of an idea of who Obama and HRC are, but I stumped. It is so hard to describe them outside of the political system and the office they are running for. I might be able to come up with some analogues with your country, if I knew which one that was, though you are under no obligation to.
And Jeff, please consider yourself invited to write a post here about the various aspects of your job and the EBT and the system. I don't want to speak for others, but I am absolutely clueless about almost every aspect of the system. (the same offer goes for anyone else, you can reach me at libjpn at gmail.
Jan 15, 2008, 12:02:09 DaveC wrote:
- The challenge seems to be not to permit ourselves to be moved, but to >>CREATE AN AREA OF CONSENSUS<< where everyone knows what the other is doing and we can work towards common goals. Perhaps that is one of the things that the blog really lacks, which is that there is no outlet for us to work on something and therefore, it becomes more important to try and take out a perceived opponent or try to silence someone with a display of knowledge that suggests the person doesn't know what they are talking about. -
But for dealing with obstinate non-consensus types, there may be never be that outlet, which can be very frustrating to say the least. I don't know what to say about this, other than that an occasional challenge, whether well done or not, is good for practicing the chops.
Jan 15, 2008, 12:36:06 libjpn wrote:
Gawd, I have got to get the markup working here.
Well, sure, but if 99 people out of 100 agree, or even 90 out of 100, that seems like a pretty good area, and those who don't agree should resign themselves to living on the fringe. This is not to say that the majority is always right, and god knows screaming in a blog comment page is better than screaming at your loved ones, but if you weigh the minority position as being important, than trying to get people to change their mind by invoking the fact that you are occupying a fringe location is pretty bizarre to me. Perhaps I have far too much faith that the liberal consensus is actually where things are going, so screaming at people is not going to actually speed things up.
But my point is that in RL, we tolerate a lot more diversity if we want to get things done. Frex, I have some colleagues who have what I think are pretty outdated notions about teaching and language learning. But if I want to get something done, I can't make a huge issue of it. A friend of mine who was a marine said that the best thing about life in the marines is that people might not agree on things, but they would shut up and get things done. Now, part of that is that they have a very simple way of deciding who gets to decide, which is called rank, but having been in any number of progressive ventures, the ability of people to create situations where it becomes their way or the highway is truly astonishing.
Jan 16, 2008, 01:54:04 hilzoy wrote:
Barnabas: the best way I know to get a sense of Obama is to read his first book, Dreams of my Father. He wrote it when he graduated from law school, well before he could have had any realistic aspirations to be Senator, let alone President.
Moreover, the book would be worth reading even if he weren't running for President, since -- and here's the extraordinary part -- he is a real *writer.* I mean this in the sense in which real writers are rare, and to be one is a very serious gift. He has his own voice. It is extremely interesting.
publius writes that he is tempted by a quasi-religious attraction to the Obama campaign. I am not. My main temptation, the one I have to constantly police, is that I find the idea of having, in this sense, a genuine writer as President -- someone that thoughtful and original, and with that strong a sense of his voice and that much nuance of thought ad expression -- incredibly appealing.
I keep telling myself: the set of great Presidents and the set of real writers *are completely different.* But that's my main temptation.
Jan 16, 2008, 04:02:35 Jeff wrote:
hilzoy said "Moreover, the book would be worth reading even if he weren't running for President, since -- and here's the extraordinary part -- he is a real *writer.* I mean this in the sense in which real writers are rare, and to be one is a very serious gift. He has his own voice. It is extremely interesting."
I concur, 100%. It's a wonderful book, regardless of Presidential horse-racing. It has such a strong "voice", you'll hear Obama speaking to you as you read.
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hilzoy also said "I find the idea of having, in this sense, a genuine writer as President ... incredibly appealing."
Not quite a Václav Havel, but as close as we'll get for a while.
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lj: We do need tags here (just so Gary can gripe about people not using them [grin]). And I'll try to write something up about my experience in the World of Welfare for you sometime.
Jan 16, 2008, 06:48:12 Barnabas wrote:
"I might be able to come up with some analogues with your country, if I knew which one that was, though you are under no obligation to"
I wish I knew myself. I am half English, half Irish, was born in Germany, brought up in London until I was eleven when my parents moved to Belgium and I currently live in the Netherlands. Politically I am probably more familiar with British politicians than Dutch ones...</cat>bag
I shall read the book, Vaclav Havel sprang to my mind too. In France it is almost obligatory for a presidential aspirant to write a book, but it certainly does not mean they are writers...