“Your Low Self-Esteem Is Sexy to Me”

Posted on January 20, 2015 by wellsdc

A social experiment involving online compliments from men to women yielded interesting, if disappointing and unsurprising, results (h/t Ragen):

The next time someone sends you a “you’re so hot” opening line on a dating app, try simply saying “Yeah I am.” That’s exactly what one college student started doing, and she got some… interesting reactions.

Claire Boniface, a 20-year-old student, began conducting a social experiment she called “agreeing with boys when they compliment you.” Rather than profess thanks and gratitude to suitors offering compliments via online dating sites, Boniface politely agreed with them.”I was curious to see how the people that messaged me would respond,” Boniface told The Huffington Post. “Often when I get messages on that site simply complimenting me I just ignore them because the compliments are never sincere and I see no reason to respond, so I thought I would try out a simple response of ‘yes’ and see what would happen” She quickly found out that most dudes did not like this.

This is not the first such experiment but the results do not seem to have changed at all.

Now, you might be saying that these are “just compliments,” and/or that she shouldn’t be so egotistical as to agree with the people sending her these messages.

To use a non-appearance or gender based example to address the “ego” question, I present the following hypothetical exchange between two men:

Continue reading →

Social Media Synergy Leads to Awkward Results

Posted on January 19, 2015 by wellsdc

A couple of friends shared a story on Facebook yesterday, about attorney Ted Olsen schooling right-wing legal dilettante Tony Perkins on marriage equality In short, Perkins tried to pull out the tired old standby argument that allowing same-sex marriage would open the floodgates to all kinds of marriages.

At least this time Perkins had an actual news story to cite, regarding a father and daughter who say they plan on getting married after two years of dating which began after twelve years of separation (when the woman was ages 4 through 16). There is plenty to unpack and analyze in that story, beginning with the fact that it certainly appears to be an outlier, followed by the fact that so far no one else seems to be seriously advocating for legal recognition of their marriage.

If they want legal recognition for their marriage, though, I say let them make their case, either in court or in front of one or more state legislatures. This is not the point I want to make in this post, though.

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What I’m Reading, January 13, 2015

Posted on January 13, 2015 by wellsdc

Dating advice from Fox News gets even more obnoxious, Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon, January 2, 2015

Fox News continues its march right past being conservative on gender issues and towards being overtly and grotesquely misogynist. As David Edwards at Raw Story reported, the show Fox & Friends did a New Year’s Day bit praising one of those sexist dating guides that promises women they’ll be able to “catch” a man while simultaneously and unintentionally arguing that men are wretched creatures that no woman should ever mess with. (To be clear, I disagree. There are plenty of men who don’t need a woman to debase herself by acting like an unpaid servant in order to “earn” love, but these kinds of dating guides always assume men are such weak monsters that this is the only way to get one to like you.) The book is called Single Man, Married Man and it purports to be a guide to how to mold yourself to be what men really want. And apparently what men really want is a doorma, though one who pretends that waiting on you hand and foot and never standing up for yourself is a form of “strength”.

Can We Please Stop Pretending Republicans Have Ever Had A Health Care Plan? Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns, & Money, January 9, 2015 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, January 12, 2015

Posted on January 12, 2015 by wellsdc

The Future of Women on Earth May Be Darker Than You Thought, Annalee Newitz, io9, January 2, 2015

When I say freedom, I don’t mean anything fancy. I’m just talking about women’s ability to control their destinies, by having things like access to jobs that give them financial independence from anyone else. Just for good measure, let’s say that freedom also includes the opportunity to contribute to the political destinies of our communities by voting, holding office, and being given a chance to run important institutions. I’m not saying anything radical here. These are all pretty typical freedoms afforded to women in modern democratic countries, at least technically — and even to some women in non-democratic ones.

I used the word “technically” for a reason. As most people who have ever lived as women will tell you, many of these freedoms are difficult to achieve in practice. Women are not forbidden from having financial independence and leadership roles, but we still struggle to get them.

But that’s not really news, and if you want to debate it, there are plenty of message boards that will welcome your thoughts. What I find more interesting is that women have had these freedoms for such an incredibly short period of time. Considering that humans have been creating systems of government for thousands of years, women’s suffrage is like a blink of an eye. In the United States, where I live, women couldn’t vote a century ago.

It’s Time To Arrest Ultra-Orthodox Jews Who Delay Flights Over Seating, Michael Luciano, The Daily Banter, December 29, 2014 Continue reading →

She Was Geeky Before It Was Cool

Posted on January 10, 2015 by wellsdc

I regret that I never got to hang out with Grace Hopper, who helped pioneer computers, and who totally and awesomely did not put up with David Letterman’s lip:

She sounds like she was an epic badass:

Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper was a remarkable woman who grandly rose to the challenges of programming the first computers. During her lifetime as a leader in the field of software development concepts, she contributed to the transition from primitive programming techniques to the use of sophisticated compilers. She believed that “we’ve always done it that way” was not necessarily a good reason to continue to do so.

What I’m Reading, January 8, 2015

Posted on January 8, 2015 by wellsdc

Bafflingly hyperbolic, PZ Myers, Pharyngula, January 4, 2015

As for the claim that creationists will be terrified by this discovery…excuse me, but I have to go off somewhere and laugh for ten minutes or so.

Creationists don’t understand thermodynamics. Heck, they don’t understand basic logic. You think an obscure bit of theory by some brilliant wonk, written up in journals they’ll never read? My dog, man, I’ve still got creationists asking me, “If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” and you think they’re going to be stunned into silence by a technical paper in a physics journal on entropy, heat dissipation, and molecular self-organization? Look at England’s paper — it’s got math in it. The only thing that’s going to terrify the religious right is the prospect of reading the thing.

I Am Trying Not to Hate and Fear Men, Laura Bogart, AlterNet, January 1, 2015 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, January 6, 2015

Posted on January 6, 2015 by wellsdc

Hollywood’s Disability ‘Inspiration Porn’ Is Terrible, but Here’s How We Can Fix It, Holly Eagleson, TakePart, November 21, 2014

The general consensus is that American Horror Story: Freak Show is a gift. Sure, the story lines have been teetering on the rails for the last two episodes. But it’s one of a pathetically few places you’ll see a talent like Mat Fraser on television.

Fraser has phocomelia, a congenital disorder that causes malformed appendages. On AHS, he beautifully embodies Paul the Illustrated Seal, a tattooed member of a 1950s freak show under threat of nefarious forces. Unlike so many infantilizing roles for disabled actors, Paul isn’t stripped of his eroticism; he has affairs with two different female characters on the show. Play on, player!

It’s a breakout role for Fraser, a performer who’s well known on the cabaret and burlesque circuits and is also a drummer and playwright. Fraser is fierce by any measure, even more so for his perspective on his new-found fame. In an excellent interview with The Onion’s AV Club, he puts media eager to exploit his story directly in his crosshairs: “I’ve already turned down two offers from really mainstream people, too f—ing mainstream, to do a life-story interview, because I am not interested in ‘inspiration porn.’”

That term may not be familiar, but you know the concept. It’s that soft-focus prime-time sitdown about a “heroic” soldier who lost limbs in battle. The relentless memes of developmentally disabled people as Successories posters. The documentary about a person triumphing over a disfiguring disease to run a marathon and climb a mountain. It’s all to celebrate ability in many its forms, if you’re being generous. In reality, it’s a clarion call to the able-bodied: If these less-thans can do so much with so little, by God, you can do anything! (Cue “reach for the stars” graphic.)

Consent, Emma Holten, Hysteria #5 ‘Nonsense’ Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, January 5, 2015

Posted on January 5, 2015 by wellsdc

On Nerd Entitlement, Laurie Penny, New Statesman, December 29, 2014

These are curious times. Gender and privilege and power and technology are changing and changing each other. We’ve also had a major and specific reversal of social fortunes in the past 30 years. Two generations of boys who grew up at the lower end of the violent hierarchy of toxic masculinity – the losers, the nerds, the ones who were afraid of being creeps – have reached adulthood and found the polarity reversed. Suddenly they’re the ones with the power and the social status. Science is a way that shy, nerdy men pull themselves out of the horror of their teenage years. That is true. That is so. But shy, nerdy women have to try to pull themselves out of that same horror into a world that hates, fears and resents them because they are women, and to a certain otherwise very intelligent sub-set of nerdy men, the category “woman” is defined primarily as “person who might or might not deny me sex, love and affection”.

***

Heterosexuality is fucked up right now because whilst we’ve taken steps towards respecting women as autonomous agents, we can’t quite let the old rules go. We have an expectation for, a craving for of a sexual freedom that our rhetoric, our rituals and our sexual socialisation have not prepared us for. And unfortunately for men, they have largely been socialised – yes, even the feminist-identified ones – to see women as less than fully human. Men, particularly nerdy men, are socialised to blame women – usually their peers and/or the women they find sexually desirable for the trauma and shame they experienced growing up. If only women had given them a chance, if only women had taken pity, if only done the one thing they had spent their own formative years been shamed and harassed and tormented into not doing. If only they had said yes, or made an approach.

This, incidentally, is why we’re not living in a sexual utopia of freedom and enthusiastic consent yet despite having had the technological capacity to create such a utopia for at least 60 years. Men are shamed for not having sex; women are shamed for having it. Men are punished and made to feel bad for their desires, made to resent and fear women for having denied them the sex they crave and the intimacy they’re not allowed to get elsewhere. Meanwhile, women are punished and made to feel bad for their perfectly normal desires and taught to resist all advances, even Eventually, a significant minority of men learn that they can ‘get’ what they want by means of violence and manipulation, and a significant minority of women give in, because violence and manipulation can be rather effective. (Note: accepting the advances of an awful man does not make these people bad women who are conspiring to ‘make life hell for shy nerds’. I’ve heard that sort of thing come out of the mouths of my feminist-identified male nerd friends far too often.)

And so we arrive at an impasse: men must demand sex and women must refuse, except not too much because then we’re evil friendzoning bitches. The impasse continues until one or both parties grows up enough or plumps up the courage to state their desires honestly and openly, without pressure or resentment, respecting the consent and agency of one another.

Why Idris Elba Can’t Play James Bond, Phil Nobile Jr., Badass Digest, December 29, 2014 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, January 2, 2015

Posted on January 2, 2015 by wellsdc

On Mishearing “Get Consent” as “Don’t Have Sex”, Miri, Professional Fun-Ruiner, Brute Reason, December 25, 2014

Countless writers, educators, and activists have weighed in on what consent is and what it is not and how to communicate around it. If you Google “what is consent,” the first page has numerous resources meant to help young people learn what consent is, such as this one and this one. Don’t like reading? There are graphics!

Yet (some) men insist that this is all so mysterious and perilous that they have no choice but to avoid the whole enterprise altogether.

I don’t want anyone to be lonely, insecure, and sexually unfulfilled. I don’t want anyone who wants to have sex to be unable to have it. I want everyone to have the confidence to pursue and find the types of relationships they’re interested in. I want everyone to feel worthy and valuable even if they haven’t found a partner yet.

But I also want people to pursue all of this ethically. That means that if you’re ever unsure if someone is consenting, you stop and ask. And if you don’t think you are able to do that, then you should abstain from sex until you are able to do it.

People Don’t Hate Millennials, Laura Bradley, Slate, December 26, 2014 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, December 16, 2014

Posted on December 16, 2014 by wellsdc

The Comic-Book Guys Quivering in Fear of Cosplay, Noah Berlatsky, The Atlantic, December 10, 2014

The backlash to cosplay is in part guys trying to keep girls out of the male clubhouse. But in this context it can also be seen as feminized guys panicking at yet another in a long line of demonstrations that the male clubhouse isn’t all that male to begin with. You could argue that cosplay’s associations with fashion actually make it more highbrow than comics—the New York fashion runway and the New York gallery scene are more kin than either is to low pulp superhero comics. Cosplay is appropriating superheroes for art, much as pop art has done—and some in comics fear the results.

But they shouldn’t. The truth is that cosplay is not a continuation of pop-art denigration by other means. Instead, it’s an antidote. Pop art’s self-conscious manipulation of comics is only possible, or painful, in a world where comics defines its legitimacy in narrow terms. Lichtenstein is only an outsider co-opting comics if you insist on seeing Lichtenstein as something other than a comics artist himself. Cosplay—like the Batman TV series before it—could be a way for fans to be the pop artists: to cast aside the wearisome performance of legitimacy for a more flamboyant, less agonized fandom. Once you stop neurotically policing boundaries, the question of whether comics or superheroes are masculine or feminine becomes irrelevant. If superheroes and comics are for everyone, that “everyone” automatically includes people of all genders, wearing whatever they wish.

The Real Story Of Apollo 17… And Why We Never Went Back To The Moon, Andrew Liptak, io9, December 12, 2014 Continue reading →

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