This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
I am too angry to respond to a certain Mr Jack Vance who has just published on his blog a patronising and inaccurate account of A+ together with suggestions about how it could be better. I held it together enough to respond to the post about this on Democratic Underground
The links are below but if you go there please do not punch through the screen
http://www.atheistrev.com/2013/10/what-atheism-could-have-been.html
http://www.atheistrev.com/2013/10/what-atheism-could-have-been-part-ii.html
More assholishness.
I’d like to declare a forever strike on housecleaning. I do not like it. Suppose I’ll go clean the stove now. :sigh:
Caine
We cooked a turkey yesterday.
Stove cleaning, indeed.
More depressing news, following on from my rant on the previous thread.
The Conservatives now want to abolish welfare benefits for people under 25 – a genuinely horrifying and classist attack on the poor. Cameron seems to imagine that everyone lives in some sort of idyllic middle-class bubble where they can just go and stay with Mummy and Daddy in their nice suburban house in the Home Counties. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about young people who don’t have that option – whose parents are themselves destitute, or who have no parents, or who come from abusive homes or were thrown out of home. Or about LGBT youth, who are much more likely than straight youth to experience homelessness. The Tories don’t even care enough to consider the impact of their policies on people who aren’t middle-class or higher.
They’re also pledging to deny undocumented migrants access to the NHS. A policy already pursued by the right-wing Rajoy government in Spain, which led to a Senegalese man dying of untreated tuberculosis after he was refused treatment. This government has so little empathy and compassion that they would deny undocumented people the basic human right to medical care.
Also reposting my rant about Theresa May from the previous thread, as it seems to have gotten caught by the portcullis.
Walton #5
You’d think that simple self-preservation would make them want to make sure that everyone is healthy.
Chigau:
Ouch. I can’t even remember the last time we cooked a turkey. Too much food for us. We get one every year anyway, from Mister’s workplace. Always donate it to one of the local shelters.
@ Caine #2
Oh, hell, I know. I’ve spent the day washing windows (that are dysfunctional) and trying to avoid rat kisses whilst cleaning the cage. (Halloo-a!) On the plus side, the critters did like champignons and cherry tomaters.
I bloody hate cleaning, esp. when the damn windows are from the eighties and have gone through heat expansion for… uh, well, that long.
Dear Caine, sure, you could go on strike against housekeeping. But then you would also have to hire a scab to break the striker. And if you do hire a scab, will you still work the picket line while the scab breaks your strike?
Teejaykay:
Tchah, I know dysfunctional windows. Got ’em. Your ratties like the ‘shrooms? Can’t get mine to show any interest in them, variety notwithstanding. Same with carrots. You’d think carrots were poison. Give the babies kisses for me.
Culuriel, please don’t use ‘dear’ when addressing me. Pilamayaye. If I could afford to hire someone, I wouldn’t have a reason to desire a strike.
Cleaning (as in dusting and vacuuming) tends to happen when our six-monthly house inspection is due, or the dust’s too thick on the mirrors to see myself, whichever comes first. Dust
bunnieskitties FTW.:)
Kittehs, I hear ya. I’m a natural slob, so I let things go way too long, which makes it much more work. I know this, but still…
Eh, it has to be done, winter is coming, and it will be six months of being indoors most all the time, so. I’m taking a wine break. Mister is cleaning carpet.
So today I happened to pass by a Games Workshop. I decided what the hell, I’d stop in, maybe pick up stuff to take care of the growing pile of unpainted figurines. And then I remembered why, exactly, I stopped going to Games Workshop so many years ago.
You’d think, with 42% of the gaming market being female, they’d stop freaking the fuck out when a person with boobs walked through the door, but noooooooo. The only staff member willing to actually make eye contact with me pulled out the ‘you should check to make sure you are getting the right stuff for your boyfriend’ bullshit.’
And they wonder why so many game stores are having trouble staying in business. Asshats.
I did a lot of cleaning today, too. And shopping. We’re going to have a birthday party for my step-father here tomorrow and so based on his requests for the meal there are going to be a great many delicious things that I can’t eat.
I’m thinking I’ll have some nuts and berries and perhaps some cabbage while everybody else eats fettuccine alfredo and a horrifyingly rich cake and ice cream.
Mm, nuts and berries.
MM:
That’s a serious drag. It’s been ages since I made Fettucine Alfredo, lots of butter and cream, fresh grated nutmeg on top. If only I had a cook. Heh.
Oh, that sounds delicious, Caine. I imagine it will be good tomorrow, as well. It’s just that the noodles (and the cake and everything else) make my blood sugar jump and triggers migraines that leave me puking. So I might be daring and try a wee bit just for the flavor, but the bulk of my meal is going to be careful to keep everything even. A lot of the time I actually feel better and avoid migraines by not eating at all…which is horribly unhealthy.
Perhaps if I try some sort of low-carb noodle I can manage it without feeling ill?
*unlurk*
From the Department of Dear God, Man, What Part of h’ = h – 0.5 * G * t^2 Don’t You Understand?™ (and previously noted for adventures in the Shard):
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/10/adventures-of-a-serial-trespasser/100604/
Some beautiful photos. Massive TW for vertigo.
*relurk*
I think they figure as long as they can keep enough of a security detail they can have that slave underclass and be happy and safe.
MM:
Yeah, I did that for years and I’m paying for it now, via pancreas the parade pisser. You do *not* want to develop a pancreas which will drop into acute pancreatitis when you don’t eat enough.
As for pasta, a fave of ours is angel hair, tossed in herbed butter. Tasty, and not terribly triggering.
Mellow Monkey #17
Have you tried Dreamfield’s Pasta?
http://www.dreamfieldsfoods.com/
It is a low-carb pasta, it tastes great, and doesn’t trigger my blood sugar. Some diabetics can’t tolerate it well, but all my friends who are diabetic swear by it. It can stimulate loose stools, but YMMV. I hadn’t eaten any pasta for nearly ten years before I discovered this. Good luck.
Standard disclaimer. I have no affiliation with the company.
I just wanted to say I’m really sad that the post about the gay-friendly grandparent was shut down by derailers just after I posted my own anecdote.
That shit hurt. :(
You mean besides it being Game$ Work$hop. Don ‘t get me wrong, they make splendid miniatures, but the cost… ( “You want HOW MUCH for that Tau battlesuit ?!”) That and the general attitude that they own the miniature gaming hobby. These days I stick to 15mm for my sci-fi gaming fix. More bang for the buck.
I confess, I tend to take notice when a female enters my FLGS, but that’s only because I’m a lonely single gamer who one day dreams of meeting a single gamer woman who will sweep me off my feet and carry me off to a life time full of geeky romance. That is, if I wasn’t terrified to talk to them in the first place. I haven’t yet master the ability to talk to a female I ‘me attracted to outside a professional or non-personal situation without stuttering and blushing like an idiot. In these situations, I do the world a favor and keep my mouth shut and try to be invisible.
Caine # 11
For some odd reason, they love shrooms and boiled carrots. Broccoli is still a fave too, and don’t get me started on their soy addiction. I’d give ’em kisses, but these buggers are all over my face already, basically asking “where’s the food you ateteteted?” Big fans of pasta, too — learned that from your blog! Other hits: pureéd apple and porridge and, er, tea. Tea, really. (Suppose it has something to do with the fact that rats originated from Asia anyway?)
/
Caine @ 20
Hmm. I might give that a shot. My plan for tomorrow is to saute the cabbage and put some of the sauce on that. I know it won’t taste quite the same, but I hope it’ll be enough to keep me from being angry at my guests. ;)
morgan @ 21
I have not! I’ll check it out, though.
Jodyp:
I’m sorry. I saw your post. I think it’s shit that people doubted it took place, because it happens all the fucking time. I also think it’s shit that some people kept going on and on and on and on and on and on about how it’s just so much better to stick by family. Plenty of times the only reasonable response is “fuck family” and walking away. Did that with mine, and it saved my life.
Mellow Monkey @ 25 & Caine @ 20
Both sound delish! Garlic butter and angel hair is nom, especially if you make the garlic butter (with herbs) a day before you actually start making the pasta. My mom keeps telling me it’s even better when you make your own pasta and fill it a bit of ham (prosciutto?) and a bit of that garlic butter — or alternatively, just but the ham inside and then cook the living daylights out of the filled pasta in that garlic butter after you’ve got rid of the water in the kettle.
Teejaykay:
My rats have *always* drunk tea. From the first one, to all the current residents. They have their own dedicated tea dishes, because it’s the only way I can drink tea without having a rat in my cup.
Caine @ 28
That… sounds rather familiar…
Caine, it’s true.
It was as much about the doubt as it was the people who derailed it over something that’s been totally settled here. We’re our own worst enemy sometimes.
My own story had a happy ending, thanks to my grandmother. She sat my parents down and gave them an expletive-laden tirade that would have made the author of that letter blush.
Caine: I don’t doubt that such a thing could take place. However, it isn’t clear how such a letter would find its way to the Internet especially if it were sent to the person that it was addressed to. Seems fishy to me. Further, it seems clear enough that thats what I meant. But whatever. Maybe you weren’t talking about my comment, but you didn’t name names.
The hyperbole about going “on and on and on” is particularly ironic coming from you. It’s rare that your nym doesn’t occupy 3-4 positions of the recent comments panel.
Jodyp:
I am so glad you had someone firmly and passionately in your corner. It doesn’t go that way with most kids who get kicked out. I know Josh (spokesgay) hasn’t been around lately, but he’s one who was without a home at a young age, and he had the fortune to be taken in by some people who cared for him, in every way.
For a lot of us, ‘family’ equals nightmare, and there simply is nothing there to be sought out.
Advice the first: Drop “female” from your vocabulary
AE:
My statement was general, as more than a few people expressed such doubts. As I commented in that thread, I imagine the motive for going public with the letter was to provide hope for those in dire need of it. It’s not difficult for me to accept it found it’s way to a site known for providing hope and support. I expect either Granddad or Grandson (or both) did it, after sending it. It’s certainly easy enough to do. I can write a letter, take a shot of it, (or it can be scanned), and bob’s your uncle, it’s on the net. *shrug*
I really don’t expect people in a more privileged place to understand, but there could at least be an effort.
Those with blood sugar transition woes – have you been tested for hyperglycemia? Your blood sugar shouldn’t rise much above 140 mg/dl regardless of your intake with a healthy happy pancreas. If you are shooting into the 200’s or above I can understand why you’re so uncomfortable. Ask for a hemoglobin A1c (a check for the glycosylation of your red blood cells’ surface proteins – proxy for average blood sugar) next time you’re at the doc. Women in particular are prone to cycles of high and low blood sugar which make for mood shittiness and general discomfort. Fairly cheap antidiabetic pills and/or access to a blood sugar monitor can help prevent these swings.
I cleaned and spiffed and did 5 hours of homework yesterday…now I am having dry sake and popcorn for dinner. Real life.
Antiochus @ 31
You might as well tell me to stop responding to Caine’s comments as well, seeing as we’re going on and on about our pets — something Caine and I are enthusiastic about.
Akira MacKenzie:
How are you going to have a wonderfully geeky conversation that way? It’s okay to talk. We all fuck up, you know, and a happily geeky woman might be just as tongue tied as you are. Someone has to start, eh?
AE:
There’s a whole lot of times it doesn’t, either. Thanks ever, though, for thinking I spend most of my time in threads beating people over the head with the same repetitive fucking point.
You know, more than half of my posts are doing education link dumps when they are needed, and people are hollering for me to do that, welcoming new people, and providing support for others. That’s a whole lot different from people who just show up here to browbeat a point to death and beyond.
Amen to that. Is family privilege a thing? I come from a ridiculously supportive family. We all have our issues but we have learned to communicate and support each other beautifully, so entering the healthcare sector was a brutal shock for me. I had always hoped my friends with abusive, angry parents were exceptions – rather, they seem a variant of the norm, with many “families” being a terrible effector for mental health outcomes among their membership. I work in a clinic focusing on diabetes, and I have learned to fear the holidays in the same vein as many psychological professionals. My patients are harried and hurt by their compulsory travels “home” and those with disordered eating behaviors suffer in ways I can graph. This is why I have turned my parent’s house into Chicago O’Hare for holidays – a safe array of food choices with no shame or abuse.
Heteronormativity?
I’ve considered going and blogging semi regularly. I might write about some of my family issues.
Please with his kind of thing.
Did Christine give the letter back? Or did the grandfather intend it to be an open letter and sent it to FCKH8 before he sent it to his daughter? That would contradict the claim that this was intended to be private, which had been expressed by a few people on that thread.
It’s not such a big deal. I’m not in complete disbelief. I just thought it odd to be attributing such surety of motive to such an apocryphal set of characters, as had been taking place on that thread. And I certainly have no reason to doubt jodyp. But if you’ll allow me to lodge a complaint–you’re sometimes real quick to tell people how they’re being shitty, when you don’t know that they are.
AUGH. Just augh. Most of the single moms I know got started in that business because they were rather young and had simplistic assumptions about life and time – as in, they were between 14 and 18 years of age when they had their kids. Many have recovered and made their families quite comfortable, but I would say full economic and educational recovery peaks for these women between ages 30 and 40. (I only know one single dad; his demographic shift is comparable.) Cutting off support to 25-year-olds is cutting off support in the descent of the peak of fuck-up behavior. Support is most necessary at this juncture so young people can stabilize their lives and work toward long-term stability.
Caine@38, if it helps, I don’t think your posts are extraneous. And besides, it’s not like PZ is shy about coming down on people who blather on uselessly.
Haters gonna hate, as the saying goes.
Queer and trans* individuals surely lack family privilege more often than straight and cis people, but all kinds of diversity and all kinds of avarice generate intolerance within family units. It’s not a single discrete phenomenon.
Example: I am a non-neurotypical person in a family of non-neurotypical people. My family understands my different emotional and cognitive needs and has supported me through rocky patches. Meanwhile, my best friend – from the same part of town, with wealthier parents – has her non-neurotypical nature shamed and othered consistently by her family, and has had a much rougher time of it. (Notably, I would describe at least half of her pedigree as non-neurotypical – attitudes and assholishness persist and she still suffers.)
AE:
Yeah, I know I have a history there. You’re absolutely right. I’ve also been actively changing that, and have been for some time. I’m not perfect, not even close, and when I’m being an ass, I fully expect to be told off. Unlike some people, I’m not proud of being an asshole, so I work to not be one. I do fuck up, a lot. I try not to repeat mistakes, I try to learn.
I am an empathic person, and I not only have my own shit family situation to draw on, I’ve helped a lot of people over the years in various shit family situations. My house has always been open to people in need, ever since I’ve had a place to call my own. That hasn’t changed. So yes, I tend to defend those people who have seriously struggled and have a lot at stake in certain discussions. I also have an intense dislike of people who automatically view situations through their privilege spectacles. I’m working on toning my reaction down.
Seize @ 35
I have not. Getting health care is…difficult for me, so I haven’t been to a doctor in a long, long time and have never had regular medical care. Diabetes runs pretty heavily in my genetic background, though. I worry about it frequently.
Perhaps my access to health care will be getting better soon if the GOP doesn’t drag everything fully into the toilet and I can see about being tested. Until then all I can do is limp along.
This is why most female gamers buy online. Interestingly, in my area, I have also observed that gamers from racial and ethnic minority groups also seem to buy online and congregate around games where they won’t be exposed to voice chat with people who will sexually or racially harass them.
I was intrigued the other day on the train when two older, newly-acquainted Black women got into an animated, expert-level conversation about Candy Crush. They mirrored white gamer dudebros in every aspect of their detailed conversation – “cheat” mechanisms, suppositions about game developers and their motives, genre-level ideas – except where referent to their identities. No doubt these women would enjoy COD if it weren’t for the white suburban dudes that normally populate COD conversations. Minorities feel safer in spaces where we don’t have to flash our ID card.
Doug:
Pilamayaye, I appreciate that.
Caine: This is frustrating. Of course I don’t think that you are posting every 4-6 minutes for the sole purpose of kicking some dead horse again and again. But then again, I think you might be less likely to accuse those posting far less often than you of going on and on and on. It was a pretty short thread, given the heat that its generating.
I am so sorry. I fight for people to get healthcare access through our clinical trials every day. I count myself as extremely lucky; my preexisting condition is currently “covered” by my employment.
That said, bench-top hemoglobin A1c assays are becoming common. The A1cNow branded kit has about +/-0.4% accuracy but it is quite affordable (note: percentage is the unit for the A1c now test, not an overall assessment of precision). More common and affordable still are personal glucometers to test incident blood sugar (fasting blood sugar should be 80-100 mg/dl, after eating 140/mg/dl or less, with low blood sugar defined as 70 mg/dl or less as uncomfortable and 50 mg/dl or less considered dangerous). If you have a relative with diabetes, you can use their glucometer safely as long as you prick your finger with a fresh lancet (pricker thingee that goes in the pricker device). You can functionally reuse a pricker for as long as you are comfortable, though by industry standards we recommend a new one is used every time.
Antiochus Epiphanes@49, I was reading that thread as it was happening, and Caine wasn’t the one who caused it to go off the rails.
I don’t give a crap about “history” between “regulars”–people should keep that shit out of regular threads and in Thunderdome where it belongs.
Caine and the other monitors have been doing a good job keeping things clean (and I say this as someone who has been cautioned twice!) It’s annoying when people keep trying to undermine them.
Antiochus Epiphanes: Are you seriously going to chastise a regular contributor here for contributing too regularly? You’ve got 1,908 comments here yourself!
There’s a wide range of discussion here, and I don’t begrudge anyone for commenting too little or too often. The only thing troublesome is when someone gets on a hobby horse and starts dominating a discussion too much, or makes the same repetitive point.
Akira,
As a person who spent 10 yrs fixing up two of my best friends with each other, I can tell you that beautiful, sexy, awkward romances between geeks do happen. Picture the scene: They were people who had decided to devote their time to the things they loved. They weren’t sure the sort of someone that would turn their heads even existed. The result of all that energy spent on their own interests was that they were both interesting and independent people that I loved to be around. They crushed from afar until my husband and I decided to meddle. Fast forward: They got together, left this one-horse town and have thus far lived happily ever after. They’re coming to visit us this Christmas.
AE:
As PZ noted, the heat was coming from the same point being bashed about, and eating the conversation alive. That’s one of those posts and threads that tends to get people talking about personal experiences, and that couldn’t happen (see Jodyp) because PZ got tired of the derail and the insistence on keeping the derail alive and closed the thread. That hurts people who may have wanted to relate a personal experience, and that’s what I care about more. And yes, I know people have different priorities. One of those sticky people things.
Caine, you might want to Google the following:
Mary Gauthier “Drag Queens In Limousines”
Jackie Papercuts @53 – that’s a lovely thing to hear. Well, read. :)
Jackie:
Okay. Am I looking for anything in particular?
Ah. Nevermind. Thank you, Jackie. ♥
That isn’t remotely what’s going on here, but I’m clearly beating a dead horse.
Want to thank people for their support and kind words earlier
We have a nickname for our house that we don’t tell everyone. We “borrowed” it from friends who always had room for one more.
;)
Ing:
I really hope they helped, Ing. It’s frustrating to be far away, and unable to offer more than words. I’d always be happy to do more, if I knew what to do. The bothersome asshole? They’ve always been around. Shakespeare wrote: One may smile and smile and still be a villain [Hamlet].
Jackie:
:D Wherever I’ve been in my life, my abode has been informally known as Open House, which has always made me laugh.
We’re The Home for Gays, Strays and Runaways.
Ingdigo Jump@60, I just read your blog, and holy shit, that post about betrayal…I so know that feeling. In middle school, everyone in my class basically turned on each other. Any gesture of friendship could easily turn out to be a trap, and often was. (And worst of all, in some ways, I did it too.) By the time I got out, I had turned into an emotional turtle, hiding in my shell from any relationships that might hurt.
Many years later, I still have trouble making friends, and even more trouble keeping them–when people move away, I just sort of lose track, and I think it’s because I never connect with anyone on a deep level.
Anyway, thanks for sharing that, it was a powerful and meaningful piece.
On a lighter note, I chuckled at the horoscopes.
There should have been a blank space there between “home” and “for”….
Our last name goes there.
Jackie:
Hee. That covers a wealth of peoples. I don’t do as much open housing as I used to, given my current location, but even as remote as I am, there’s still a need, and it gets filled.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/10/06/more-formulaic-bullshit-from-thunderf00t/comment-page-1/#comment-702400
@280
zyxw
personally i think doing the former, rather than the latter, is a great idea. kids don’t need to be bossed around.
i’ve read a lot of positive parenting techniques at libby anne’s blog, and they seem quite reasonable.
Caine @ 37
And thus you see my conundrum. As a teenager I was not encouraged by either my peers or my family to seek a girlfriend. My religious parents were afraid I would knock someone up. Meanwhile, as the social pariah at my school, my female classmates tended to be nearly as cruel to me as the male, making an proposition of a date an exercise in humiliation.
Whoops… Pressed the wrong icon and submitted before I finished.
Since high school, I have had one-and-only-one sexual entanglement in college. It didn’t end well and I discovered that I didn’t take heartbreak very well. In the years since, I would occasionally build up the courage to ask another woman out going to be shot down sending me back into the doldrums of romantic depression.
At present, I’ve reluctantly resigned myself to perpetual bachelorhood, but I still hold out a fool’s hope.
Akira MacKenzie@69, ouch I know that feeling. Not the religious parents–my parents didn’t say one way or the other–but the cruel female classmates. Nothing builds self-confidence like getting mocked mercilessly for going through puberty while going through puberty.
No solutions for you, I’m afraid. I’m still in therapy trying to sort out that whole mess.
Akira, you’re missing on an important piece that Ingdigo Jump @33 said:
I would say, in an only slightly more nuanced suggestion, that you should use “female” and “male” as nouns only when you are referring to animals. People are “girls”, “boys”, “people”, “women”, “men”, “adults”, all kinds of things, but since you really don’t have any certain knowledge of their sex (which is described by ‘female’ and ‘male’ as adjectives or substantives), saying ‘females’ just makes most women think “Oh, great, another adventurer into The Great Mystery That Is The Female”.
Seriously. I know an awful lot of geek women who will recognize that usage as one used by nearly every PUA, MRA, misogynist scumpuddle, and libertarian JAQ-off, and will almost certainly assume that’s who you are too, if you’re using it. Call us “women”, or “girls” if you’re talking about people who are girls, rather than women. Not “skirts” or “babes” or “bitches” or “whores” or “sluts” or “sperm burglars” or “airheads” or any of the other things that misogynists like to call us, because if you use the words of a misogynist, exactly what will you be showing off at the same time to suggest you aren’t one?
It’s a trivially easy thing to learn how to talk in ways what won’t make the kind of women you’re interested in throw up at the idea of spending time with you. All you have to do is want to. Getting the courage to try the talking thing, well, that’s up to you. But learning what to say once you open your mouth is trivially easy, if you want to.
Akira:
I don’t think you’re a fool, by any means, and I don’t think it’s a foolish hope.
CaitieCat:
I wouldn’t say it’s that easy. I got the sense, too, that Akira is using male/female as a way of distancing, or at least expressing what seems to them to be an incredibly wide gulf. I agree, using woman/women is better, absolutely. It can be really difficult to figure out the right language which will sync up with your emotional state, though.
CaitieCat @72, I totally agree about not using “female” to describe women (although the one I really have problems with is using “girls” to describe women, I trip over that on all the time).
But what would be the right way to express the phrase “female classmates”? “girl classmates” doesn’t sound right, and in the case I describe, “women classmates” would be incorrect. “Girls in my class”, maybe? That sounds rightish, but I’d welcome advice.
Also, speaking in general terms of the difficulty of language, I didn’t realize until recently that “guys” was not a gender neutral term. Seriously, where I grew up, it was used that way by basically everyone, and many people (including women) still use it that way today. My therapist (a woman who is definitely no misogynist) was kinda surprised when I pointed it out.
I’m so used to using it that I’ve had a very hard time purging it from my vocabulary. Fortunately, living in the South, I have “y’all” as a handy replacement.
Caine, fair point generally; I was specifically pointing out that Akira had ignored Ingdigo’s valuable suggestion and was carrying on using ‘female’ as though we’re biological specimens, and that this valuable lesson was being ignored. Your point is taken, though, of course.
Doug, I think you’ve answered your own question: “the women in my class” or “the girls in my class” or “my classmates who are women” or “my classmates who aren’t men” (note that {B} =/= {!A} here), depending on what you’re trying to accomplish by saying it.
“Guys”, to me, is only problematic if you also use the word “guy” to mean “only a person who uses masculine pronouns”, because then it becomes like saying “mankind” means women too, or “chairmen” or “salesmen” or “policemen”. I use it too, for sure, it’s a fairly common semi-genderless term, but I’m not sure it’s accurate in my own idiolect to say that it’s a completely genderless term, and if the group I’m addressing is entirely women, I’m much more likely to use “women” as my address: “Hey, what do you women think of going out for lunch?” Alternately, I’ll use “you folk” or “people”, or sometimes, yes, “y’all” or “youse” or “youse guys”, for effect and because it’s useful to be able to distinguish between singular and plural “you”, and (“standard”) English doesn’t do this well.
CaitieCat@77,
Thanks for the tips!
I had never thought about “guys” until I used it to describe a group that was entirely women. My boss raised an eloquent eyebrow at me, and I thought, hmm, that is kind of weird. I looked it up, and realized that it could be viewed as sexist.
Mind you, I’m not trying to police other people’s use of the word. I’m just trying to minimize my own use of it, and it’s proving harder than I thought.
In my defense, I missed ingdigo’s post in the shuffle. However, I’ll take that advice and drop the “female” verbiage.
Yeah, I still do it a lot, too.
Also, I tend to use “girls” when referring to grown women. I use “guys” as a general term for men, so I feel like I need an anologue for women; technically, it’s supposed to be “gals”, but I usually end up using “girl”. I try not to, but lingual habits are pernicious little blighters.
Oh, my.
It certainly isn’t difficult to engender* a controversy around here any more. So but this refers to a few controversies ago.
For the record. I had no idea that thunk was dealing with gender or trans or whatever issues**; nor was there any clue to that context in the comment to which I explicitly replied. I took thunk’s comment at face value, as a sort of wry Seinfeldian observation (“body hair: what’s up with that?”), to which I replied in kind with what really was meant to be a light-hearted throwaway quip. Any parsage to the contrary is nothing but confirmation bias.
So, although I admit it wasn’t supposed to be “supportive,” that’s because I didn’t realize it was a serious thing that needed support. Thunk, I’m sorry I was dismissive.
That said, I think you’ll find that there are a large variety of products available to help purge yourself of unwanted body hair. As far as I can tell, young women these days are encouraged to completely obliterate every single follicle that’s not on their scalps, but for those they are encouraged instead to spend untold amounts of money giving it bounce, shine, fragrance, and body. Personally I find this state of affairs très weird, but I acknowledge that that’s just me. (Hell, I think armpit hair on a woman is among the sexiest possible things, that’s how out of step I am. So pay me no mind, I guess.)
Finally, many of you-all still seem to think it’s your place to tell me when, where, what, and how I ought to comment here. Hey. It’s not your blog. No, really, it’s true! It’s PZ Myers’s blog. Were he to tell me to shut up***, I’d do so. You folks? Not so much.
So have nice days.
(Incidentally, did you know there was a New Rule against discussing other commenters in the third person? Yet I saw no Monitor Notes from the threadcops. In fact, I saw the chief threadcop actively participating. tsk.)
*see what I did there?
**If I had been aware of the context, I would have shut up, as is my longtime policy. Because as (by no fault or choice of my own) a life-long vanilla cis-heterosexual, I am utterly unable to fathom gender or trans or whatever issues, so I acknowledge that I have nothing to contribute to such discussions. So I don’t; never have.
***However, the last time PZ Myers addressed me directly, he pretty much said just the opposite. So have nice days.
Caine @26
Yeah, if we’re talking about queer kids being disowned, oh fucking hell, yes. It’s a shame the following standing up by cool grandparents doesn’t happen nearly as often.
I may be a bit older, but it’s only been about 4-5 months since I was disowned by my parents (mostly my father) for being trans*. I’m currently of the mind that if my dad comes back and tries to be like “okay, fine, whatever”, I’m going to need him to do some groveling and apologizing first.
Seize @39
Back before my family decided to suck and suck hard, I used to claim I had “not having a shitty family” privilege to acknowledge the ways that not growing up abused and having at least fictionally supportive parents gave me an immense amount of relative emotional resources compared to those I knew who have had to spend most of their 20s escaping both physically and emotionally from the scars of childhood and the tactics still used by family to try and reel them back into the cycle of emotional violence.
Relevant facts, before this discussion gets any more twisted:
Nobody did that. And the fact that no one did was covered already. You are being disingenuous, Caine.
Nobody is disputing this. Nobody was suggesting otherwise. It’s fine to repeat it for emphasis, but don’t set it up like it’s a counterexample to anything that anyone here said.
I’ve been writing and re-writing this for awhile since I seem to fuck up exceptionally lately but at this point I just have to hope I got this one right.
I’m sorry for posting my latest comment regarding the family disowning thing in the original thread. Apparently, I should have just stuck with accidental submission here. I thought PZ’s comments about the derail was referring to the “b-word” discussion, not the disowning part. But clearly it counted as the edges of the derail, as PZ put it, since the thread was close three comments after mine. I’m sorry I contributed to the de-rail and of the closing of that thread instead of posting about LGBT kids as a chance to keep it on track. I just didn’t want to (and still don’t agree with but I’m done with the whole mess) let the “don’t close off family ties” as a general rule thing because of the harmful assumption about families.
And I was to especially apologize to jodyp for getting the thread closed after your story. I should have stayed in the Thunderdome with it and I’m so sorry you got cut off.
And you too, Cerberus, since you never even got a chance to go in that thread at all with your story.
jodyp
Sorry your story didn’t get the attention it clearly deserves. And yay for decent people in your life!
Ing
Nah, I think shitty families come in large varieties. And really, while in some families you can see tell-tale signs of being shitty and dysfunctional, the fact that you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not shitty as shitty can be.
Indigo Jump @60
Just read your post. *ALL THE SAFE HUGS (or other appropriate physical gesture of support)*
JAL,
It obviously did. PZ is retconning.
Your comment wasn’t prohibited, my response to your comment wasn’t prohibited; David’s comment actually was prohibited, but oh well.
PZ is the one who made the decision shut down that thread. Don’t blame yourself. He had a choice, and he pushed the button.
JAL @85
Well, I think at the time, I posted it in either the Lounge or Thunderdome, so it’s definitely been shared here. May 2013 kinda really uber sucked for me. Though I’m happy to report that I’ve finally entered the phase where I’m actually beginning to sort of almost begin shaping out the trauma and recognize ways its fucked me up immensely instead of just reeling from the initial blows.
Though I guess I have my own grandpa story in the way that my biologicals (the immediate family of the biological entity that spurt the seed that aided in my spawning) have stepped up in the last couple of years and prove their awesomeness. There was a slightly terrifying moment where I got an email from my aunt over there asking if my blog where I was out as trans* poly and asexual was mine and I nervously answered yes and she responded by out of the blue with:
They’ve been especially supportive since my parents disowned me and have allowed me a space to emotionally vent when I’ve needed to and given me a non-judgmental family space where they could so yeah.
It’s been kind of an interesting shift because they’ve always been a little colder with me in the past, especially my aunt because I reminded her of her asshole brother (he who contributed half my DNA) who she despised with a fiery passion (largely because he was abusive to her and was a racist asshole who constantly ripped into her for “shaming the family” for loving and marrying a black man as a white woman), but they are now the closest family I’ve got.
There was even a cute bit where she and the family went and visited biological because of a promise made to my late grandmother to try and put up with the asshole and my cousin and aunt sent worried notes letting me know that it wasn’t intended as a snub or insult and they understand I’ve been going through crappy family stuff lately and I had to reassure them that I knew they were only doing the trip as an obligation and that I was perfectly fine, though if they wanted to give the fucker a heart attack by outing me to him, feel free.
So yeah, it’s really kept me from sinking worse than I have. And I guess that’s my belated over-indulgent contribution to the discussion.
Doug @65
Ugh middle school. In about 7th grade, I had all of my friends seemingly randomly decide that they couldn’t be friends with me anymore except for one single kid who ended up becoming my male best friend to this day. I later found out from him that the reason that they did that and the reason I was constantly being snickered at and recognized by people I didn’t even know was because the group of bullies who had decided to make me their favored target for a year had spread a rumor all around school that I was a gay boy (turned out inaccurate on both accounts).
I don’t know if the argument that I was queer was one they decided to weaponize or if it was the reason they targeted me in the first place and honestly I don’t much give a shit, but it was interesting nonetheless that apparently everyone in the school had come to decision about me without in any way bothering to let me know about it.
That trial by fire pretty much doubled the amount of extra personalities I had and it’s still kind of impressive that I made it to high school intact.
And fuck, if I’m going to be reminiscing this much in one evening, I need to grab myself some booze and do this properly.
SFW
chigau,
You’d think so, yes. Even aside from the cruelty and racism of this policy, they don’t seem to have even considered the possibility that denying people healthcare will lead to the spread of infectious disease. But they don’t care. Their first priority is, it seems, to placate the Daily Mail.
This is a party who, at their recent party conference, had posters up saying “BENEFITS CAPPED, CRIME DOWN, IMMIGRATION DOWN”. And the slogan “FOR HARDWORKING PEOPLE”. Apparently the Tories don’t think that the immigrants victimized by their policies, held in hellholes like Yarl’s Wood and denied basic human rights, count as “hardworking people”.
I am so angry.
Cerberus von Snarkmistress@90, I am sorry to hear about your experience. Thank you for sharing.
Middle school (grade 6-9, roughly) is vicious. Bunch of kids going through puberty (at different rates, no less), forced into close proximity, and with little guidance or supervision–that gets unpleasant fast. And so many adults refuse to admit that bullying is even a problem! Much less that it can permanently scar people.
Kids in that age range need extra love, support, and guidance; instead they are often thrown to the wolves.
(In defense of my parents, I never told them about the bad stuff, because I was going to a private school, and the only other option was the public school, which I figured would be worse. And apparently it was, because both my brothers went to the public school and had even worse experiences than mine.)
Picked up a night-shift last night, from the employment agency. Which was nice. I asked what the work was, I was told “cleaning., which is usually good news, as it’s not exactly difficult work. They bussed a bunch of us twenty miles to this place out in the middle of nowhere, and it turned out to be a slaughterhouse. Which from my point of view is vaguely unpleasant but makes for even easier work, because it’s mostly done with pressure-hoses.
Thing is, it turned out we’d all been told merely that it was “cleaning.” One chap, who is a vegetarian, said he couldn’t do the work, so they left the poor sod, without a penny in his pocket, to walk all the way home. Told him that as he’d refused the work, they couldn’t let him ride back on the empty bus.
As I understand it, they were technically correct, as the bus insurance is likely to be for carrying people for “work purposes” but, jebus, you’d think they could stretch a point. Not to mention that they could have been a little more forthcoming about the nature of the work in the fist place, given the obvious likelihood of at least one person being uncomfortable with it, or having ethical objections.
Fuck.
Sorry, needed to get that off my chest somewhere.
Daz@95, that’s horrible. And employment agencies can be ridiculously vague about jobs. One time I got a call for a driving job. I said that I could only drive a car, and that I wasn’t too familiar with the area outside my own town. They said, no problem.
I get to the job, and find out that it’s to drive a van in a nearby town that I’d never visited.
Of course, I turned down the job, which pissed off the person who requested the temp, but what could I do?
Another time I got a call to trim someone’s lawn. The only “lawncare” I’d done was for businesses that were fine with me taking it down to bare dirt, and I explained this. The agency said that was fine. I got there, and it was someone wanted their yard prettied up for a party!
Your story is much worse, but boy does it bring back memories.
Again Daz,
I note that you substantively agreed with my criticism to Nerd. Considering that, it either must not have been a disagreement or misunderstanding that led you to outrageously attack me back at 631 and 633, or if it was a misunderstanding then you nevertheless didn’t see fit to apologize to me for your unjustifiable cruelty.
To therefore attack me in these ways, when I’d done nothing warranting such, and explicitly try to drive me away:
indicates the obvious; you were just maliciously trying to gratuitously hurt me.
PZ,
Because I can pass a freshman reading comprehension test, I know for a fact that it didn’t violate the spirit of your prohibition. This is what you identified as a “derail”:
And of course I’m not the only person who read your prohibition correctly, since it was perfectly plain and unambiguous.
Regardless, there was no derail.
You are the one who posted a guy calling his daughter a bitch and disowning her. That was your OP.
Discussion regarding the content of an OP is necessarily, definitionally on-topic.
Ironically, people commenting about their own experiences would be derailing, but in any reasonable atmosphere that should be okay, because derails are not inherently bad.
False claim. You are not consistent, PZ. You are prejudicial, and you reject responsibility for your own actions.
“Entitled regular”** David Marjanović posted about the slur, at 163. Three hours after you said anyone who did so would be banned.
“Entitled regular”** JAL posted about disownment; such behavior you retconned into being an alleged violation of your “prohibition” against the “derail” which you specifically detailed as being entirely about the slur.
I responded to JAL, about disownment. You singled me out for in-comment red-text scapegoating.
You should quit trying to tell yourself that you are consistent; that self-narrative makes you act more hypocritically.
(**I’m kidding, David and JAL. I don’t think you’re acting from a feeling of entitlement. Neither was I, and neither was SC. The point here is that you behaved like we did, but you aren’t scapegoats.)
+++++
jodyp,
I’m sorry that the thread was shut down by PZ just after you posted your own anecdote. That was unfair to you and several other people. There was no derail, and that particular narrative shouldn’t go unchallenged. But you did get a short end of the stick.
+++++
*Everyone is not in agreement, PZ, nor is the matter totally settled; Nerd of Redhead said it was a good thing for the father to call his daughter a bitch, and that Nerd would do the same thing to women in his private life if needed, and that no one should be criticizing anyone for privately telling a woman she’s a bitch. Maybe you missed that. I don’t really see how you could have missed it, since like 15 people commented about it. Maybe you’re under the mistaken impression that Nerd ultimately retracted his endorsements of the slur? He didn’t.
Caine,
No one under discussion here does that, and no one here is “proud of being an asshole,” so you should stop with the vague and unsubstantiated personal attacks.
Go back to that thread and find the comments you think shouldn’t have been made, and explain why. If you honestly attempt to do so, you will find that all of them are substantive contributions to a sometimes-misunderstood discussion. They are replies to other substantive comments, containing new points or clarifications of earlier points. It’s certainly not one-sided, and each participant had their own reason for participating, and each is deserving of fair treatment here.
It’s all too easy to look at a discussion that doesn’t intrigue you and declare it repetitive and useless. Taking the participants seriously, and trying to understand where each of them is coming from and what they’re trying to contribute, can be harder — but it’s often the only way to have any hope of speaking accurately regarding what happened. And thus the only way to be fair to all the people involved. (Individual people, each of worth, all deserving of at minimum being spoken about accurately.)
+++++
Doug,
Hey. Nobody’s a hater here. You’re not treating people here fairly, and if you’re not going to try to understand what’s going on, addressing people’s actual words so you have a reasonable chance of doing so, then don’t make matters worse.
Nothing in that thread was simply history between regulars, and AE didn’t claim it was; certainly AE didn’t blame Caine regarding that thread, as you falsely suggested. If you aren’t going to address what people are actually saying, then the other way to try to treat people fairly is to drop it. Pick one, but quit with the unsubstantiated characterizations. Everyone deserves more than that; AE deserves better, SC deserves better, I deserve better, and you would too if you were being treated like this.
Antiochus Epiphanes,
And that seems to be what PZ wants, at least on some level. It’s certainly easier for him if there’s no detailed discussion going on that he might fret over. He gets especially flustered when there’s an argument and he can’t figure out “whose side” he’s supposed to be on.
Lots of people find disagreements to be stressful, and want to find a way to make them stop. Me too, sometimes. It’s not very remarkable that PZ shares this common characteristic. But he has the power to make it happen; consequently, the more and more heavy-handed he acts, the more Pharyngula really becomes what its dimmest critics have always wanted it to be — an echo chamber.
There are noticeable losses:
And it’s only gotten worse since then. IMHO, some of this was clearly necessary to deal with racists and misogynists. The existence of a forum dedicated to hating us, for instance, justifies banning on sight that forum’s participants. But “he who fights with monsters” et cetera.
Admitting that he just can’t handle some disagreements, that he wants them to stop for the sake of his own spoon supply, and then shutting down a thread without assigning blame, would probably be understood and accepted by most commenters here.*** But then what happens to Pharyngula’s mythos, the story that this is a shark tank where only good arguments can survive? So instead of admitting when he can’t handle it, he picks out some participants to blame, and either scolds or outright punishes them for “making him” react the way he does.
***Is there anybody here who wouldn’t understand and accept that?
No, he’s telling you to say your piece and let it go. Don’t continue on and on about it, as you have done lately in obsessed fashion. Which is why I called you and SC PC/thought policemen. You intend to make everybody think and behave like you do. Cut it out.
SGBM, question for you:
Do you expect PZ to change his moderation style because of your posts? Because it doesn’t seem to be working.
Or are you just registering your complaints for the record?
I’m curious what your objective is. What outcome do you want to see?
No, that’s obviously false since it was in response to me saying my piece exactly once, regarding your endorsement of calling women bitches.
Nerd, you really need to back up and think about what you’ve been saying lately.
This is from pretty much everybody, dude. Quit blaming me and SC. Scapegoating won’t work. Everyone is trying to get through to you.
Esteleth
JAL
Ogvorbis
Daz
kittehsurf
Nerd:
Beatrice
Tony
Rev BDC
David
Mellow Monkey
+++++
Doug,
I’ve been here for five years. He does change. Not merely for me, of course, but he takes a lot of things into consideration. It is unlikely that I will be the only one discussing the matter. But in the unlikely even of last resort, I do want to be on the record. Thank you for your concern.
SGBM,
Indeed, I think this is a real problem. If the me of 2008 turned up here now, he might end up being banned relatively quickly. And if I had been banned in 2008, I might well never have become a leftist, and the trajectory of my life would have been rather different (and almost certainly worse).
I don’t necessarily blame anyone in particular for the cultural change – as you said, it’s in part a reaction to the rise of the haters, in particular the slimepit misogynists. Back in 2008, the majority of the trolls here were creationists and religious apologists. That isn’t true any more – now the majority of them are fellow atheists with misogynist and/or racist views, many of whom are here to pursue their irrational vendettas against Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson, and feminists in general. And to be honest, they’re much scarier than the creationists ever were.
But, as a result of this, I think it is true that we have a problem with false positives when it comes to identifying trolls, and distinguishing genuine malice from foolishness. And that is something we need to work on, as a community. (I absolutely include myself in this, because I sometimes have limited patience when it comes to certain issues, and I have yelled at people when it wasn’t necessarily merited.)
===
This is unfair, Nerd.
SG
I wasn’t objecting to the discussion of the gendered slur. It went on way too long, but discussion of it was fair. I was objecting to the fact that, on top of an already over-long discussion of a negative aspect, two more extremely hypothetical negative aspects were then dragged out for discussion. Reading the bulk of that thread, one could come away with the impression that, to several people, the fact that the grandfather did a very good thing was an almost negligible aspect of his actions, compared to all this crappy stuff!!11!!
And I am saying no more on this subject. Feel free to demand that I do.
Nerd:
Rossignol
Jadehawk
Jacob Schmidt
and so on. Really. Don’t try to foist this off on me and SC as your scapegoats. You can avoid scrutiny by running from it, I guess, but you aren’t going to make it my problem.
SGBM@104, Ok, but what do you want PZ to actually do?
No snark, I’m genuinely curious; I’ve been reading PZ since way before he left Scienceblogs, but I don’t usually follow Thunderdome or Lounge, so I obviously missed whatever caused these DEEP RIFTS. But this argument is spilling over into regular threads, and I’m trying to figure out what people are complaining about.
Doug Hudson
Yeah, I’ve been phoned up several times for driving jobs, despite the fact that they have it on record that my licence is motorcycle-only (well, unless they have a reliant Robin van, I suppose). As you say, you come to expect a certain amount of bureaucratic fumbling , but sheesh, last night was a whole nother level.
It’s not my problem. It’s the problem of those who take things out of context and apply PC/thought police thinking where it doesn’t belong, and get others to go along blindly. None was needed for grandad’s letter. It was a private letter, no splash damage. It wasn’t public until later. Until you let it drop, it won’t be dropped.
Daz@110, wow, at least in my case I was legally able to drive the van, even if, in reality, I didn’t have a clue how to drive something that large.
Since the employment agency doesn’t benefit from sending people to jobs they can’t do, it has to be carelessness–it’s like the dispatchers don’t even read the job descriptions, they just call up the first available name and hope for the best. Heck of a way to run things.
I had always assumed that the company I worked for was uniquely incompetent, but I guess not.
Daz,
? You made those attacks in response to me here in Thunderdome, posting about Nerd, and in fact before you made any complaints about SC discussing the letter. Go back and look at what you said.
No, no. You weren’t “objecting.” You were maliciously trying to hurt me. This is pure malice:
There is no excuse for that attempt to hurt me and drive me away. You should acknowledge this. An apology would be worthwhile too, but an acknowledgement that you were wrong to treat me that way would be fine.
And here’s the strange thing — we discussed plenty about that thread, during which time you were able to treat me decently. What you should do, in that same spirit, is go back and reexamine your initial cruelty.
I’m demanding no such thing, and it’s bizarre that you’re changing the subject. For the record, since you brought it up again: you are wrong in your impression, you have failed to make any case supporting your impression, and therefore “>it is indeed well past the time that you should have admitted such. A reasonable person who wasn’t deliberately trying to find reasons to be angry with other commenters here would at least, at this point, admit that they had no evidence to sustain their initial reaction.
But that is not what I brought up, and not what I am asking you to address.
You weren’t “objecting.” You were maliciously trying to hurt me. This is pure malice:
There is no excuse for that attempt to hurt me and drive me away. You should acknowledge this. An apology would be worthwhile too, but an acknowledgement that you were wrong to treat me that way would be fine.
Doug,
I gave one suggestion: when he just can’t handle certain disagreements, and he wants them to stop for the sake of his own spoon supply, just admit that and then shut down a thread without assigning blame.
I doubt anyone here would have a problem with that, and it would serve PZ’s needs without unfairly denigrating anyone. It’s just one suggestion though; I’m sure there are various options.
Nerd,
Letter being private doesn’t make the word bitch as used for a woman any less sexist. Sexism isn’t bad just because of splash damage, even though that is what we usually emphasize.
Beatrice,
QFT.
Shit; that link is giving me a lot to think about.
Okay Nerd. So it is your contention that Esteleth, JAL, Ogvorbis, Daz, kittehsurf, Beatrice, Tony, Rev. BigDumbChimp, David Marjanović, The Mellow Monkey, Rossignol, Jadehawk, Jacob Schmidt, et al. were going along blindly.
That’s helpful. Or were certain of those individuals applying their own “PC/thought police thinking” and certain others were going along blindly? Thanks in advance for your analysis.
No, it’s your problem. That whole string of nonsense above pretty much demonstrates that. You’re doing a terrific job of missing the point being made about the use of the word.
Can I call someone a n*gger in private for effect and to shock them and it not be racist? And it be ok because of some magical “context”?
Walton @ 105,
I forgot to mention, that was Jadehawk I was quoting back in comment 100; not my own observation.
SGBM@113, Thanks!
Since there are obviously DEEP RIFTS in the Pharyngula community, I was trying to figure out which side of the rift I was on. Your comments are very helpful in that regard.
You miss the point. Whether it is sexist or not is irrelevant in a private conversation. But the real point, one nobody has answered, is there a better way to get through the righteousness fugue the mother had going than a direct insult. Why has nobody shown a better way to get her attention, make her sit up, and realize she needs to change. CONTEXT folks.
#110, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
Stop. This argument is stupid. Of course sexism is still sexism, even in private conversation.
#113, strange gods before me ॐ:
You need to realize that this is my blog, not yours, and you have no special rights, entitlements, or privileges beyond those of any other commenter…and your ideas about how to run the place aren’t even particularly good or interesting.
I am intrigued by your suggestion that I should just “shut down a thread without assigning blame”. Can I also just shut down annoying commenters that way? Because I can think of some who are a continuing pain in the ass, and who, if they don’t lose their arrogant sense of knowing better than everyone else, I could just quietly send away.
Also, #113, strange gods before me ॐ:
Stop trying to nail yourself to that cross. It’s getting annoying.
Are you seriously threatening to ban me in Thunderdome for criticizing you regarding a conversation that you sent to Thunderdome?
Ah. Well, it has to be said that you and Jadehawk, and some of the other then-commenters, did a good job of deconverting me from libertarianism, back in the 2008-2010 era. For which I shall always be grateful. (Especially as I know it took a lot of work on your part.)
#124, strange gods before me ॐ:
I am seriously threatening to ban you for being a sanctimonious prick in every thread in which you participate. As you say, I’ve got a limited number of “spoons”, and you go through them awfully fast.
Mmm. That’s not what I’m asking. If I continue criticizing you here — as for example, when I respond to your mischaracterizations in 122, are you going to ban me for commenting in the UNMODERATED thread?
I never said it wasn’t sexism. Just I won’t condemn the use of the word in the total context of the letter.
I believe in gaming parlance PZ@122,123, and 126 would be referred to as “boom, headshot!”
Either because it was a righteous smackdown or because it made SGBM’s head explode. Heh.
Horde, if granddad was out of line, how would you have written such a letter? And why the changes. And would it still be as visceral and effective?
SGBM@127, You are a self-righteous ass, aren’t you? PZ has the right to ban you whenever or however he likes. Despite your implication (which you’re never brave enough to come out and say), it’s not hypocritical for him to ban you for posting in an unmoderated thread–you have no rights except those he gives you, and he can take those away whenever he damn well pleases.
Or, in other words, it is very bad to steal PZ’s rum. VERY bad.
Doug, I am asking him whether I can continue with this discussion without being banned.
Doug, please stop bullying me.
Nerd of Redhead
It happens.
Ah, so I missed the point, but your point is actually as bad as the one I wrongly assumed you were making.
How can it be irrelevant? It doesn’t (at the moment) hurt anyone but the person it’s directed at, but it’s still likening her to a female dog. It is enforcing sexism she hears from other people, whether in private or public, directed at her or other women. Depending on the person, it can further normalize the use of the word, and therefore indirectly hurt other women when she uses it for other women.
There are other insults.
A couple of people mentioned that slurs like that slip by them, in anger or otherwise. I let them slip. Personally, bitch isn’t much of a problem, but I use my language equivalent of the word cunt or pussy often. Or worse, us Balkan people can be really inventive with slurs so even if I don’t use cunt or bitch, suggesting things about someone’s mother (and it’s always the mother) and a dog is quite sexist.
Anyway. It happens. In anger, in annoyance, out of habit. At least I’m able to acknowledge it’s not good that I use those, and I do try to purge them out of my vocabulary.
I was one of those arguing that people (naming names: mostly SC) were taking the discussion about grandpa’s sexism too far, but claiming that using a sexist slur in private is zero bad or somehow necessary is ridiculous.
Yeah, if he doesn’t use the word otherwise, it was probably something that would shock her and show how angry he was. Agreed.
But you aren’t arguing just that, you were saying that it’s politically correct (you fucking serious, using that term?!) to have anything against use of sexist slurs in private. See the second quote from you at the beginning of this comment.
Let me ask you, we often argue about men calling other men cunts, so do you think it’s ok for one man to call another cunt when they are alone?
Nerd of Redhead
It happens.
Ah, so I missed the point, but your point is actually as bad as the one I wrongly assumed you were making.
How can it be irrelevant? It doesn’t (at the moment) hurt anyone but the person it’s directed at, but it’s still likening her to a female dog. It is enforcing sexism she hears from other people, whether in private or public, directed at her or other women. Depending on the person, it can further normalize the use of the word, and therefore indirectly hurt other women when she uses it for other women.
There are other insults.
A couple of people mentioned that slurs like that slip by them, in anger or otherwise. I let them slip. Personally, b word isn’t much of a problem, but I use my language equivalent of the word c word or pussy often. Or worse, us Balkan people can be really inventive with slurs so even if I don’t use c word or b word, suggesting things about someone’s mother (and it’s always the mother) and a dog is quite sexist.
Anyway. It happens. In anger, in annoyance, out of habit. At least I’m able to acknowledge it’s not good that I use those, and I do try to purge them out of my vocabulary.
I was one of those arguing that people (naming names: mostly SC) were taking the discussion about grandpa’s sexism too far, but claiming that using a sexist slur in private is zero bad or somehow necessary is ridiculous.
Yeah, if he doesn’t use the word otherwise, it was probably something that would shock her and show how angry he was. Agreed.
But you aren’t arguing just that, you were saying that it’s politically correct (you fucking serious, using that term?!) to have anything against use of sexist slurs in private. See the second quote from you at the beginning of this comment.
Let me ask you, we often argue about men calling other men c…s, so do you think it’s ok for one man to call another c-word when they are alone?
I lost a comment to moderation hell, presumably for using some of the slurs too much. They were edited into b-word and c-word in the above version.
SGBM@133,
Y’know, I kinda hope PZ doesn’t ban you, you’re actually pretty funny.
I apologize for the self-righteous asshole comment. The rest of it is true though. Especially the part about PZ’s rum.
Nerd,
You are not being very consistent here:
And what’s more, the capability. I don’t think anyone is confused about this. Your apparent jubilation about PZs “smackdown” reminds me a little of one of the lesser villains in Alvidsen’s “Karate Kid”–Bobby or Tommy (I can’t remember) of the Cobra Kai, cheers on the lead villain Johnny, after executing some unnecessarily cruel “technique” (or whatever they call it in karate) that sends protagonist Daniel Larusso to the floor in agony, by yelling “Get him a body bag! Yeah!”. So thanks for the movie nostalgia. I have always loved that movie.
Nerd: It is also your right not to condemn sexism, so long as it’s private and “visceral and effective”*. Have fun with that.
*I myself have never been able to come across as visceral or effective without a dose of bigotry thrown in there.
Nerd
Heartless asshole would have worked as well. Heartless bastard, too.
But I will concede that there is a fucking lack of awereness around the word “bitch”.
While I will generally stand with the ban on gendered slurs I would never ever huff and puff over grandpa who is just doing something good and wonderful by taking his grandson in and taking on the huge responsibility of giving that kid love and support when he needs it the most because he fucked up one word.
Doug,
It’s PZ’s rum, but he’s kinda promised to share his rum in the Thunderdome and that he’s going to withhold rum only from very very bad
boysfolks.(I feel like I’m missing what rum is in this analogy.)
Doug, you’re being a douche right now. Please don’t.
Oh, that was supposed to be inconsistent in my #137
Or not.
Ignore my 142
Stick with 1980s film analogies. Every one can identify with films of the 80s ;)
I ask you again, is it ok if I call someone a racial slur in a private conversation if it’s used for effect and to be visceral and effective?
Antiochus Epiphanes@138–glad to be of service!
But seriously, you’re right, it was petty of me to take joy in PZ’s comment. Frankly, I find SGBM to be extremely irritating, and seeing PZ lay the smackdown made me forget myself for a moment.
I apologize to SGBM for my comment. It was immature and inappropriate.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought@140, I feel that some people are taking advantage of PZs good nature.
The rum is his good nature.
Anyway, this is obviously a private fight, so I’ll bow out.
Um – the actual letter says “B-word” and the letter B is heavily written and might have been another letter entirely.
Actions (i.e. taking in the grandson) speak louder than words, especially if the word being argued about isn’t there. I actually had a relative who used terms like b-word and f-word as their go to curse words when calling someone a doorknob didn’t adequately express their feelings. The contextual baggage associated with the terms being substituted for was not in their mind at all.
This is a hateful and awful discussion over a word this isn’t even there!
#133, strange gods before me ॐ
That. Stop doing that. You don’t get to simultaneously adopt a snide, superior tone AND claim that you’re a martyr.
What the ever-loving fuck?
http://www.theguardian.com/society/reality-check/2013/oct/07/sun-people-killed-mental-health-true
And the UK press continue to contend that they’re capable of self-regulation!?
pHred,
What do people hear/read when someone uses “b-word”?
Btw, the only other letter it could have been, looking at his handwriting, was C. Which really doesn’t make it any better, sexism-wise.
#145
effect x 2….
anywho
PZ @ 148,
The reminder to treat people fairly, and that I too deserve to treat people fairly, is a legitimate request and one that serves to reduce tensions. It helps to slow things down for a while and it allows both parties to approach each other more like meaningful individuals, less like abstractions or faceless entities. Doug in response reconsidered what he wanted to say to me. I needed that, and am grateful for it. (For the record, it works on me too.)
I don’t know for sure whether it was rising to the level of bullying yet; when I am tense and afraid of what comes next I do not always make perfect word choices. But something unfair was happening, I needed to appeal to Doug’s sense of fairness, and Doug did respond more fairly.
It is okay for me to ask this of others. It is okay for anyone to ask this of others.
Beatrice,
I just told you – I literally heard “b-word” as that was used as an actual curse word. My circle was not nearly as creative in inventing new curse words – doorknob being a literal example.
I personally would substitute bastard, that being much more common to me now.
That being said, I am not going to extend into an exercise in attempted mind reading. I was just depressed that “Justice is more important than civility. But aspire to be charitable at first.” went flying out of the window with a sonic boom over word that wasn’t even fully written by someone in an emotional state.
pHred,
Ok, you heard b-word and it meant precisely “b-word”, not bitch. So you’ve conditioned yourselves into considering “b-word” a horrible insult without it in any way being related to the word bitch (except for being derived from it and being heard as bitch from anyone outside your circle but whatever).
Argh… I’m not even going to bother. I’m not a mind reader either, but frankly, I just don’t believe you.
Daz: Indeed. And the Daily Fail bullied a trans woman to death [TW on the link for transphobia and suicide], and continues to print racist and stigmatizing lies about refugees and migrants on a near-daily basis. The British press are awful.
(the above was in reference to Daz’s #149)
pHred@153, if I may quote myself at a moment, in an earlier thread on rape I observed that while it would be nice for people to assume good faith, the reality is that between people who believe the lies of the patriarchy and people who are actively malevolent (slymepitters), it is simply not possible to assume good faith.
This is true of misogyny threads in general.
What we can do is be compassionate and understanding. Part of being compassionate and understanding is recognizing that for some people this isn’t a purely theoretical argument. People have been badly hurt by this shit, and we need to respect their anger and pain. Hell, even people who haven’t been hurt should be angry about misogyny and rape.
Especially when discussing things online, without access to body language and tone of voice, it is very careful to choose your battles carefully. Even saying “can’t we all just be nicer” can be extremely offensive when one side consists of victims of misogyny.
So if someone gets angry with you in a thread about such topics, it’s generally best to let it go.
You may notice that I am not very good at following my own advice. All I can say is, I’m working on it. I did apologize to SGBM, after all.
Walton
I knew something of that case, but hadn’t realised that she’d committed suicide.
I feel sick now.
I knew you would, much like I knew that Daniel and Johnny and Johnny’s friends would eventually come to respect each other. Even if they didn’t really hang-out, like, socially.
Me too. Richard Littlejohn is a bullying asshole, and one with power and a platform of influence. And I feel sick whenever I walk past the Fail or the Express in the supermarket and see its front page repeating some noxious racist lie about migrants and asylum-seekers, or cheerleading for awful policies.
Much of the popular press in Britain are basically schoolyard bullies, except with money and power.
Antiochus Epiphanes@159, in a different thread I asked Ogvorbis: Apologies for everyone if I could borrow some of his apologies. I seem to burn through mine rather quickly.
The big trick (for me) is to wait a bit before posting. My first few comments to SGBM, asking about goals, were carefully considered and more or less genuine. But then, I started posting too quickly, and I said some things I wouldn’t have said if I’d given myself a chance to cool off.
I may find SGBM somewhat annoying, but he (it is a he, right? if not, my apologies) is a human being, and deserves respect.
And Strange Gods Before Me, I apologize for not using your full ‘nym; believe it or not, but I didn’t actually intend it to be a measure of disrespect. That little symbol at the end kinda throws off my typing.
Walton
And whatcha know?, there’s a petition.
Not sure how much direct good it’ll do, but a bit of awareness-raising can never hurt in the long run.
It is a he.
And “SGBM” is an sg-approved abbreviation, no problem. Most people don’t use the ॐ. I don’t.
Walton @160, aside from rich white cis-men with extreme right-wing beliefs, is there anyone the Daily Mail doesn’t hate?
I’m surprised they haven’t started publishing here in the states, they’d be hugely popular with the Tea Party.
SGBM@164, thank you. I would hate to offend accidentally. (I should also hate offending deliberately, but that is a steeper hill to climb. Still, one can but try.)
I know I’m kind of late returning to this party, but I have to ask: has anyone ever encountered a use of the phrase ‘politically correct’ that wasn’t an immediate indicator that the speaker was being an asshole?
@157 Doug Hudson,
The problem is that it wasn’t a misogyny thread. It was a thread about a gay grandson finding some acceptance with his grandfather. It got turned into a hate fulled thread about a word that wasn’t even spelled out. The splash damage I saw was to people like jodyp (see 22 above) who had a story they wanted to share that was on topic with the original post. It got turned toxic instead. That is what bothers me.
@Beatrice 157,
I don’t care if you believe me or not. Please don’t bother – I am well aware that it is common currency and should not be. That wasn’t really my point (see above).
I will point out that there are plenty of households where you will get beaten if you use anything approaching a curse word or anything approaching the blasphemous. This “So you’ve conditioned yourselves into considering “b-word” a horrible insult without it in any way being related to the word bitch” is totally failed mind-reading. Using any standard curse (something you heard an adult say) – even saying the phrase “curse word” – could get me slapped black and blue and I didn’t even know what the words meant.
Also – you both seem to be under a misunderstanding regarding my gender.
Rossignol@167, nope.
pHred@168, I’m not suggesting you’re wrong (or right), I’m suggesting a cooling off period. When people get pissed, posts like yours aren’t going to make them not-pissed.
But this IS Thunderdome, so if you want a fight over it, this is certainly the place. But don’t expect any resolution.
I don’t believe I made any reference to your gender; if so, it was certainly unintentional.
pHred,
I’m sorry about your former home situation.
@170 Beatrice,
Olive branch ? I am sorry I expressed myself so badly – I wanted to point someone who is having issues at that thread and I am just do glad that I didn’t get a chance. I was really disappointed by what happened to the thread, that’s all.
@169 Doug,
This is the bit I was having trouble with – I am one of the people hurt by these things, but that thread was about something else – I objected to what the thread turned into.
And for the record, I am not angry, just disappointed and disheartened that so many threads seem to be turning into something like that.
I find myself annoyed at the thread not because of the B-Word discussion, but because of the folks saying that disowning someone for any reason whatsoever is a bad thing.
Yesterday I disowned my uncle.
It was not an easy decision to make. But he has mooched off me to the tune of $5000, he constantly expects me to drop everything I’m doing to come to his rescue because he can’t be bothered to put the slightest bit of effort into helping himself, he expects me to do things like risk my vehicle on the ice pulling his car out of a ditch because he doesn’t want to pay $75 a year for AAA, he pulls shit like using my wedding quilt to line his dog’s bed, he lies to my face constantly, and on his most recent visit when I was convinced to help him out one more time he ended up losing my 6 year old son’s prized possession (an iPod) because he couldn’t go two hours without having his face in a video screen.
Yesterday he texted me at 3 in the morning for stupid asking for yet another favor shit, knowing full well I was angry at him still over the iPod. Being that I am the emergency contact for several people in poor health, having my phone go off at 3am is generally cause for alarm. I responded by blocking his number from calling my phone and then blocking him on facebook.
Now I’m getting shit from other family members for ‘overreacting’ to a 3 am text.
But I’m not reacting to a 3 am text.
I’m reacting to a 15+ year history of entitlement and thoughtlessness.
There are valid reasons to say ‘I don’t want you in my life anymore’. Yes, even to family members, because being family doesn’t give anyone the right to mistreat you.
What the grandson did was exist. What the mother did was a heinous act of callousness. The first is a shitty reason to disown someone. The second, not so much. I would not allow anyone who acted the way she did to remain in my life, nor would I allow them contact with my child.
My grandfather once referred to my mixed race nephew as a ‘little niglet’. I didn’t speak to him for 4 years. Later, he had a stroke, and ended up doing some reevaluation of his life. He made amends with the aforementioned nephew, and as a result, has now been allowed back into my life as well. He is allowed supervised contact with my son, and any resurgence of the bigotry will result in that contact being immediately revoked.
Now, as for the use of the b-word: Language is a difficult thing. I am making an effort not to use slurs in my vocabulary. But they were part of my language at one time and there are times, especially in stressful, emotional times, that they show up. Calling people idiots and lunatics are my most common offenders. I’m trying, very hard, to come up with good alternatives, but those alternatives haven’t had anywhere near as much time to become as comfortable on my tongue as the slurs once were. In a stressful, emotional time, such as realizing that your daughter whom you tried to instill good values in is actually a bigot and has emotionally devastated your grandson, I can cut a little slack for having a slur show up and not immediately jump to the conclusion that it means a person is bigoted themselves. Could mean they are ignorant and don’t understand the underlying issues of the word, could mean they didn’t edit themselves well under stress, could just mean that in the heat of the moment their brain went to ‘what’s a nasty thing I could call her’ and took the first result that popped up.
So I’ll take a point off for the slur. But the grandfather stepped up when a lot of people don’t. Gay teens make up a hell of a percentage of homeless. Final score, 99 out of 100.
WithinThisMind
Yes ! Thank you !
and I am sorry for the uncle.
Nerd:
I think I mentioned in the Granddad thread that back in my live journal days, I was a member of a group which also had a member who was of the firm conviction that the only right thing to do, if one of her children made the choice to be gay, would be to kick them out and withdraw as a parent until they saw the light, and chose to be hetero.
She was argued with, in every manner possible, believe me. It was like being in a body cast and flinging yourself into a concrete wall. With people like that, there is no visceral and effective. The most you can do is plant long, well considered arguments in front of them, and hope like hell they will sink in some day. The beliefs of people who think like this are frightening solid, and they simply do not see that dumping a child in such a case is in any way a bad thing. To them, they think it’s good parenting.
What I saw in Granddad’s letter was a great deal of anguish, anger, and a desperation to get through, none of which will work (in my personal opinion), but helped Granddad get some of his emotions out while validating the life of his grandson. All that said, using the b-word doesn’t help at all, because it never helps, whether it’s private or public, and it’s highly likely that the only actual effect it would have had on the woman would be to confirm that her father is just as wicked as her gay son. So, in that sense, it made things worse.
Now, all that said, I still think there was way too much focus on the gendered slur business. The derail hurt people who would have used that thread to relate personal stories, and gotten support. As I said way upthread, that’s what upsets me.
pHred:
Yes, that’s what bothered me as well. Seems we’re in the minority.
pHred@171, I am not questioning your feelings, your opinions, or your right to have either, and I apologize if careless wording implied any of those things.
On a lighter note, when I read your ‘nym my brain interpreted it as “pH” (the acidity measure) “red” (the color). Dunno what that would mean, though.
pHred,
I got a bit annoyed with Nerd of Redhead, so some of the annoyance slipped into my conversation with you. Sorry about that. I don’t think I am justified to have any hard feelings regarding you, and I don’t have them.
The way that thread progressed frustrated me as well.
Caine, Fleur du mal@175, oh, I agree as well; the “discussion” of the word bitch was a serious derail. But that train went off the tracks from the very first post.
My unsolicited advice to pHred was more along the lines of “it’s a waste of time arguing that point.” Come to think of it, I probably should’ve just said that.
Doug @176,
Ding ding ding ding !!! You win one shiny internet prize!
That is exactly what my nym is – it was a riff on my red hair and the fact that I was in a foul mood complaining about the fact that I had never had a nickname in my life. I ended up getting dubbed pHred – pronounced fred. It was a late night gaming session and we weren’t thinking really clearly.
pHred@178–that’s an awesome nickname. Late night gaming sessions can be great.
Has anyone else read the Wereworld series by Curtis Joblin?
I really completely missed an important and high-drama thread. And because of that, I really really hesitate to throw my two cents in here as I don’t want to trip over some bad context and be the final straw that broke the back for anyone, but…
On the word bitch: Yeah, it’s a gendered insult and carries sexist baggage. I’ve actually been on a kick for awhile now of trying to flush out all the fucked up slurs from my usual conversation, especially in terms of gendered slurs. And it’s been pretty fun replacing them with new invented slurs that actually sound cooler. It’s not terribly hard to do but yeah, like anyone I fuck up occasionally and need to apologize.
On whether that topic would be a derail on a post about the viral letter: Yes. Clearly. I mean, especially if it became the only game in town. I mean, it’s an important note to make and I can definitely see a side conversation and it popping over to Thunderdome like usual, but if it was nearly all what anyone was talking about in the thread, then yeah, I can see why PZ got frustrated and shut it all down.
On PZ getting frustrated: He’s a human being. People get frustrated, people get tired, people have peeves. Deal.
Further note on the impact of a derail: I might have been upset if that had happened, not because I disagree on the subject, but because there really isn’t a place to talk about that sort of thing with regards to disowning and it’s impact. As I noted earlier, I was disowned in I believe May of this year by my parents (mostly my dad) for being transgendered. I believe at the time I posted the letter from him doing so. There was a bunch else going on at the time, I was being discriminated out of a job for being trans* and could have used some of the love and support they always said they would have for me. It was further out of left field because I had been out to them for 3 fucking years before they decided that this “new information” was too much.
I’m now, five months later, just beginning to almost sorta be able to trace some of the contours of my trauma and where it’s affected me instead of just being buffeted around and doing what I need to to survive. I’ve got a breakdown that’s always inches away from happening that I’ve just been slamming the snooze button on every chance I get.
At least one of the impacts of my family’s betrayal I noticed was a sudden need to keep everything secret that was happening with me because of how hard they slammed me for being so stupid and selfish as to be out to my employers and family. So, I found out recently that I internalized that. When I needed help or emotional care or basic needs, I kept them locked up inside and wouldn’t even let my partner or girlfriend know, because I convinced myself that telling them was an act of violence (my dad said that one of the fallouts of me coming out was a violent act of driving my mom into therapy). I convinced myself that even taking care of myself was something selfish and violent. If I was closeted in my jobs for capitalism reasons, then why bother speaking up for myself anywhere. I needed to care for others now, right? Make sure they were okay and not being hurt by my obvious flaws? That made so much fucking sense that I lived life like that even though I should know better, even though they were telling me that they loved me and hated to see me beating myself up.
I internalized shit that happened to my partner. When she was bullied out of a job, I notice know that I blamed myself for it. That me being out and proud had given her ideas of being herself too much and besides she was struggling with some nasty stuff my uncle and dad had said about her, blaming her for “making me this way” that suddenly taking care of her was priority one, as a way of apologizing and “making it up”. It got pathologized and most importantly, it became a perfectionism thing. After all, I needed to be perfectly on to try and save us financially so clearly I must also be perfect emotionally to be adequate as a partner. It wasn’t true, but I convinced myself that any minor disagreement or sign of emotional triggering was a request to shut myself down and give only “perfect” responses. Ignore that that wasn’t what she wanted, because this was necessary somehow.
That perfectionism and self-need-denial I know directly led to the incident where I violated my own consent and tried to force myself to perform sexually for my partner against their check-ins. I think in addition, part of me thought I deserved it, because it had internalized the message from my dad when he disowned me that “everything that is happening is my fault and no one else’s”. That that sort of thing was how my life should look and behave.
Me and my partner used to have a strong honesty policy that was held as the most important thing, inviolable. The most important aspect to my self-esteem used to be my “fuck you and your bullshit” response to social messaging about “how I should be”, a matter of standing up for myself and not letting the bullshit drag me down. Being me as loud as I can and letting the world try and deal with that.
I lost all of that as part of the trauma of that disowning and the discrimination that preceded it.
I’m currently working to rebuild the honesty policy and knock out the remaining impulses to self-abuse and obfuscate and turn to passive-aggressiveness that I inherited. Rebuilding a way to be me at least in the private sphere. To regain all the important stuff I lost.
That’s the lingering trauma of events like these. And despite the shallow plaudits that things like “It Gets Better” receive, there is little attention given to experiences like that.
I would agree, the grandpa shouldn’t have used the word bitch in his missive, but I’m still happy someone like him exists. If it wasn’t for the grandpa figures in the comment sections here or my biologicals holding me up and giving me an emotional cushion to fall back on, I know the resulting trauma would have been much worse… actually, no, it would have been fatal.
With the trauma I had and the way I convinced myself that I was all alone and needed to save everyone, I ended up attempting suicide and then hiding it. Maybe it wasn’t a serious attempt, but the knot on the noose slipped and I nearly couldn’t get it off in time to not kill myself. Who knows how many more attempts I might have made and in ways that wouldn’t have been so easily escaped if those in my brain who wanted to live tried to do so.
So yeah, I’m willing to give that grandpa a little extra slack than I normally would. Maybe that’s wrong and maybe it’s wrong injecting myself into a nasty argument that I don’t know everything about, but, I guess, it really is important that I stop hiding all the damn time and try and regain what that disowning stole from me.
Previous attempt got lost, will try again
I really completely missed an important and high-drama thread. And because of that, I really really hesitate to throw my two cents in here as I don’t want to trip over some bad context and be the final straw that broke the back for anyone, but…
On the word b—-: Yeah, it’s a gendered insult and carries sexist baggage. I’ve actually been on a kick for awhile now of trying to flush out all the fucked up slurs from my usual conversation, especially in terms of gendered slurs. And it’s been pretty fun replacing them with new invented slurs that actually sound cooler. It’s not terribly hard to do but yeah, like anyone I fuck up occasionally and need to apologize.
On whether that topic would be a derail on a post about the viral letter: Yes. Clearly. I mean, especially if it became the only game in town. I mean, it’s an important note to make and I can definitely see a side conversation and it popping over to Thunderdome like usual, but if it was nearly all what anyone was talking about in the thread, then yeah, I can see why PZ got frustrated and shut it all down.
On PZ getting frustrated: He’s a human being. People get frustrated, people get tired, people have peeves. Deal.
Further note on the impact of a derail: I might have been upset if that had happened, not because I disagree on the subject, but because there really isn’t a place to talk about that sort of thing with regards to disowning and it’s impact. As I noted earlier, I was disowned in I believe May of this year by my parents (mostly my dad) for being transgendered. I believe at the time I posted the letter from him doing so. There was a bunch else going on at the time, I was being discriminated out of a job for being trans* and could have used some of the love and support they always said they would have for me. It was further out of left field because I had been out to them for 3 fucking years before they decided that this “new information” was too much.
I’m now, five months later, just beginning to almost sorta be able to trace some of the contours of my trauma and where it’s affected me instead of just being buffeted around and doing what I need to to survive. I’ve got a breakdown that’s always inches away from happening that I’ve just been slamming the snooze button on every chance I get.
At least one of the impacts of my family’s betrayal I noticed was a sudden need to keep everything secret that was happening with me because of how hard they slammed me for being so stupid and selfish as to be out to my employers and family. So, I found out recently that I internalized that. When I needed help or emotional care or basic needs, I kept them locked up inside and wouldn’t even let my partner or girlfriend know, because I convinced myself that telling them was an act of violence (my dad said that one of the fallouts of me coming out was a violent act of driving my mom into therapy). I convinced myself that even taking care of myself was something selfish and violent. If I was closeted in my jobs for capitalism reasons, then why bother speaking up for myself anywhere. I needed to care for others now, right? Make sure they were okay and not being hurt by my obvious flaws? That made so much fucking sense that I lived life like that even though I should know better, even though they were telling me that they loved me and hated to see me beating myself up.
I internalized shit that happened to my partner. When she was bullied out of a job, I notice know that I blamed myself for it. That me being out and proud had given her ideas of being herself too much and besides she was struggling with some nasty stuff my uncle and dad had said about her, blaming her for “making me this way” that suddenly taking care of her was priority one, as a way of apologizing and “making it up”. It got pathologized and most importantly, it became a perfectionism thing. After all, I needed to be perfectly on to try and save us financially so clearly I must also be perfect emotionally to be adequate as a partner. It wasn’t true, but I convinced myself that any minor disagreement or sign of emotional triggering was a request to shut myself down and give only “perfect” responses. Ignore that that wasn’t what she wanted, because this was necessary somehow.
That perfectionism and self-need-denial I know directly led to the incident where I violated my own consent and tried to force myself to perform sexually for my partner against their check-ins. I think in addition, part of me thought I deserved it, because it had internalized the message from my dad when he disowned me that “everything that is happening is my fault and no one else’s”. That that sort of thing was how my life should look and behave.
Me and my partner used to have a strong honesty policy that was held as the most important thing, inviolable. The most important aspect to my self-esteem used to be my “fuck you and your bullshit” response to social messaging about “how I should be”, a matter of standing up for myself and not letting the bullshit drag me down. Being me as loud as I can and letting the world try and deal with that.
I lost all of that as part of the trauma of that disowning and the discrimination that preceded it.
I’m currently working to rebuild the honesty policy and knock out the remaining impulses to self-abuse and obfuscate and turn to passive-aggressiveness that I inherited. Rebuilding a way to be me at least in the private sphere. To regain all the important stuff I lost.
That’s the lingering trauma of events like these. And despite the shallow plaudits that things like “It Gets Better” receive, there is little attention given to experiences like that.
I would agree, the grandpa shouldn’t have used the word b—- in his missive, but I’m still happy someone like him exists. If it wasn’t for the grandpa figures in the comment sections here or my biologicals holding me up and giving me an emotional cushion to fall back on, I know the resulting trauma would have been much worse… actually, no, it would have been fatal.
With the trauma I had and the way I convinced myself that I was all alone and needed to save everyone, I ended up attempting suicide and then hiding it. Maybe it wasn’t a serious attempt, but the knot on the noose slipped and I nearly couldn’t get it off in time to not kill myself. Who knows how many more attempts I might have made and in ways that wouldn’t have been so easily escaped if those in my brain who wanted to live tried to do so.
So yeah, I’m willing to give that grandpa a little extra slack than I normally would. Maybe that’s wrong and maybe it’s wrong injecting myself into a nasty argument that I don’t know everything about, but, I guess, it really is important that I stop hiding all the damn time and try and regain what that disowning stole from me.
*thumbs up for WithinThisMind*
*offering a heap of fluffy hugs for Cerberus*
…That link seems to be the part I missed. I can’t remember anything about B&W in this context.
Can’t remember that either. Perhaps I had left the thread by then; due to timezones, many threads go on after I visit them the last time.
…But I wasn’t having an idea about your motives. I simply thought you were more anxious than you apparently are.
As for “links or anything”, I’m sorry to say that’s an unreasonable expectation from me – I don’t have the kind of memory or Google-fu necessary for that. I knew yours are better, so I expected you to remember the incidents in question at least as well as I do – and indeed you do. I never thought you wouldn’t weigh in!
…To think that mothers disowning their children are “against nature” while fathers doing the same are less so – that would be misogynistic, wouldn’t it? And yes, I fully agree it’s a view held by many people and warrants some discussion.
*blink*
The other way around. I thought you were concluding from this evidence that he’s likely (though not definitely) a misogynist. I have not tried to accuse you of somehow deciding in advance he’s a misogynist and then looking for evidence to fit your hypothesis.
I tried to disagree with the “likely” part of that conclusion: a more parsimonious assumption, as far as I can tell, is that he used “her” to refer to “parent” just because he was talking to and about his daughter. Wondering why you had gone with a less parsimonious but scarier option, I presented a possible reason…
As Jadehawk said, you are an activist. Similarly, I am a scientist – and that has caused trouble for me before, with other people.
That, as I said, would explain why he wrote “B-word”. He clearly meant to offend his daughter – censoring that when nobody else was going to see it doesn’t make sense.
But then, I never imagined the situation described in comment 153. o_O
…No, really, pHred, I have to ask: people in your family really shouted “B-word!” and not “Bitch!”? Because if they did, I’m just culture-shocked out of words.
You know what? I agree. I just hoped that the rule wouldn’t be enforced quite as strictly as it was worded, seeing as I talked about “B-word” in another context (as evidence that the letter was meant to go public), not to which extent it should be excused.
This fear is part of why I crossposted it here.
*offers wide selection of fluffy hugs*
The distance between the eyes and the book never changes. All is fine. ^_^
The good news: in Austria, we have a separate party for this, not the conservatives.
The bad news: that party has got between 20 and 27 % at every election since the mid-90s.
The worse news: it even formed a coalition with the conservatives, who fare similarly in elections, from 2000 to 2002.
*headdesk*
…I, for one, didn’t talk about the good thing, because I didn’t see anybody disagree on this. I don’t like pointing out the obvious when I don’t think anybody needs to. If enough people think like this, of course the discussion will look completely one-sided.
What for, actually? That attempt can be safely ignored! Not being PZ, Daz can’t drive you away.
There’s still splash damage, I think: on the woman, who is told “you’re an asshole because you disowned your son, and also, you’re a woman“; on her son, who evidently got to read the letter before it was delivered, and is taught it’s OK to insult people for being women once they’ve done other shit; and, once they accept and internalize these attitudes, there’s splash damage on everyone else in their life.
I said so, in fewer words, both in that thread and here. Nerd of Redhead appears to have overlooked both instances.
But, dude, it’s not like the English language has no strong insults that aren’t misogynistic. Why not call her an asshole?
I said so both in that thread and here. You appear to have overlooked both instances.
…Please help me out: I can’t figure out where sgbm implied otherwise. I suspect this is an autism-spectrum thing, so I’d appreciate if someone could help me out – lest I give rise to the same kind of impression of myself somewhere in meatspace or so.
…Oh.
I think this explains plenty about you.
For me, I’ve found it useful to try not to make any assumptions about what might come next: few people are so consistent as to be fully predictable, and few are even just consistent enough as to be predictable within reasonable error margins. Really surprising combinations of opinions often exist in the same person.
What about assuming good faith till the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming? I thought that’s what the three-comment rule was supposed to quantify.
Signed.
…I guess there must have been a few instances when the phrase was coined in the 60s or 70s… maybe…? I haven’t seen any of those, though (and am too young to have heard them).
what
*thumbs up for WithinThisMind*
*offering a heap of fluffy hugs for Cerberus*
…That link seems to be the part I missed. I can’t remember anything about B&W in this context.
Can’t remember that either. Perhaps I had left the thread by then; due to timezones, many threads go on after I visit them the last time.
…But I wasn’t having an idea about your motives. I simply thought you were more anxious than you apparently are.
As for “links or anything”, I’m sorry to say that’s an unreasonable expectation from me – I don’t have the kind of memory or Google-fu necessary for that. I knew yours are better, so I expected you to remember the incidents in question at least as well as I do – and indeed you do. I never thought you wouldn’t weigh in!
…To think that mothers disowning their children are “against nature” while fathers doing the same are less so – that would be misogynistic, wouldn’t it? And yes, I fully agree it’s a view held by many people and warrants some discussion.
*blink*
The other way around. I thought you were concluding from this evidence that he’s likely (though not definitely) a misogynist. I have not tried to accuse you of somehow deciding in advance he’s a misogynist and then looking for evidence to fit your hypothesis.
I tried to disagree with the “likely” part of that conclusion: a more parsimonious assumption, as far as I can tell, is that he used “her” to refer to “parent” just because he was talking to and about his daughter. Wondering why you had gone with a less parsimonious but scarier option, I presented a possible reason…
As Jadehawk said, you are an activist. Similarly, I am a scientist – and that has caused trouble for me before, with other people.
That, as I said, would explain why he wrote “B-word”. He clearly meant to offend his daughter – censoring that when nobody else was going to see it doesn’t make sense.
But then, I never imagined the situation described in comment 153. o_O
…No, really, pHred, I have to ask: people in your family really shouted “B-word!” and not “Bitch!”? Because if they did, I’m just culture-shocked out of words.
You know what? I agree. I just hoped that the rule wouldn’t be enforced quite as strictly as it was worded, seeing as I talked about “B-word” in another context (as evidence that the letter was meant to go public), not to which extent it should be excused.
This fear is part of why I crossposted it here.
*offers wide selection of fluffy hugs*
The distance between the eyes and the book never changes. All is fine. ^_^
The good news: in Austria, we have a separate party for this, not the conservatives.
The bad news: that party has got between 20 and 27 % at every election since the mid-90s.
The worse news: it even formed a coalition with the conservatives, who fare similarly in elections, from 2000 to 2002.
*headdesk*
…I, for one, didn’t talk about the good thing, because I didn’t see anybody disagree on this. I don’t like pointing out the obvious when I don’t think anybody needs to. If enough people think like this, of course the discussion will look completely one-sided.
What for, actually? That attempt can be safely ignored! Not being PZ, Daz can’t drive you away.
There’s still splash damage, I think: on the woman, who is told “you’re an asshole because you disowned your son, and also, you’re a woman“; on her son, who evidently got to read the letter before it was delivered, and is taught it’s OK to insult people for being women once they’ve done other shit; and, once they accept and internalize these attitudes, there’s splash damage on everyone else in their life.
I said so, in fewer words, both in that thread and here. Nerd of Redhead appears to have overlooked both instances.
But, dude, it’s not like the English language has no strong insults that aren’t misogynistic. Why not call her an asshole?
I said so both in that thread and here. You appear to have overlooked both instances.
…Please help me out: I can’t figure out where sgbm implied otherwise. I suspect this is an autism-spectrum thing, so I’d appreciate if someone could help me out – lest I give rise to the same kind of impression of myself somewhere in meatspace or so.
…Oh.
I think this explains plenty about you.
For me, I’ve found it useful to try not to make any assumptions about what might come next: few people are so consistent as to be fully predictable, and few are even just consistent enough as to be predictable within reasonable error margins. Really surprising combinations of opinions often exist in the same person.
What about assuming good faith till the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming? I thought that’s what the three-comment rule was supposed to quantify.
Signed.
…I guess there must have been a few instances when the phrase was coined in the 60s or 70s… maybe…? I haven’t seen any of those, though (and am too young to have heard them).
what
Cerberus:
Aye, me too.
You have as much right to express your thoughts on the matter as anyone else. I think it’s very important you stop hiding too, and I think it’s just as important that you get all the support you need. That support can be crucial, and make all the difference when trying to rebuild from such experiences. I hope you know you have mine, unconditionally.
Hm. Something triggers the spam filter.
Part 1:
*thumbs up for WithinThisMind*
*offering a heap of fluffy hugs for Cerberus*
…That link seems to be the part I missed. I can’t remember anything about B&W in this context.
Can’t remember that either. Perhaps I had left the thread by then; due to timezones, many threads go on after I visit them the last time.
…But I wasn’t having an idea about your motives. I simply thought you were more anxious than you apparently are.
As for “links or anything”, I’m sorry to say that’s an unreasonable expectation from me – I don’t have the kind of memory or Google-fu necessary for that. I knew yours are better, so I expected you to remember the incidents in question at least as well as I do – and indeed you do. I never thought you wouldn’t weigh in!
…To think that mothers disowning their children are “against nature” while fathers doing the same are less so – that would be misogynistic, wouldn’t it? And yes, I fully agree it’s a view held by many people and warrants some discussion.
*blink*
The other way around. I thought you were concluding from this evidence that he’s likely (though not definitely) a misogynist. I have not tried to accuse you of somehow deciding in advance he’s a misogynist and then looking for evidence to fit your hypothesis.
I tried to disagree with the “likely” part of that conclusion: a more parsimonious assumption, as far as I can tell, is that he used “her” to refer to “parent” just because he was talking to and about his daughter. Wondering why you had gone with a less parsimonious but scarier option, I presented a possible reason…
As Jadehawk said, you are an activist. Similarly, I am a scientist – and that has caused trouble for me before, with other people.
That, as I said, would explain why he wrote “B-word”. He clearly meant to offend his daughter – censoring that when nobody else was going to see it doesn’t make sense.
But then, I never imagined the situation described in comment 153. o_O
…No, really, pHred, I have to ask: people in your family really shouted “B-word!” and not “Bitch!”? Because if they did, I’m just culture-shocked out of words.
You know what? I agree. I just hoped that the rule wouldn’t be enforced quite as strictly as it was worded, seeing as I talked about “B-word” in another context (as evidence that the letter was meant to go public), not to which extent it should be excused.
This fear is part of why I crossposted it here.
*offers wide selection of fluffy hugs*
The distance between the eyes and the book never changes. All is fine. ^_^
Part 2:
(Oh wow, it’s late! :-o )
The good news: in Austria, we have a separate party for this, not the conservatives.
The bad news: that party has got between 20 and 27 % at every election since the mid-90s.
The worse news: it even formed a coalition with the conservatives, who fare similarly in elections, from 2000 to 2002.
*headdesk*
…I, for one, didn’t talk about the good thing, because I didn’t see anybody disagree on this. I don’t like pointing out the obvious when I don’t think anybody needs to. If enough people think like this, of course the discussion will look completely one-sided.
What for, actually? That attempt can be safely ignored! Not being PZ, Daz can’t drive you away.
There’s still splash damage, I think: on the woman, who is told “you’re an asshole because you disowned your son, and also, you’re a woman“; on her son, who evidently got to read the letter before it was delivered, and is taught it’s OK to insult people for being women once they’ve done other shit; and, once they accept and internalize these attitudes, there’s splash damage on everyone else in their life.
I said so, in fewer words, both in that thread and here. Nerd of Redhead appears to have overlooked both instances.
But, dude, it’s not like the English language has no strong, direct insults that aren’t misogynistic. Why not call her an asshole?
I said so both in that thread and here. You appear to have overlooked both instances.
…Please help me out: I can’t figure out where sgbm implied otherwise. I suspect this is an autism-spectrum thing, so I’d appreciate if someone could help me out – lest I give rise to the same kind of impression of myself somewhere in meatspace or so.
…Oh.
I think this explains plenty about you.
For me, I’ve found it useful to try not to make any assumptions about what might come next: few people are so consistent as to be fully predictable, and few are even just consistent enough as to be predictable within reasonable error margins. Really surprising combinations of opinions often exist in the same person.
What about assuming good faith till the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming? I thought that’s what the three-comment rule was supposed to quantify.
Signed.
…I guess there must have been a few instances when the phrase was coined in the 60s or 70s… maybe…? I haven’t seen any of those, though (and am too young to have heard them).
what
That’s it. :-) I’ll take a look at the closed thread now.
What triggered the spam filter, and didn’t yesterday, was bitch; I had to use the usual HTML trick.
Sure, but IMO the blame for that can be laid at the feet of those who thought the gendered slur was rendered harmless by the context of the letter…not the people who pointed it out.
First of all, it was PZ who pulled the plug* a moment after jodyp posted. We rarely have an active thread in which several conversations aren’t going on at once; people could have been sharing personal stories and arguing the minutsia of the OP simultaneously. If PZ intends to steer the commentary towards sharing and support, he could let us know that. And I kind of wish he would*.
Related: Looking over my comments from last night, I was less kind to you than you deserve. I didn’t consciously intend that, but as my mother used to say, I took a “tone” that reflected my annoyance–which in retrospect, I certainly felt. You and I are here, I think, for different reasons, but you should keep doing what you’re doing. Your contributions are much more valuable than mine in the balance.
*As is his prerogative
Yep.
*cautiously extending an eyestalk*
–
Caine:
Probably while thinking “scared straight”.
After all, if frightening kids out of their minds with threats of jail and the possibility of jail-related abuse is good for turning them off of the backtalking and shoplifting….
–
Extra *hug* ration for Cerberus, with a side order of moral support and good wishes in the aftermath of Big Shitstorm.
–
Cerberus @ 181
*non-invasive supportive gestures here* (Are we on hugging terms? Take whatever you find appropriate.)
Your story is so painfully familiar to me. Please know that whatever support I can give over the Internet, it is yours. Taking care of you and relearning when not to hide and all of those tough things are important. You have a right to that, even if it means you can’t fight every fight and find comfort in things that aren’t platonic ideals.
cicely @188
Yeah, that’s definitely the psychology at play, I feel. I know with my dad, a lot of his disowning letter was about trying to hard-sell this idea that my evil partner was infecting me with this abusive notion that I was trans* and once I escaped her, cut off all ties and ran back home weeping and apologizing for making up this bizarre life affliction and promised to be a good proper boy who’d listen to what he said and followed his advice and always apologized for ever going wrong, then he and mom would totally accept me with open arms of love.
The irony is that after spending my whole life teaching me to see through bullshit like that and to stand up for oneself it was a little late to be selling that textbook abusive shit and expecting me to fall for it.
And thanks everybody, the hugs are appreciated. I knew it was bad this year, but I’m only just now realizing how bad. It’s honestly a little frightening to contemplate it all and to realize just how much some individual acts could utterly destroy so much “me” without me even noticing it.
AE:
Yes. That’s not what I meant, though. Over the years, I’ve seen where a ferocious side argumentation, which is eating a thread alive, completely discourages people who want to relate a personal story to the OP. That’s what I meant when I said my priorities in such threads is different. I’m more concerned with people who need to get traumatic experiences off their chest and get some support while doing so.
As I noted supra, I know other people’s priorities are different, and I don’t expect anyone to change theirs for mine. I simply wish that those who wanted to carry on the ferocious side argumentation were a bit more thoughtful and removed that discussion from the thread. At any rate, the thread is done now, so all this talk isn’t helping much. By the way, I’m just fine with you, you don’t have to be kind to me, I don’t expect it, and there are plenty of times I need a smack to the head.
Rev. BDC, I’m curious about something. Quite some time ago, you mentioned on TET that your wife and her friends used the word bitch in a reclaiming way. Does that still happen, and how do you feel about it?
It’s…wow. *more hugs*, cerberus.
Rev. BDC, I’m curious about something. Quite some time ago, you mentioned on TET that your wife and her friends used the word b!tch in a reclaiming way. Does that still happen, and how do you feel about it?
Within this Mind
Oh yes, everything. I was the one who was disowned for being a disappointment as a daughter. It fucking hurt, but actually, I would have liked to stay disowned because my parents are damn unhealthy folks to have around. My mum is comitting slow-motion suicide and I’m totally not interested in going down with her nor will I allow her to drag my children down with her.
thunk: In the likely event that it gets lost amidst all the current stuff here in teh ‘dome, I want to be sure you know that I apologized to you @#81. Meant it, too.
Sigh – so no, they didn’t shout “B-word.” Damn was allowed to adults, as was shit – the mean ones, they called you streams of things like dumb, cow-brained and many, many ablest slurs. This was rural Wyoming, cows and their products featured heavily into adult language.
“Grandma” and a few others overcompensated by actually saying things like b-word, yes out loud. She would call people doorknobs when upset. She didn’t raise her voice much. Thinking back, in her mind it was entirely possible that b-word actually stood in for bad word because I don’t remember her saying things like “you b-word!” (And before you go there no – I don’t think the letter writer meant bad word, it is clear he didn’t.)
I don’t know – all I do know is that those kinds of threads are a dime a dozen around here. Fine – so he shouldn’t have written “B-word” (though I find the psychology of that potentially interesting given my history) – and no I never said that it was harmless – what now ? I was finding hope in his actions, that’s all.
That was a while ago, and yes they occasionally will use it, though not nearly as much. It did not used to bother me that much (if at all) but now I’d have to say it gives me pause.
Rev. BDC:
Thanks. Can’t be an easy situation for you.
Oh – I was supposed to be a little lady (I hate that phrase!) so I was supposed to follow the ladies example.
This is one weird trip down memory lane for me into stuff that I haven’t thought about in years. Ugh.
For me the very idea that someone like the men I knew there (one of whom used to run over small animals for fun but would not allow you to cuss) to actually take in a gay grandson. I can’t tell you how much the very concept means to me.
For the record I am cis but I was not a little lady. Sorry I am out of spoon now and going home.
z
Yes I obviously disagree. I for reasons made clear do not have contact with some family. Some of them biologically close
HOWEVER: there is a power difference between a child rejecting a parent for abuse and a parent rejecting a child to be abusive.
pHred @197
Doubly minced cursing! I can’t even fathom that level of linguistic repression. I certainly can’t censor myself when I stub my toe.
Rossignol:
This ^ in itself is quite nice. While my situation was not the equal of pHred’s, it was close. No swearing! If I ever heard my grandmother let loose with a ‘damn!’ or even worse, ‘shit!’, it was time to hide in a closet, because the anger behind that was powerful. Like pHred, I was expected to be a lady. Ladies don’t swear. I still remember being scolded by one of my great grandmothers for saying “geez”. Heresy, ya know, on top of swearing, too close to “Jesus”.
I wanted to share a thought with the Pharynguloids: in the past we talked a lot about privilege, be it racial privilege, sexual privilege, religious privilege, etc. Right now, I’m speculating that “happiness” or the appearance thereof, is a criteria for social privilege. Those who can put on a smile and be cheerful enjoy more advantages than those who are depressed or just introverted.
Is there anyone besides me who thinks there is something to this is this just a brain fart on my part?
On Grandpa, the b-word, compassion…
Wrong is wrong. Sexist is sexist, and we absorb sexism and racism through our skin because our culture is so steeped in it.
Grandpa, however, has demonstrated that he can learn–I rather doubt he grew up in a society tolerant of homosexuality. So maybe he can learn about the toxicity of gendered insults. Clearly, he has qualms about using the actual word, as he called it the “b-word” rather than bitch. Maybe someone kind in his life can help him to realize why he has those qualms.
Saint Augustine was full of shit about a lot of things, but I think he might have been on to something when he said, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.”
Akira,
Most definitely our culture is biases toward extroverts and those who can put up a good front. As George Burns said, “The most important thing in show business is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
David,
Well, we now have UKIP, who are xenophobic and awful, but they’ve never won anywhere near 20% of the vote (thankfully) and aren’t likely to, and under our electoral system they’re unlikely to be able win any seats. But the Tories genuinely seem to be worried about them as a political threat* – which I think is why the Tories have made a really noticeable rightward shift this year, particularly on immigration.
(*Not because they’re likely actually to win seats, but because they could split the right-wing vote in some constituencies.)
No.
The Mash is cruel, but it is not wholly wrong.
;-)
Speaking as a godless, socialist, left-wing, bisexual, pinko, politically correct, pro-immigration human rights lawyer*, I’m sure the Daily Mail hates me quite a lot. I imagine the only way to make them hate me more would be converting to Islam. Or perhaps being appointed to the European Court of Human Rights.
(*Well, almost. My Call to the Bar ceremony is on Thursday.)
Well, that’s wonderful, Walton! Felicitations and congratulations (offer void outside Canada, check local statutes to determine validity of congratulatory offer, offer does not supersede waiver of rights, offer to be adjudicated under Canadian law). ;)
Daz:
again: “too long” compared to what? because compared to the arguments that led to the establishment of the “no splash damage” standard, that was short and civil, and not even off-topic.
one could, if one didn’t read for comprehension.
nerd:
that is incorrect. private communications cause splash damage as well.
no it fucking isn’t. sexism is toxic shit regardless of whether it’s public or private.
of course I’m perfectly capable of being effectively insulting without using slurs. So’s most of the horde. I would very severely question the line of reasoning that insists that the bigotry adds something necessary to the letter.
pHred:
lolwut
WithinThisMind:
that didn’t actually happen.
Chas @81:
1- I am glad to see an apology from you to thunk.
2- People who come across as assholes get told that around here, as I am sure you know. I thought you were being an insensitive asshole and responded as I felt appropriate. Did I think you would listen? No. Did I think you *should* listen? No.
I have no idea why you felt the need to tell people “I won’t shut up unless PZ tells me to”, bc we know that.
3- given that the Lounge is filled with people in ongoing conversations, in the future perhaps you could consider that there might be some background to a comment. No, you are not required to go back and read every previous thread, but instead of assuming, perhaps just not making any comment would be better.
gosh, Tony!!, thanks for the unsolicited advice!
Here’s some for you in exchange!: Learn to read!!
Hey! Some things aren’t about you! I wasn’t talking about you! That’s why I said nothing about being called an asshole! I don’t care about that! I also said nothing about being SHOUTED AT! Instead I referred explicitly to those who think they have some right to tell me to go away or not post in the stupid Lounge or never to post on Pharyngula!
I feel no such need! That’s why I didn’t say anything like that!
Dumbass!!
Nerd @110:
I like you. I often agree with what you say.
This time, I do not.
‘Slut’ or ‘cunt’ do not lose their offensive misogynistic power when uttered in private.
Likewise, ‘bitch’ does not magically become an ungendered slur when spoken in private.
I saw your comment earlier about not using the word yourself, even in private, so I am happy about that. But if gendered slurs are wrong to use-and I think most of us here agree they are-their use must end completely. Not just here at Pharyngula. Not just in the US or Canada or Germany.
Everywhere.
The use of gendered slurs is one aspect of the problem of sexism and misogyny that permeates humanity. Tackling the problem is done by people from many angles. One way is convincing people that certain words are offensive and derogatory towards women, maligning them just for being women. People who use these slurs need to understand why they are wrong. They need to change their opinion on these words. They need to not use them bc they understand the harm done by their use. Finding a justification to use a gendered slur at a woman is not an example of someone ‘understanding why the word is wrong’. It is an example of someone perpetuating the use of an offensive, derogatory, misogynistic word.
You are arguing that there exists a justification for calling a woman a ‘bitch’.
I say no.
Be it public or private.
Chas:
*thats not saying ‘I wont shut up unless PZ tells me to’?
Havd nice fucking day yourself you fucking asshole.
WithinThisMind @172 – yes, THIS!
I haven’t taken part in this conversation except to agree with a couple of posters, but I want to make it clear, because SGBM has linked to my comment a couple of times, and I do not want to be assumed to be supporting zir in this neverending squabble.
I read “b-word” as meaning “bastard,” just as pHred did. I’ve never seen the other slur written that way.
Yes, if the grandfather meant “b***ch” that’s a gendered slur and it’s a pity he used it – or almost used it, since whatever word it was, he felt it was harsh enough, or crude enough, not to write it out.
It’s such a minor damn point in all the important things he wrote to his daughter, and the way that derail dragged on was eye-rolling stuff.
The whole “disowning is terrible! He’s such a hypocrite!” tone that came in was even worse. FFS, he’s giving her an object lesson in what she’s just done to her son, who’s far more vulnerable and hasn’t DONE anything: she’s booted him out for who he is. Grandfather also explicitly showed the daughter is free to contact him; he’s not saying he’s blocking her calls or anything of the sort.
I’ve long since severed contact with my male parental unit, who walked out on us when I was eight or so and tried the boo-hoo-I-want-to-get-to-know-you bullshit when I was in my thirties – this while 1) trying to get my mother to assist him, ie. go behind my back, and 2) lying to his current wife – the person he left my mother for – about doing this.
I cut him off with NO “call me when you’re not a fuckwit” options, and what he did is far less bad than what the mother in this letter did. So all the “but family!” comments had me rolling my eyes really hard.
On the subject of the Tories and what they’re doing – fucking HELL that is mind-boggling. I thought our governments (whichever party) were brutal. Well, they are, but this is … I can’t even.
Oh and I was one of the people telling you to shut up.
cm’s changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)@207,
Thanks! That certainly answered my question. Kind of laugh or cry sort of thing, really.
Calling it the Daily Fail understates the problems with that miserable rag.
that also didn’t happen.
this conversation would be so much less inane if people argued what actually was written, not some exaggerated and simplistic version thereof.
Maybe “hypocrite” is too strong a word, but I thought the “he shouldn’t have disowned her/there are better ways/it’s problematic” stuff was ridiculous, and I inferred the suggestion that the grandfather was being a hypocrite. Still do, in re-reading it.
Chas people tell you to stay out of the lounge because you don’t respect it, dont’ agree with the purpose there and often seem only to go there to express how frustrated people there make you. You don’t seem to enjoy posting on occasion and thus do not make for a pleasent person to talk to.
Since we are discussing the use of gendered slurs..
PZ @126:
“…sanctimonious prick…”
I understand your point, but is that not still a gendered insult?
Hey, anyone here who is also a JREF Forum member and can post in the “Community” forum, I need a favor: could someone please create a thread there containing the information found in the two comments I made to http://yankeeskeptic.com/2013/09/28/real-science-real-hope-for-als/?
Thanks. My JREF account is still in moderation, waiting to be activated.
Walton:
Awesome! Congratulations!
*putting champagne to chill*
–
Walton:
You finally reached legal drinking age?
Seriously, congratulations. I know you will use it well.
Walton: Your long-anticipated admission to the bar has put a smile on my face. Well done.
My Phellow Pharyngulites, I’m asking a favor.
There would be a Trigger Warning: sexual abuse of minors on the information I seek, but I don’t need grim details…just suggested search terms.
You see, I’m involved in a FB argument with a guy who seems to think that only Islam offers the opportunity for grown men to legally rape little girls. I think I remember, from a few years back, a case where a father who raped his daughters claimed that it was “all right, because that’s why God [Christian] gave them to him”. I can’t come up with search terms to find the article/s where I read it. Any help gratefully appreciated.
–
Walton-
Woot! Good job!
Also, fuck it, I’m going to go read that post’s comments for myself and try and figure out the context for shit even though it might trigger the shit out of me.
@201
A few years ago, a friend of mine made the heart wrenching decision to throw her 17 year old son out of the house.
The final straw in a long list of things was his attempt to pimp out his 13 year old sister to get money for drugs.
There are valid reasons to disown someone, even a child. Existing while cisgender is not one of them.
@210
I read the thread. The sentiment starts in post 9 (calling the grandfather hypocritical) and shows up several more times. 26. 31. So on, so forth. Others have clearly read it the same way. You’ve clearly chosen to take a more charitable interpretation, but that is merely your opinion and doesn’t make our read of the posts incorrect.
Yargh, I’m only up to 55 on that thread and I need to take a break, throw some laundry in the wash and try and stop shaking before I push on. I think I might actually have something to say on the matter with this context.
Memo to self, self care good, first instincts can be trusted.
Okay, um, first up, pretty much what I said above
Second up, to the conversation that actually took place and which was clearly the most important for everyone. Yes, that does indeed highlight an important issue. The way that anger against people who are women ends up gendered, but anger against men isn’t. We are indeed all carefully taught that when we are pissed off at a woman, it’s time for b**** to come out and that’s not right at all. It’s one of the big reasons that I am working to try and excise it and other gendered/problematic slurs out of my vocabulary and train out that automatic learned habit.
And you know what, I’ve been in a similar position of those pointing that out. I’ve called my partner out sometimes when she calls my mom a b**** who “pussied out” because of her anger at the way that my mom doesn’t stand up to my dad and make her own effort to contact me and reconnect with me, even in secret or private and especially the way she jerked me around at a con we both went to and avoided a chance to meet with me but did run my partner all around the world asking for help setting up a meeting and then backing out at the last minute.
That. All. Being. Said.
It physically hurt.
It physically hurt having the life experiences of those like me literally erased out of the conversation in favor of this critique of what an old dude wrote when he was ticked the fuck off.
And you know what? Yeah, SC is right that moral outrage is not an excuse for learned social behavior or the impact it can have. But fuck if having that be the only damn focus of the conversation, if seeing all the outpouring of sympathy and support go to the poor mother who had to suffer a misogynist slur and the disowning by her father didn’t feel like a goddamn punch to my lower stomach that has left me shaking a little.
Oh poor her, what she has suffered, let us all focus and show our concern for her.
Not for the son. Not for the kid who is going to carry that emotional scar so deep it may very well leave a pattern of scars if they don’t lock up the knives well enough.
And you know, I get the reason. People know everyone here and no one here is for disowning so since we all agree on that, let’s discuss the issue where there might be some disagreement. I get it. But…
How it plays…. how it feels reading those words, seeing those arguments, seeing who gets the sympathy and all the words of discouragement getting thrown at the grandpa and the son and nearly none getting thrown at the mother (unless to defend that misogyny isn’t misogyny if it’s I don’t fucking know).
It was all just so unbelievably erasing. Some of us have been disowned. Some of those scars are fucking recent as fuck. And the few people who actually stuck out their neck to keep me from slamming into the floor at Mach 12 have my eternal gratitude. And the sick joke is, my story up thread makes me one of the lucky ones.
I was disowned when I was already living outside the home, with my own apartment and life and friends. I wasn’t 17, trying to figure out where I was going and having all these plans only to be blindsided by that cruelty.
And I’m even luckier that I only know one person who was disowned that way. And I know a few more who got really fucking close. Fundie friends who had to hide their religious drifting or sexuality questions or even political opinions, because if their parents knew, they would very shortly not have a roof over their heads. Hell, my male best friend has had to live homeless a lot of the last year because his parents cut off most forms of support just on the suspicion of what he is now. His sister is terrified into the closet by how her parents and friends will disown her for owning up to the increasingly serious relationship she has with her not-a-girlfriend.
Which I guess brings up the point SC was trying to make, but in another aspect. It’s about splash damage.
It’s about the little things, without meaning of offense or inherited bigotry, a simple slip that makes society what it is and makes a culture feel the way it does. So all the people thinking “oh, we all support disowned queers” and let’s have this conversation about misogyny instead weren’t intending to erase and minimize the actual experiences of those of us who have been disowned by our parents, to erase our experiences and end up creating a culture that feels like it is our fault for daring to be supported or having the gall to be disowned in a way that “breaks up the poor family” with this petty “reaction”.
But that’s the end result of all of it. And it comes through so strong, I feel I am drowning in it just reading it after the fact. And that was created and should be acknowledged too.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s harsh, but it’s just how I feel catching up on that context.
WithinThisMind,
What makes your reading of the post incorrect is the fact that you are misrepresenting what was said.
You claim there were “folks saying that disowning someone for any reason whatsoever is a bad thing.”
This is a claim about reality. It is true or not, depending on whether people did indeed say that disowning someone for any reason whatsoever is a bad thing.
Nobody said that. Therefore your claim is false.
What makes you wrong — the process by which you become wrong — is that you are not taking the care to treat people fairly. You are not making the effort to portray accurately what individuals said. I find that using quotes is very helpful in this regard, because it keeps the other person’s words directly in front of me while I type, so I have to compare what I’m saying to what they said and continually check whether I am being fair. I would suggest you try the same, because so far, when you’re not quoting, you have not succeeded at treating people fairly. So this might be a remedy that works for you, as it works for me.
Every participant is a worthwhile individual who deserves to have their words portrayed accurately. You would not like it if others were doing to you what you are doing. So please try to stop.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, I have seen more condemnations in that post of the grandpa for disowning her than her for disowning the gay kid.
How is that not deeply fucked up?
Cerberus,
This is also a false characterization. You are not treating people here fairly, because you are not making the effort to portray accurately what was said.
It is not okay. It is not okay for you to do this.
Nothing gives you a license to treat people in this way. Nothing makes it okay to just make shit up about people. It’s not okay when people do it to you, and it’s not okay for you to do it to others. You may have come away from that discussion wishing that it had gone a different way, and that is fine, I’m sure we all wish that it had. But that does not make it okay to claim that people said things they didn’t say.
It could be fucked up…
Is it an accurate claim, though? That’s actually important, since it matters that people are treated fairly.
strange gods @231
*Nods sagely.*
I apologize for this, because I do respect you and like you as a friend.
strange gods, that thread @76
No, Chad and Grandpa aren’t here.
But I am there now. And I am a Chad. I’m a queer kid who has been disowned by my parents, someone who resonates with that letter and who softly thinks of the biologicals who got my back and how cool it would have been if say my uncle, instead of ripping into me and telling me what a disappoint I was and how “hard” it is for him and my parents, had actually pulled them aside and said, c’mon dudes, what the fuck or called them on their shit. If… anyone had called them on their shit.
And I’m here now, reading this comment and yeah, not going to erase the person’s pain who reads the slur and is hurt by it, but maybe, just maybe, it’s a little more bearable than the rather poignant real life issue that actually fucking happens to real people who may very well be reading along and are being completely erased by comments like this.
Our pain? Poof. Who cares? We’re not “here”.
That has now become your message to me.
Sigh, as I said, I like you, and I know what you were trying to do. But there’s what you were trying to do and there’s what you have done. And I dunno, it just seemed important to note that.
Do you? Here’s the thing. The people who were being actively, deliberately hurt by vicious attacks against their specific persons, in that thread, were already being hurt right then and there.
It needed to stop, and it needed to stop quickly, because it was already spiraling.
I didn’t disappear you, Cerberus. I attempted a quick intervention into an interpersonal problem in real time with specific victims who were being treated unfairly singled out for blame. If you read that like I had plenty of time to compose it, or that I could take everything into consideration and say everything that ought to be said, you would be assuming far more than was possible. Indeed you are already reading it after the fact.
There’s nothing wrong with what I said. I wish I had time to say more and say everything that was worthwhile to say. I always wish that. But there was nothing wrong with what I did say.
strange gods @233
…
1…2…3…4…5…
Okaaaaaaay. I’m not going to respond in anger. I’m not going to say what I really want to say right now. Or at least, I’m going to try my fucking best, because this comment. This comment? Fuck this comment. Sorry, I’ll try and hold it in.
See, strange gods before me, I’ve got the other thread open right now. I’m reading it. Right now. It’s in a literal separate tab.
So this gaslighting thing you are doing, trying to argue that the words that I am literally reading this very minute are somehow tricks of the light, in the rather grim context of how much gaslighting I have had to put up with this year by those who disowned me and those who discriminated me out of a job and back into the closet… yeah. Kinda, sorta, not cool, just a little, if that makes any sense.
I mean, you do get why this comment (233) is a giant asshole move, right?
Please tell me you do because fuck, I really respect you and know you usually get this shit.
And I’m going to be kind and not even respond to 234 yet other than to reiterate that I have the fucking thread open on the other tab and am in real time actually fucking reading it. You gaslighing piece of… I mean, going to try and drop it and hope that you get this shit.
I mean, look at the timestamps.
If you want to say “That has now become your message to me”, I can’t stop you from that interpretation, but it’s totally unfair to me, because it assumes demigodlike powers I just don’t have.
If I ever compose a blog, or a novel, or a wiki article, and you feel disappeared upon reading it, that would be a fair criticism. I would want to know, and to the extent it’s possible for me to fix those words I would do so.
Nope. I’m telling you you are treating people unfairly because you are not addressing their words accurately.
Find people saying “Oh poor her, what she has suffered, let us all focus and show our concern for her.”
Find people saying it. Quote them. Show that your claims are accurate. You owe that to the people who you are claiming to be paraphrasing.
Misreading people happens. Everybody can do it. It’s also not fair to claim that someone who alleges you are misreading is thereby “gaslighting” you. Gaslighting would mean I’m trying to convince you you’re crazy or something.
I don’t think that.
I think you, for some reason, don’t think that it’s important to try to address other people’s words accurately. If pressed for a motivation, I would assume the most likely: laziness.
I get that (right now) you want to have your portrayals of other people’s words taken at face value, while you don’t treat other people’s words at face value. I wouldn’t assume that you’re always expecting this kind of preferential treatment.
strange gods @238
The fuck?
I shouldn’t have to explain this as if you were some dense troll who doesn’t understand the concept that words can have impacts of minimization and triggering pain for non-intended targets. Fuck, we’ve been elbows locked in the pit together time and time again and yet you approach me like a stranger, hit me with a shitton of gaslighting that is triggering one hell of a nasty bout of internalized bullshit from my discrimination/disowning trauma, and obsess about “fairness” as if you were some freeze peach douchebag playing a game of gotcha.
I’m reading your posts on the other thread and they are cruel. Not snarky, not righteously indignant, just… cruel. Full of picking fights just to pick fights and bullshit games that are more the province of our trolls than someone I know is a fucking badass schooler of idiots.
I feel like I’m talking to a stranger right now and that’s not at all helping the questioning my own sanity bout that you just triggered for me with all that gaslighting bullshit.
I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if I’m missing important context that isn’t on that thread, but this… words fail.
This was supposed to be:
Find people saying [anything like, or anything that amounts to] “Oh poor her, what she has suffered, let us all focus and show our concern for her.”
strange gods @239
You are arguing that the words I am reading right now. Right this second. Are false. Are lies and never existed. That I am making them up because I am lazy and cruel and bad at life.
On what fucking planet is that not gaslighting?
Greedy Bottom Jesus are you being an asshole right now.
@231
I pointed out several of the post numbers. But, if you’d prefer quotes, I can do that too –
“I chafe at the hypocrisy (declaring disownment “unnatural” in one breath and then disowning the offending daughter in the next)”
“not particularly impressed that he would so readily and hypocritically disown his daughter”
I’ll apologize to 26, as zei was in fact, calling the above two out as absurd for equating the two.
But, there are more –
31 – “Which, though it might turn out OK, and I hope it does, is not an especially productive or compassionate approach. Just because his daughter is an adult doesn’t mean that he no longer has any responsibility to help her learn and become a better person, and cutting her off entirely blocks off those avenues. I understand the anger behind this sort of extreme response and the desire to support it, but I think in general this isn’t an approach that people should be cheering off the bat. ”
45 – “Think about if you were writing a manual for grandparents in this situation. Would this be your general advice? I doubt it. In general, it seems callous and unlikely to be productive.”
54 – “But I can’t believe people genuinely think this is the best approach to take if the goal is the best outcome for the people involved rather than the satisfaction of expressing contempt. I definitely think the grandfather is to be admired for taking in his grandson, for supporting him, and for standing up for him with his daughter and telling her how terrible disowning him was. Cutting her off in this way? Not so much.”
Looks pretty clear, with the grandfather being called out for disowning his daughter for her actions and being called a hypocrite for doing so. His action of disowning his daughter for throwing a gay child out was called ‘callous’. His actions are characterized as irresponsible and unproductive because it should apparently still be his job to teach his adult daughter not to throw her gay child out on the street. Reminds me of all the folks who talk about how mean we feminists are unwilling to spend yet another hour of our lives explaining why cat-calling is inappropriate.
So don’t try to rewrite history and gaslight me. I read the thread. As you can see above, I can pull direct quotes to support my characterization of what occurred. To sum up, fuck off.
Thanks; so try to keep in mind that I’m not.
What I’m saying is that while you can take the reading you took from my words, it’s still unfair to me to claim that I was doing something wrong in my comment 76.
Please, think not only about what I was trying to do, but the context of that moment and how quickly everything was happening.
This is still not fair. I am also (because I have to do this in order to be fair) insisting that other people who I’ve locked elbows with (and those I haven’t) are at least portrayed accurately when people dispute their words.
It’s totally fine of course to dispute what people actually said. I would like to see that happen.
No, they aren’t. And if possible, you should try to understand them in context of the ~2 years of bullying I have been the target of here. People here push me around a lot, and I have to “react” with as little emotion as possible or else I will be dogpiled. I am the Pharyngula scapegoat, fair game.
But okay, if you want to claim I was being cruel, just quote some of my words, please, let’s talk about something I actually said.
These contextless, quoteless “summaries” just don’t work well for anyone. They’re not fair to me, and to the extent they continue they will result in a spiral of aggravation for everyone.
Well, yes. I don’t think it’s safe for me to really try to explain, though. I will be singled out again for harassment, just for speaking up in my own defense. Cf. 123.
Cerberus,
No, I’m saying you aren’t portraying them accurately back here. Quotes would really, really help.
Please give me some consideration here. I know for a fact, because we already went through much of this in the previous thread, that one of the authors of the words you’re talking about does not believe the things you are attributing to her. And that she also, like all of us, deserves to be treated fairly.
I know that she would say your words here are inaccurate portrayals of hers.
Which one of you am I to say is wrong? And if I say that one of you is wrong — for the fact is, one of you necessarily must be wrong. You can’t both be right — if I say one of you is wrong, what else can I say about why it’s happening?
You started the accusations against me, you claimed I was gaslighting you. In response, I say I don’t think you’re crazy, I think there is a much more likely explanation for the way you are inaccurately portraying people’s words. Intellectual laziness is more likely.
Okay, you don’t want to be accused of intellectual laziness? I don’t have to ascribe any motive at all. But you ascribed a motive to me already — gaslighting, trying to convince you that you’re crazy — and in response I would just like it to be known that I don’t think that about you. So I offered a more likely alternative explanation..
But still, one of you is wrong, because you can’t both be right. How do you propose I approach such a situation? I am doing my best here to be fair to everyone.
This ought to be a fucking Rule in general.
In this case: nobody expressed any sympathy for the mother. Nobody. At all.
strange gods before me ॐ: Shut the fuck up now.
Oh, screw it. I’m just closing this whole thread until I figure out what I want to do with you pissant pseudo-Spockian nitpicking nuisances.
I’m going to regret this because the usual suspects are just going to go back to their pettifoggery and sniping and demands for volleys of quotes back and forth, and it’s all going to go to shit, but here’s your thunderdome back again.
Next time, I’m coming in with knives.
quackquackquack
PZ:
I shall stand clear. Still immersed in books, anyway.
How about a trained knife-wielding cephalopod?
With lazer beams?
Oooh, yes!
Or a lightsabre-wielding cephalopod.
Lets get the reboot going.
*drops off grog, swill, and popcornz*
sabrepus
OT.
Tuesday’s Daily Show interview with Malala.
The use-age of the phrase “Now, do what you want too.” struck me to the bone.
“the ‘slow blade’ o reasoned argument”!!!??
Watching the interview again, the correct quote is “Now, do what you want.” Still, lands very hard for me.
I’m sorry, PZ.
You’re on the wrong side of this one imo.
But it’s your blog.
“If you thought Darth Maul was badass with the lightsabrestaff…if you thought General Grievous was hell-on-wheels with four light sabres…prepare to be completely overwhelmed by…Sabrepus!!!”
–
<blockquote“If you thought Darth Maul was badass with the lightsabrestaff…if you thought General Grievous was hell-on-wheels with four light sabres…prepare to be completely overwhelmed by…Sabrepus!!!”
::laughs evilly::
(well, I’d like to think it sounded evil)
Oh poop, blockquote fail. Try again:
::laughs evilly::
(well, I’d like to think it sounded evil)
I thought Darth Maul was bad-ass indeed, but I thought General Grievous was annoying and offensive. George Lucas lost his shit somewhere … did he not hear old Obi-Wan say the light-saber was a dignified and classic weapon, not a goddam freak toy?
… too quiet …
@ChasCPeterson
I directly suggested that you should stay out of the Lounge. I stand by that and I’ll repeat it again; if you can’t follow the rules of the Lounge, then don’t post there.
People often come to the Lounge for support and to discuss sensitive topics in an environment where they don’t have to worry about people giving them shit. As a result, you don’t need to know their background. If they’re posting in the Lounge, you should start from the assumption that this is a sore spot and comment with care.
The Lounge is explicitly meant as a safe place. Phrase your comments accordingly or just stay out. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable standard.
PZ:
It’s our last best hope for peace, though. People have misunderstood each other in complex ways and therefore consider each other evil. Putting a lid on that won’t help, it’ll just delay the eruption. The only thing I can see that can be done is to tease the whole thing apart.
Chas:
There aren’t two sides here. In fact, there isn’t even a countable number of sides.
Nerd of Redhead:
Good. I’d like to know, though, if you’ve understood what so many people here have against sexist slurs, and if you’ve understood that this is orthogonal to insulting people.
Cerberus:
As I wrote: I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t like to point out the obvious when nobody contests it. Everybody seems to have taken for granted that the grandpa is Not Good.
sgbm:
Wow.
Is there no such thing as an honest misreading on your planet? What makes you infer a malicious motivation? I don’t get it.
I don’t get it any more than I get why PZ said you were “skating on thin ice” when you really did not talk about “B-word”.
I think Darth Maul could have been bad-ass, but they got so caught up in how bad-ass he was supposed to be that they forgot to give him a character. They were all about the martial arts moves and double-bladed light-saber, but they forgot to give him any lines or personality.
Come to think of it, they did that a lot in those movies. Almost as if some self-important buffoon wrote the script and nobody dared to tell him that it sucked.
*headdesk* That the mother is Not Good, of course. *headdesk*
+ 1
OMG, it’s alive and I haven’t noticed immediately!
Yep.
Yes, people are against sexist slurs. Normally I am too.
But there is a time and place for everything, including the judicious use of a sexist slurs in a private communication to make your point very clear. Every suggestion to change the wording turned it from a solid communication with a visceral 9/10 into a mealy-mouthed 3/10. Which is why nothing anybody can say will change my mind on that. Not being allowing to think for oneself what is appropriate in context means the PC/thought police have taken your freedom to choose your speech away, and that was my main complaint above.
Nerd:
Every time you use the term “PC thought police” to defend your support of sexism, I think less of you. You’re wrong on this. Whether the derail was a bad thing or not, you are dead wrong. What’s frustrating, is that I’m pretty sure you know you’re wrong. Because lots of people have explained why. All you got is “visceral” and “PC thought police”. For your own sake, cut it out.
Really? That letter to you would be mealy-mouthed without the use of ‘B-word’?
The awesome passion and righteous anger of the Grandfather would shine through if we removed that line entirely, let alone merely replacing ‘B-word’ with the proferred ‘Asshole’.
Sounds scary.
Let me find my tinfoil hat.
Holes, how do they work?
Nerd.
Answer my question.
Is it appropriate to call my African-American daughter in law a n*gger if it was used to shock because of context?
Really. When’s a good time for me to promote racism? To fight misogyny?
When’s a good time for me to promote sexism? to fight racism?
That is, in a very real sense of the word, zero-sum if it works.
Lily to Control:
Subject has grasped veil. Requesting clearance for CnD procedure 215.
#279, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
Shut the fuck up. You are making a stupid and utterly indefensible argument.
I’m serious. If this thread boils over again with endless recriminations and finger pointing and fussing over quotes, I’m not going to close the thread again — I’m going to use it as an opportunity to slice out chronic annoyances from the commentariat. Everyone stop and think.
Because this is the Thunderdome!
In case anyone was curious, I’m pretty sure the person who made the coffee in the office today took part in the Spanish Inquisition.
They brought a comfy chair?
Unexpectedly?
LykeX
My understanding is that he originally had more lines, but Lucas had a spat with the actor who was due to play him, and rather than find someone else, they just put his makeup on the fight choreographer and wrote most of his lines out.
I didn’t say there were two, nor did I specify any other integer number of sides. The point remains that our esteemed cephalopodian host is pretty obviously taking a side, and in my opinion it’s in the wrong.
LyleX, I didn’t violate any “rules of The Lounge”. Yes, it’s in part a safe space etc., but it’s also supposed to be the place for recipe-swapping and general chit-chat. And that’s all my comment was supposed to be: jokey chit-chat. Now, I acknowledge that intent is not magic, and that’s why I apologized unreservedly to thunk. But on the other hand, you don’t get to impose your misinterpretation on me as if it was legitimate. If you’re a
threadcopMonitor, you have the right to attempt to enforce Rulez, but you do not have any right to command me not to post in that thread or any other. You just don’t. It’s not your blog. It’s not even your Lounge.Who is LyleX?
Who is Tpyos?
A long reply to David Marjanović
ChasCPeterson #295
When you put something someone said into blockquotes, do you type the whole thing or do you copy/paste the words?
A libertarian Taxi
I never claimed to have any authority to command you to do or not do anything at all. I never claimed that this was my blog or that I held any power whatsoever, not even that of a Monitor. I will however speak my mind and I have the right to do that unless PZ says otherwise.
You apologized and that’s good. All I’m really getting at is that you should be especially careful when posting in the Lounge. If you can do that, then we’re cool. If you can’t do that, then I very much will recommend that you don’t post there.
That’s not specific to you, by the way, it’s a general rule.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ, what does it take for some peoples to get a clue? Drop it. Move on. Life’s short. All that.
Rev. BDC:
How was the coffee bad, too strong, too weak? I’ll cope better with bad coffee that’s strong, but I can’t cope with weak coffee. Mister’s idea of coffee is more coffee-flavoured water, drives me bats.
Okay, new topic: If you were charged with coming up with a new name for the color “red”, what would it be?
Definitely strong coffee here. In a pinch, though, just coffee. Anything that’ll drive down the blood-level in my caffeine-stream.
shitty and too weak.
I’m a black coffee drinker and weak black coffee is like a ride in the Brazen Bull (not really).
It’s so shitty. I bring my own to work from home but i drank it all and was in dire need of a refill.
LykeX:
Incarnadine.
Rev. BDC:
Aargh, blech, spit. Weak coffee is the worst. I usually drink tea,* but I like coffee now and then, and I expect it to be actual coffee, not water.
*Also strong. Very strong.
Strong black coffee, no milk.
Erm, let’s all ignore how I’m repeating repeating myself in the above comment. I’m having a case of stupid this evening.
Beatrice, you were just emphasizing.
@Caine
Nice. I wasn’t familiar with that word. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it’s used in Macbeth, but I don’t remember it.
LykeX:
Mara (the first ‘a’ pronounced like the ‘a’ in car). This is what popped into my head immediately and it is almost certainly because my synesthesia sees ‘m’s and ‘a’s as bold reds. ‘R’ is purple, but in this word it fits with the other colors to me.
LykeX
It’s from the handwashing scene
(And all I keep thinking of are variations of “rouge.” I obviously suck at making new words up.)
Caine,
I should have gone with
Strong black coffee, no milk, lots of caffeine.
so there’s absolutely no confusion. :)
Is there some particular reason that the makers of baby food can’t come up with a seal which will open easily and cleanly? FFS, baby food is messy enough already.
SC: I can’t seem to comment on your blog post. Is there something special that I need to do? I have both a gmail and a WordPress account. If these are piling up in moderation, please accept my apology.
AE, blogspot always gives me problems when it comes to commenting. You’ll probably have to enable third party cookies, and do a hard refresh (hold down shift key, then refresh), and if you run no script, enable blogspot entirely, hard refresh again.
LykeX:
I love the word incarnadine, I use it at every possible opportunity, which don’t arise easily. If it wasn’t to be incarnadine, I’d go with something in the sanguine family, what with the blood stuff. Red is my favourite colour, which is immediately apparent to anyone walking into my house.
Beatrice:
Yes, no doubt whatsoever, like a good cuppa coffee. :D
Caine: Thanks! Will try.
*stomps in*
TEA, goddammit. Hot, strong, and straight. Not coffee.
Carlie:
ABSOLUTELY. I do not function without copious amounts of tea. Doesn’t mean I don’t like a cuppa coffee now and then.
Cherry Coke. Straight from the bottle!
Ogvorbis:
Aargh, no, poison, certain death. No, no, no.
Caine:
I drink tea, also. Especially peach ginger tea.
Drank coffee in the Army. When I got out, I tried to drink it but it never tasted ‘right’ (for a demented definition of right).
Ogvorbis:
Okaaay. I keep PG Tips, Tetley, and Yorkshire Gold in the house.
Goddammit, what are you people babbling about all this unimportant nonsense for? Don’t you get it?
I’M OUT OF ICE!
Get your priorities straight, people.
WithinThisMind:
Sending ice through the USB. To get it to flow, though, I had to melt it, so you’ll still have to refreeze the thawedice when it gets there. Sorry.
Annnnnnnddddd……..
One Classic Gin Martini, please, double, two olives and a twist.
Thank you. That is all.
hot strong black coffee in the AM
cold hoppy ale in the PM
water in between
who gives a shit
Morgan:
Speaking of poisons…
Caine,
Hubby calls it “drinking perfume.” Urg.
To each hir own. Now vodka, yetch, won’t go near it.
Morgan, Mister loves gin. I’ve tried, I can’t stand the stuff. In fairness, I can’t stand most hard liquor. Never developed a taste for it. I do like a good quality vodka, but I can’t drink it anymore, sends my pancreas into a fit. I have been able to go back to having a glass of wine once or twice a week, which I’m so happy about. I love wine.
Caine,
Agreed on the wine. The first “real drink” I had (other than sips of my father’s crummy beer) was a glorious deep dark red called Petit Syrah. It was love at first taste.
From the Departments of Whovia and Sentences I Didn’t Expect to Read Today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24467337
60s DW is much too early for me, but as a daily Tube traveller, it’s good to know someone took care of the robot yeti.
cm’s changeable moniker:
Re: The Who-pisodes. Are you sure this is not some kind of scam to get your bank accounts?
Caine @325: Ah, PG Tips. Memories of TV ads with chimps.
cm @334: The Web of Fear. Oh, Troughton!
Obviously, a plot to overwhelm old farts with nostalgia. Luckily, no-one mentioned the best ever Doctor Who serial, or Top of the Pops, or Flower Pot Men, or I’d be blubbering into my vodka. Weeeed!
I used to live on coffee, made about as black as I could get it without forming a black hole.
But I sort of fell out of habit when I went over to Denmark so now I mostly drink green or black tea for my caffeine boost when I need it.
You are saying there is something wrong with Denmark ?
Heh. I’m one of the really weird subset of people who can use caffeine as a mood stabilizer.
So it’s coffee in the morning, coffee during the day, and coffee right before I go to sleep.
I quit drinking coffee because I have a bad belly. I drink loads of tea instead. I like the black teas and especially those infused with yerba mate. And I especially love the 滇紅工夫茶, which I am guzzling right now in a very anti-gongfu style*, because I must write an exam.
*Guzzling. Out of a Davy Crockett mug that I bought at the Alamo.
Rob @336 – I can just remember Flower Pot Men (Weed! Weed!). Also The Banana Splits, the Magic Roundabout, Kimba the White Lion, Marine Boy, Adventure Island (for any Aussie old farts reading) …
Wasn’t Web of Fear the story where Lethbridge-Stewart and Benton were introduced? I read the book years ago, never saw the show, tho’.
Trivia: the design of the Yeti was changed a bit for this serial to make them thinner and taller, to make them scarier. The feedback from their first story was that kids thought they looked cuddly! :D
Book recommendation: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss.
“Eye-opener” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Rob:
:D I have one of the PG Tips sock monkeys. It’s good to have friends in the UK.
I remember The Banana Splits and Kimba the White Lion. I have vague memories of loving Kimba.
yubal:
How in the fuck would anything Cerberus said imply something wrong with Denmark? Places and cultures are different, you know.
Nightshade Queen:
If I’m quick enough, really strong coffee can help me head off a migraine. Unlike most people though, coffee doesn’t do anything for me energy wise.
Is it ok to really like the smell of coffee, but not the taste?
Ha! Kimba.
Speed Racer, anyone?
H.R. Pufenstuf?
dog help me: Winky Dink?
Tony. Sure, I like the smell … but drink it only as a cream and sugar (and caffeine) delivery device.
What is it with advertisers and stereotypes? Are they really that unimaginative?
A friend’s company threw a ton of money at some advertisers. This is what they came up with – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C16jQaeGsoE&feature=youtu.be
:::headdesk::::
yubal @338
Ha ha, nah. My coffee maker was too big to pack and the space I had for my kitchen space was super small and compact so it never made sense to get a new one and I inherited a kettle from someone who moved out really early on.
So more blame space and laziness for it than anything else.
Still love the taste of a good black coffee, but I’m far more likely to drink tea at home because my habits got retrained and so I haven’t felt the need to buy a new maker.
Which, hey, better for my stomach, certainly to turn coffee into an occasional treat instead of the legal drug habit it used to be.
Chas:
I remember all of those.
Mighty Mouse.
Dudley Do-Right.
Snidely Whiplash.
Muttley.
Underdog!
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
The Magic Boomerang
yes, I am Canadian
so
The Forest Rangers
Razzle Dazzle
Danger Mouse
Čudesna šuma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elm-Chanted_Forest)
(Wrong decade? Wrong continent?)
OK
Thierry la Fronde
Turtle Boy!
(Dedicated to Chas.)
Is that you?
Caine @345 – my bff is the same re: coffee helping against migraines if she’s quick enough. Don’t know if it helps with her tension headaches.
and @351: I just remember Dudley Do-Right, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Whacky Races, yay! Not to mention The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
chigau @352 – gad, Skippy and the Magic Boomerang had an overseas market? Wonders will never cease. :D
Chas @347 – I remember one episode of Speed Racer, or one scene from it, rather, and it still freaks me out: they were somewhere in South America and a jumped from a tree (aiming at the car?) missed, and ended up in the river – and was eaten by pirahna in a moment. They showed the swarm and then the skeleton. That’s about as horrible a cartoon moment as I’ve seen, even worse than the moment in The Adventures of Superman where “the Pernicious Parasite” explodes because he’s absorbed Superman’s energy and an earth-man’s body can’t contain it.
Kimba I adored. It was a harsh moment when all I could find on YouTube were clips from the remake, instead of the original.
I loved H R Pufnstuff!
@ chigau
Hey, I don’t have blond hair and a shell!
Coffee?
Strong, with lots of milk and a side-serving of lactase, since it turns out that lactose intolerance is a fairly common result of Hashimoto’s disease. Yay. And lactose-free milk is an abomination
I love tea, but coffee is my caffeine – both because I like it and because I can’t drink tea on an empty stomach but can drink coffee. I have the coffee-maker next to where I sleep so I can have the first cup without getting up. There’s something so exceedingly comforting about waking in the middle of the night and smelling the ground coffee.
Does anyone else know Upton Tea Imports? They have a white tea that I love. I used to do a big order once in a while with a boss I had; she favored Assam, and I favored Darjeeling, and when the order came in we’d sample all each other’s teas and then not relax for a while.
Tea-drinker me, and I learned to drink it like my Granddad taught me, what he called “the Regimental Sergeant-Major’s tea”: hot, weak, and as much sugar and milk as you can stick in it.
“Ef the spoon’s no standin’, yon tea’s no grand’un.”
He was a company sergeant-major in the Argylls in the war, and in North Africa, he says, he got used to the tea that they could have in the Desert Rats, namely tea used over and over and over again until it was barely worth the name. Since we were fairly poor, re-using tea was a feature of my growing-up, and I got used to the weakish/sweet-milky flavour.
Caffeine delivery, though, is via Coke for me. Not Pepsi, not Diet Coke, not Cherry (shudder) Coke, just Coke. When they brought out New Coke, I spent four hours’ worth of my meager wage (I was making 2.15/hour, the minimum wage for students, in my high-school after school job) on the “Please bring back Coke Classic” phone line, at 50 cents a go. I can identify Pepsi or Diet Coke by blind taste test as not being my Coke.
In part, this is because I spend my days taking powerful narcotics for my pain condition, which means I would be a drowsy numpty if I didn’t have a serious caffeine intake. This can take the form of about four to six cans’ worth a day, with some occasionally replaced by tea if the weather’s right.
Coffee-stink makes me nauseous, and the taste is worse, so I avoid it utterly.
theophontes
nono
The guy with the beard.
@ chigau
Perhaps a distant Spanish relative? The Phontes family is large. The Ming vases are a dead giveaway.
Caine @ 344: I inferred a joke in there. “You don’t like my beverage of choice? I think your country must be malfunctioning.”
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Vatican pulls papal medal which misspelt name of Jesus…
Typos: 1, Christianity: 0
To lighten your day and for your edification, un chiste:
A man takes his pet duck to the vet. After examining the duck the vet pronounces it dead. The man refuses to believe this and asks for further tests. So, the vet brings in a dog and the dog sniffs around the duck for a while and then walks out. “There you are” says the vet, “The duck is dead. The man still refuses to believe it, so the vet brings in a cat. The cat sniffs around the duck and like the dog, walks out. “I’m sorry but the duck is dead” says the vet. “OK”, says the man, “I guess I have to accept that. How much do I owe you.” 100€” says the vet. “What!” says the man, 100€ for a that!” “Well ” says the vet, “It would have been 20€ but you insisted on the Lab report and the Cat-scan.
Tony: I love the smell of good coffee, but drink coffee only medicinally (trying to avoid falling asleep at my desk in that crucial 8-to-10 a.m. time slot). Mind you, I’ve drank good coffee a couple of times, but what I use is shitty old Folger’s Crystals, heavy on the fake creamer, stevia, and add a shot of hazelnut syrup.
–
I remember Kimba! It was Sister2’s favorite cartoon, she being 3 at the time.
–
I also remember Danger Mouse. Loved it!
–
CaitieCat:
So can The Husband. He becomes belligerent if he is served Pepsi under the assumption that it is “just like Coke”. And New “Coke” was a blasphemy of the highest order!
–
Daz:
Lesus, eh? Hee. Wish I had one of those, they are going to be worth serious money.
Caine
[Insert pun about the Lord being lust and giving here.]
Daz @366:
It’s Tpyos, danmit!
@370:
Not to mention, “Thou Shalt Commit Audultery!”
Ogvorbis
Audultery
There’s the old joke about Catholics, where a theologian bursts into the rectory and announces “It was a mistake! The translation was wrong! It says celebrate, not celibate!”
There’s the kid whose mum asked her why she called her teddy-bear “Gladly.”
“Well, his eyes are sewed on wrong, and there’s that hymn we sing in church…”
Mum, looking puzzled, “Hymn?”
“Yes, Gladly my cross-eyed bear.”
Daz, I cannot believe you just Rick Rolled me.
Go to the Spunking Couch. Now.
Oh, and All Hial Tpyos!!
We aim two peas.
I thought it was, “We blame two peas”?
*groan*
And on the subject of bad jokes, somebody just added to my furniture-themed music post: Carol King, Sofa Away.
I know, I’m supposed to be staying off the Internet, but …
From the Department of How Many People Did You Invite to the Party?!
J-Lube Powder Mix-with-Water Lubricant – Makes Approx. 6-8 Gallons
o.O
I blame (TotallySFW): GIANT BUBBLE EXPLOSIONS
Aside: The budgie is joining in with the bubbles soundtrack. I can make him start and stop chirping with a click of a button.
I CONTROL THE BIRD!!!1!!11!
Do not click related videos. Do not click related videos. Do not click related videos. Do not click related videos. Do not click rela… Oh damn. That’s me watching FX videos for the next hour.
Ah. The MDP understands sharing the same way that Tea Party Republicans understand sharing — what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. I got it.
And that was in the wrong thread. Sorry.
cm:
Why?
Because points 3, 4, and 5. ;-)
# 350 Cerberus
Newsflash. You do not need a “coffee maker” to make coffee!
The turkish way is the least complicated, the italian cofee maker is about the size of an american coffee cup, or you can simply stick a filter in a funnel and let it rinse through into your cup.
Also, you can boil tea and coffee the same time to get the most out of you hot liquid treat.
Is anyone watching Bill Maher?
This has nothing to do with him. The republicans on the panel are making a complete ass of themselves.
Chris MF’N Matthews is actually making sense. A shit load of sense
Although Oliver Stone is now on. …
I trust him on history about as much as David Barton
ok
More that Barton
somewhat
So many *hugs* for JAL. But at least you made some of those people aware; that’s a gain, right there. You made them think.
It is a Significant Impact.
And you are right to be proud of it.
–
You blame toupées?
I’ll grant you that the Shatner Turbo 2000™ was blame-worthy on its own “merits”, and a Thing of Horror Forever, but I don’t believe that it was ever implicated in the mass disappearance of cheeses.
–
I don’t remember who or what thread but THANK YOU for pointing out the ‘A Girl and Her Fed’ web comic.
[xpost with the other Thread]
That’s my kind of coffee, everything out of a coffee maker is just a poor substitute or necessary evil.
While I admit that the filter-in-a-funnel coffee is technically probably better, what I like about my coffee maker is that all I have to do to have coffee in the morning is reach one arm over there and push a button. And if I have a few of those individual UHT creamers that come home with me from trivia nights because the server brings three of ’em with every refill, I can even have coffee with cream.
Normal coffee for me is one creamer or blob of milk in the first cup, more coffee poured in when cup half-empty with no additional dairy products. That reminds me that around here if you order a “regular” coffee it comes with sugar and cream. Is that what it means everywhere in the U.S. and, if not, what does ordering a “regular” get you elsewhere?
I….still don’t know how I can pull off freshly ground coffee in the morning, but apparently I can make freshly ground coffee while half-awake.
I usually will transfer an entire pot’s worth [apprx 5 cups] into a thermos for the day; I may make another in the afternoon.
And yes, coffee should be as dark as sin, with no milk or sugar. Cinnamon and honey acceptable only when sick
I drink coffee only if someone else gets me a doubledouble.
Tea for me and lots of it.
*sets down a freshly brewed cup of turkish coffee*
Mmm
Nightshadequeen
You have my undying respect for that. One of the biggest challenges I face in the morning is to make coffee before having had coffee.
Mind you, I have one of those fancy Senseo machines where it’s really easy, but I’ve fucked up any one of the four parts:
1.) No water in the tank. I stand there for 5 minutes wondering why it doesn’t work
2.) Fresh pads. I managed both to use the old pads as well as using none.
3.) Closing the lid. And it’s amazing how long I stood there watching the water sprinkle out of the top before I realized that this was wrong
4.) Putting a mug underneath. Yes, I’ve even managed to forget that.
I’m currently training the kids to make me some coffee
I’m more of a tea drinker than coffee, but I’ll occasionally make some cold brewed coffee so I can dole it out as necessary. Then I’ll have it black or else use it for iced coffee with condensed milk. Mmm.
I stopped watching sometime during Tom Baker’s era, and Patrick Troughton ([namedrop] who was with my dad in the Royal Navy during WWII [/namedrop]) was my favourite Doctor; as for the young whippersnappers they cast these days – pfft.
From cm’s link:
I wonder if the numpties who wiped the tapes ever realized what they’d done?
Caffeine sources: I used to drink 6 or so mugs of strong black unsweetened coffee a day (and like Caine@345, I could use it to abort an incipient migraine). These days it’s 2-3, because if I drink it later than mid-afternoon, it disturbs my sleep; I grind the beans by hand. Fortunately, the migraines have pretty much gone – apparently one of the compensations of aging, for some. Tea is always Earl Grey when possible, weak, sometimes with milk, sometimes without. I found out a couple of years ago that I’m maybe not supposed to drink it (no clear advice found on the web), as bergamotin potentiates statins – this is why statin users are warned off grapefruit – but since I’m on a low dose statin taken at night, and don’t drink tea in the evening, I’ve stopped worrying about it.
Coke? Shit-coloured, and flavour appropriate to the colour.
Nick:
Yeah, that’s happened with me, which makes getting slammed with one even worse these days, because I’m not used to getting them all the time.
Briefly delurking…
Speaking of coffee (and even if it’s too expensive, it has an amusingly hyperbolic name and narrative):
http://funraniumlabs.com/the-black-blood-of-the-earth/
Is cold-brewed coffee really generally less bitter and/or burnt-tasting than hot-brewed?
Owlmirror:
That was an entertaining read. Thanks. I’m afraid that level of caffeine would make my heart explode these days. Getting older is a drag in many a way.
Owlmirror: I find it to be less bitter. The taste is more appealing to my palate, but YMMV. I also dilute it down when I do cold-brew.
It was standard BBC practice at the time. Tape is expensive. Tapes can be re-used. Ergo…
Also, TV was very probably considered a temporal and inferior media in those days (at least by the powers-that-feckup), and certainly not art, and rarely worth archiving.
I speculate the fads (even back then) regarding some TV shows reinforced that “elitist” attitude. Dr Who itself was an early craze in the UK, fueled largely by the original Dalek episode.
yubal @386
Oh I know that. It’s just the way I was used to when I was a coffee addict, so when that pattern got uprooted, I just sort of ended up migrating to tea, which has ended up a lot healthier for me overall.
I still enjoy the taste of coffee as a sometimes drink instead of being inches away from injecting it into my veins and when I do I tend to make the cup turkish style.
I feel it’s a healthier relationship with the drug than what I had.
I can’t stand cold-brew, myself. Coffee needs to be hot to be palatable.
Mmm, I quite like iced coffee in the summertime, but I brew the coffee hot, and it’s poured into a tall glass of ice. Pouring it down the length of the spoon is the trick to not cracking the glass. (Ice Tea spoons are best, they are very long.)
NightShadeQueen, there’s no reason why cold-brew coffee has to be served cold. Iced coffee is something else entirely, though it does work nicely with cold-brew for those who enjoy iced coffee. I normally mix my cold-brew concentrate with hot water. Milk is also especially nice, to get that creaminess without making it more diluted than a normal cup of coffee. My method is basically the same as this one.
I do love cold brewed coffee for the summers- where I’m from we call it Toddy. I’ve been strictly french press for the mornings until this year, when I got a fancy German coffee maker that is french press quality. Between the press and the machine, the electric kettle, and the burr grinder my coffee making equipment takes up a whole counter!
I love black tea, but the tannins upset my stomach. I recently discovered genmaicha tea, which is a blend of green tea and roasted rice. It smells like puffed wheat cereal, and I just have to remember not to drink it within 6 hours of bedtime.
Coffee is one of my favorite things. I like it very strong with sugar and lots of half and half. In hot summer weather I make coffee ice cubes, so as not to dilute my iced coffee. Sometimes I add in a shot of chocolate syrup before adding the ice, and then it tastes like a dark chocolate milkshake.
Ah, that seems interesting.
I’ll occasionally make coffee-flavored LN2 ice cream, which involves mixing one part brewed coffee to two parts cream, with sugar to taste. Then freeze with liquid nitrogen :D
Might try cold-brewed in that, to see if it’s any better. [We’ve tried instant in cream+milk before, to avoid diluting the ice cream mix too much with water, but frankly instant tastes horrid]
Tethys,
I was informed my my mormon sister in law that the rule about caffeine is not actually about caffeine, and that the reason why mormons don’t drink coffee, tea or hot chocolate is because tannins are bad for you. She then asked me if I wanted to put the stuff they cure leather with in my stomach. I’ve heard this switch is a PR move to make cola drinking kosher.
Tethys, I love genmaicha. Nothing else tastes like it. I barely remember discovering it, that was back when I was still in SoCal, and used to shop in Little Tokyo quite a lot. Lovely stuff.
Caine,
I was at my local pet store recently, and went to check out the small furry mammals. There right in front of me was a rat having baby ratties! They were so tiny and pink, and she was still having them, right there against the glass. It was amazing, and made me think of you.
Oh, genmaicha is lovely stuff. Just the smell of it, opening a bag – it smells like breakfast.
Yazikus:
Aaaw, sweet little momma. It is a little freaky, the ratlets looking so unbaked when they pop out. I hope the pet store people do right by mom, and give her an appropriate place to hide the babes. Rats seriously stress over having their babies exposed.
Ledasmom @ 414, it is, ennit? One of the most comforting drinks I’ve ever come across.
Oooh, a beverage discussion! I drink black coffee, usually one to two mugs in the morning. When living alone I usually use a cafetiere, though I do also have a coffee machine in my new flat (my parents’ old one, as they recently invested in a Tassimo). Over-coffeeing can make me feel ill, though. In the evenings I tend to drink green tea, or rosehip-and-hibiscus tea. The taste of milk is an abomination, so I never drink anything with milk. (I even eat cereal dry.)
I also drink Diet Coke rather frequently, although less than I used to. And when living in the States I became briefly addicted to Diet Mountain Dew, there being a vending machine opposite my dorm room which stocked it. (Which until recently was not available in the UK, but W H Smith now sells sugar-free Mountain Dew, though it’s not generally worth going to the effort of getting any.)
Walton:
Have you tried using fruit juice? Unfiltered, organic apple juice can be delicious on cereal.
It has been a while since I have done this.
Cigarettes And Coffee-Otis Redding
Black Coffee-Black Flag
Dog Coffee-Ani DiFranco
Black Coffee In Bed-Squeeze
Janine
Curtis Gordon – Caffeine And Nicotine
Glen Glenn – One Cup Of Coffee (And A Cigarette)
Yazikus
I can only shake my head at that line of reasoning. Huh? Tannins are in lots of things that people eat. Nuts and berries spring immediately to mind.
Caine
Yes, it is lovely I like Kukicha too, and it is very low in caffeine. I was overjoyed when I recently found bulk genmaicha at a small Vietnamese herb and tea shop.
That led to an odd conversation with the shop owner, where he politely and apologetically tried to stop me from buying it, and I apologized for the horrible behavior of my fellow Minnesotans.
We had a nice chat about racism and teas, and he is going to try and source bulk kukicha for me!
Ugh. This is terrible: a summary of the provisions of the new immigration bill here in the UK. Among other things, the bill will make it illegal for landlords to rent housing to undocumented people, and for banks to allow undocumented people to open accounts. It also stops undocumented people getting driving licences. The cumulative effect of these provisions will likely be to push more undocumented people further into destitution and create more suffering.
The bill also does various other nasty things. It restricts appeal rights in various ways. It introduces a policy of “deport first, appeal later” for foreign criminals whose human rights claims are certified as unfounded – which will likely lead to more people being deported in breach of their human rights, to places where they face danger and/or will be permanently separated from their families. (Remember that some of these “criminals” are guilty only of immigration offences such as using false papers to work illegally – a victimless crime, and one which people often have to commit in order to survive.) It will also require courts, in deciding whether someone’s deportation would be a disproportionate interference with their right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to discriminate against poorer people and those who don’t speak English.
Also, check out Life Without Papers, a powerful new blog by a journalist writing about the real lives of undocumented families living in Britain. These are the human beings who will be hurt by the Tories’ policies.
A thought-provoking passage from “Borderline Justice: The Fight for Refugee and Migrant Rights” by retired immigration barrister and campaigner Frances Webber.
The book – which I would recommend to anyone – goes into great detail about the ways in which British immigration law persecutes asylum-seekers. The use of visa requirements and carrier sanctions to stop those fleeing persecution from getting here in the first place, forcing many to enter illegally through dangerous clandestine means. The brutal immigration detention system, including the practice of holding asylum-seekers on the “detained fast track” while their cases are rushed through the system. The farcical adjudications, and the hyperskepticism of caseworkers and judges who refuse to believe asylum-seekers’ accounts of the trauma and persecution they suffered. And the violence involved in deportations. I would encourage everyone in the UK interested in immigrants’ rights issues to buy this book.
So, Walton…if you ever wanted to do a guest post on immigration, you should just send me something.
That would be great! Thank you. I’ll put together a post tomorrow.
One cup of coffee – Robert M
One more cup of coffee – Robert Z
Nick Gotts @398:
Sorry. I was attempting humour (the Nigerian email scams?). My bad.
Caine:
What type of cereal are you adding the juice to?
Tony, multigrain type cereal. We have several boxes of Kashi in the house right now. Basically, whatever Mister buys.
According to a fairly recent article in The Salt Lake Tribune, the whole don’t-drink-caffine business is a long-standing but apparently incorrect interpretation of the ban on “hot drinks” in one of the many wHoly Made Up Books. The most recent “official” interpretation is those two words are a ban on coffee and tea, and nothing else. Hot chocolate is Ok (so the sister-in-law is mistaken), as are the various colas (soda pops). Not sure about iced coffee or tea.
I have no idea what earlier, if any, “official” interpretation(s?) of “hot drinks” were.
The tannins hypothesis is amusing. A ban on tannins neatly covers tea and wine. But not coffee per se (albeit trace amounts have apparently been found). The “tannin” in coffee is Chlorogenic acid, which is really a so-called pseudo-tannin, and — this is what makes the whole tannins ban really amusing — Chlorogenic acid is not used in tanning.
Adding to that amusement, other foods and drinks with (real, not pseudo) tannins include chocolate, fruit juices, nuts, many smoked foods, most legumes (beans…), and some spices and herbs. (List from Ye Pfttt! of All Knowledge.) I don’t know, but seriously doubt, that all of those foods and drinks are also banned.
And finally, what robust evidence is there that tannins are a health risk. That is far outside my area of expertise, but the impression I have (from a very quick search) is… None. Nothing suggesting they are “bad” (in moderation, obviously), and a few hints that certain tannins in certain circumstances may be “good” (but the evidence is apparently weak).
I have no idea if the moronic cult really has a ban on consuming tannins, or the sister-in-law also made that up.
I can tell you from personal experience that consumption of lots of tannins will interfere with your ability to digest protein. But you’ll not likely do it twice.
Course not! You’ve just turned your GI tract into leather, dontchaknow.
Actually, the craze predated the Daleks. The very first episode was repeated a week after its first showing due to the demand from kids who’d heard about it from their friends. I saw the repeat: Dr. Who (William Hartnell) kidnapped two schoolteachers who had followed his granddaughter back to the Tardis. The first adventure took place among “cavemen”, and gave me a nightmare. The first Dalek adventure came immediately after that.
Ogvorbis@427,
A bit po-faced of me, perhaps, to respond as I did, but I imagine Nigerians must be pretty sick of email scam jokes.
I saw that episode a month and a half ago.
This granddaughter… everything about her screamed “1960s”. Her clothes, her music, her movements, her very face! Nobody has looked like that in fifty years!
Perhaps. The first part of the four-part first episode was originally broadcast on 23 November 1963 (the day after JFK was shot), and was repeated a week later, on 30 November, apparently just before the second part. It’s never been clear to me if the repeat broadcast was planned or was due to demand, and I have no idea if any of the other three parts were rebroadcast at the time. (Whilst verifying those dates, I learned the first episode was then never(?) rebroadcast again until 1991.) I concur — and did not say otherwise — the craze started before the first Dalek episode.
The original Dalek episode, The Daleks, was indeed the second episode broadcast, in seven parts, starting in December 1963. During or after this second episode (which is also credited with saving Dr Who, which was in danger of being canceled due to high costs despite the respectable ratings) is when the craze — commonly known as “Dalekmania” — exploded.
I’ve seen a BBC-produced documentary claiming The Daleks happened to be the only episode ready for filming (at the time), much to the disgust of the producer(?) who apparently hated it. (Whilst trying to verify that, I learned the tapes were saved at the last minute by “film collector Ian Levine, who discovered in 1978 that older episodes of Doctor Who were being junked… Coincidentally, he arrived the day that all seven episodes of The Daleks were scheduled to be junked, and when he learned of this, he contacted the BBC Archive Selector…[who] then issued an order which stopped the junking of older material“.)
As far as I know, even in William Hartnell’s day, the name of doctor was not known. He was just “The Doctor”. Dr Who is the name of the series, and not (as far as is known) that of the Time Lord.
Nick Gotts:
Yeah. Sorry.
The only reason I thought of it was that there was one sitting in my inbox. I’ll try to avoid stereotyping humour. Not saying I’ll succeed, but I’ll be trying.
Nick Gotts: you may be interested in my guest post, since I recall we discussed this issue a while back.
Chiming in to say I **love** genmai tea.
I’m a heavy tea drinker. For those who don’t like the tannins but like black tea:
There is a category of teas, pu-er/pu-ehr/ puerh/ bu-er/ etc. that are amazing and gloriously low in tannins.
They are initially processed (into green teas, black teas, or oolongs – white teas could be used, but aren’t, at least historically, and oolongs are very rarely used) then while still wet, mold spores are stirred in to the mess of leaves. The leaves are then left to “age” with the mold growing on them for quite a while. The mold breaks down some chemicals but not others. For whatever reason, this one mold (or group of related molds) preferentially breaks down tannins. When they are ready to stop mold process, they dry it out, which causes the mold to turn into spores that can survive the drought. Warm air is blown threw the leaves from beneath, with the dry leaves bouncing up a bit, freeing the mold spores to fly up on the breeze (as they have evolved to do). Wet cloth then traps the mold spores for use in the next batch of tea-making, while the leaves are either packaged loose or re-wet to be smashed into a coherent shape (usually either bricks remarkably similar in shape to the Obelisk from 2001, or into bell/cup shapes) for shipping.
These pu-ers can be brewed for half an hour without turning bitter. They are lovely, lovely, lovely in their refusal to turn sour or bitter and yet they retain all their original flavor, undiluted.
There are, of course, many places you can buy pu-er teas, but perhaps the best tea shop in the US for a variety of excellent local/small batch pu-ers is the Tao of Tea. This is an amazing shop run by a guy who came to the states to do something else (engineering? architecture? something – I forget) but whose family was wealthy and still owned and ran a tea farm in India. His brother still runs the family farm, organizing other farmers to sell their Darjeeling-region teas in the states through Tao of Tea, with many other local folk producing the ceramic tea ware Tao of Tea sells. This is tea by Indians for Indians that you can snag. It’s awesome. But it’s not just that: the family has been into tea for so long that the owner couldn’t **only** sell Darjeelings. So he spends 3 months a year in Darjeeling, 3 months a year traveling Asia with visits to Kenya, and only 6 months in the states. He gathers the most amazing teas, many of them from Nepal. If you think you don’t like oolongs, if you thought oolongs were only seacoast teas that inevitably had seaweed-y, iodine flavors (foregrounded or backgrounded) you have to try the Nepalese Oolong that they have. It’s only through drinking that that I was really able to get to the essence of what makes oolong different from black or green processing. I always thought the ocean flavors were inherent to the process, but they aren’t: they are only traditional.
If you want the single best basic-black tea ever for tannin-intolerant folk though, it’s actually sold by someone else: Jasmine Pearl Tea Merchants. The tea? It’s their Golden Nugget Puerh. Smooth, warm, both fruity and earthy at the same time. No hint of smoke as with some pu-er teas (which I love, don’t get me wrong, just trying to describe it accurately as some think that the smoke is integral to pu-er teas the way that ocean notes seem integral to oolongs, but aren’t).
Thank you! Unfortunately I’m too tired to so much as understand it all right now – I hope I’ll get to it next week, or next weekend.
With these words I asked if you, Nerd of Redhead, understand what so many people here have against sexist slurs. I didn’t tell you to agree, I asked if you understand why we think they shouldn’t be used even in this situation.
By saying PZ was “on the wrong side”, you implied there’s only one wrong side; and since at most one side can be right, it logically follows you meant two. ~:-|
This is why I’m so fucking happy that I’m not addicted to caffeine!
Caffeine doesn’t seem to have any effect on me at all, in fact. :-| I drink plenty of tea, but for the taste, so it’s rather weak. (Sugar: depending on the kind of tea – some need none, some are much better with some. Milk is only necessary for extremely strong tea, I don’t like it in tea otherwise.) Coffee can smell good (when the smell is too strong, it’s just a burnt smell), but it can’t taste good. I’ve drunk coffee maybe 2 or 3 times in my life; the one that was easiest to tolerate, though it was strong, was cold – it was left over by a visitor who had left, and had cooled out.
The best tea I’ve sampled (only once, alas) is gyokuro sumei. It’s not the tiniest bit bitter. Wikipedia sez I have an expensive taste, though.
Cocoa! As often as possible!
Currently drinking tea from an isolated bag I had. It contains cocoa beans. It’s not happiness tea, though.
All milk? Because there are enormous differences. The cheapest supermarket milk* in Berlin and in Vienna are completely different things.
* Not counting the skimmed milk, which is an abomination.
I almost always* eat it dry.
* When I have a cereal-eating phase, that is. There are things that I eat almost nonstop for months and then take a break that lasts months.
…What tea-related horrible behavior do Minnesotans have?
Hànyǔ Pīnyīn transcription (official in PRC and ROC): Pǔ’ěr.
Wade-Giles transcription (widespread till the 1970s in the PRC, longer elsewhere): P’u3-erh3 with superscript numbers. (Fun fact: Wade and Giles hated each other’s guts.)
Pīnyīn dào; Wade-Giles tao4.
Pīnyīn p, t, k correspond to Wade-Giles p’, t’, k’; Pīnyīn b, d, g correspond to Wade-Giles p, t, k. The fun thing is that people kept leaving off the apostrophes of Wade-Giles, making everything even harder to guess than the usual omission of the tone numbers already made it; this must be where the spelling “bu-er” comes from.
The lady who played her, Carole Ann Ford, is still alive. The Grauniad has an interview with her and several other companions (video).
I love you, David M.
Oh for eff’s sake. I’ve been worried out of my mind about Chester, he’s seriously ill and will be traveling to the doc tomorrow. Last night, I noticed the rats had gotten into something which was dyeing bits of them blue, Oliver has a large streak of blue running across his middle. Now Chester is dyed blue all over the place, including his chin…I can just imagine Angie’s* reaction.
*Our rat vet.
I thought rats were quite picky about what they ate. I seem to have heard that somewhere. Am I wrong about that?
Caine
ohno
Wee Free Ratties!
tiny hugs for Chester
test test test
[are my posts just not showing up for a good reason?]
LykeX:
Yes, rats can be fussy eaters. Mine have a long list of things considered to be “not food”, like carrots, grapes, green beans, etc.
Chigau:
Pilamayaye. I have no idea what the fuck they are dyeing themselves with this time out. Could be some of the wrapping paper Hekuni Cat sent, but I thought I got most of that out of Playstation East. Could be one of their formerly blue calcium chews. They got ahold of a couple of my art pencils last night, looks they went through a fucking shredder. I’ve never eaten one, so I don’t know if they would dye blue…
Hum. While scrolling past ericgarth’s unformatted tl;dr, I started wondering whether or not having a soft-cap on comment size may be a good idea.
Not a software cap on comment size, just a general guideline, something like Greta Christina’s
….thoughts?
NightShadeQueen, it’s not a bad idea, but we do have regulars who tend to write comments of epic length, all of which comprise good reading, so, I’m not terribly keen on using such a cap, soft or no.
Formatting, however, yeah, I could go with getting harsh on that one. FFS, using paragraphs and html is not a hardship. If you can’t be bothered, you shouldn’t be commenting.
Yeah – I know, for instance, that I’m prone to long, long comments, as is AJ Milne, but I would generally hope that they were welcomed (and indeed, no one’s told me off about it yet). And I’m wary of anything we might institute that would require special dispensation for the regulars who are already here, because it just furnishes more fuel for the FTBullies bullshit fire: “oh, look, if you follow the herd, you get to break the rules!”
So for me, at least, I’d rather see rules predicated on the content, than the form. I grant absolutely that I have a dog in that race, of course, so take that suggestion with as much salt as you find appropriate.
Well, Cerberus and CripDyke tend to write very long comments as well, close to treatises in some cases, but it’s all good, because as I said, the content is on point and very good reading.
I wouldn’t like to see people who are capable of writing at length curtailed. Geez, I’ve popped off a few treatises myself from time to time here.
Hum, okay, fair.
I may code up a greasemonkey script that scrunches up long comments some, and, I don’t know, adds a scrollbar for long ones. It’s awkward and looks weird but may work better for some.
[the css changes I made are
#comments ol li.comment {max-height: 350px;
overflow-y: scroll
}
]
Then again, a limit on the length of comments would reduce steamnerding and the dreaded Fire Stories.
But can you make shoes out of your large intestines? Huh? Can you?
ledasmom:
No, but you could fashion a barrier prophylactic out of your large intestines.
Would have to be the large intestines, though.
I have no objection to epic-length comments.
I object to a lack of paragraph-breaks.
Ogvorbis and CaitieCat and Cerberus and CripDyke all know how to use paragraphs.
Ogvorbis:
That alone is good reason to allow them. I love your stories, Čhunwanča awanyanka.*
*Forest keeper.
NightShadeQueen
Make it 400px, and I’d love it.
Oh, Caine! Since I see that you’re here, I have a question. I just finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, which includes a lengthy bit about relations between Native Americans (writ large, and with specific examples of specific nations) and the US government (and its various colonial predecessors). There’s a lot of detail, and liberal use of the term genocide (with ample footnotes supporting this usage). The author (who, as near as I can tell, is a WASP man) uses the term “Indian” (or “American Indian”) consistently, except where he’s quoting. I had thought that this term was considered improper. Recognizing the absence of monolithic thinking, am I wrong? Am I right? Or is the correct answer somewhere in the middle?
Esteleth:
When speaking or writing in a larger sense, I use Indian or NDN, same as a whole lot of other NDNs. The subject always seems up for debate, and it depends on individuals. Some are okay with Amerind/American Indian, some are okay with NA (but not as many as you might think), First Nation[s] isn’t widely used in the U.S., yada, yada, yada. Most Indians prefer to be referred to by tribal/nation affiliation, but in lieu of knowing that, Indian is okay to use.
A lot of younger Indians use skins, but that’s mostly used on a rez, and not open for use by non-Indians.
Oh, for an example, AIM (American Indian Movement). It’s best to keep in mind when that was founded, though. Long time now.
Fair enough. I suppose that if one is discussing US policy WRT them, using “Indian” monolithically may make sense (because the policy didn’t differentiate substantially), but if one is discussing just who it was that was involved in such-and-such incident, it makes more sense to identify them specifically.
The book does the exact parallel – “European” is sprinkled liberally throughout when discussing things done similarly by English, Dutch, Spanish, etc, but if it is something that was specific to the Spanish, then the book says “Spanish” or “Spaniard.”
Failing to do so and casting Europeans as monolithic is just as much of a fail as doing that to Indians, I daresay.
I am not an Indian
but
in Canada “Indian” is pretty much not used
(especially not by people who are not “Indian”)
People identify by Tribe and Nation.
until it becomes necessary to form a European Union, North America style.
Except that modern-day English, Dutch, Spanish, etc people are granted a certain respect by the dominant class, of course. If they complain, they’re listened to, because they matter.
*sigh* I feel it is important to remember what’s been done, so to be aware of what’s still happening and stop/alleviate what I can. But sometimes, I get so damned angry. And then I remember that I have the luxury of being able to forget.
Esteleth:
Yeah, I grok. When you look enough, pretty much everything humans have done is a clusterfuck in one way or another.
Up next in my lighthearted evening reading for the sake of cheering-up: The People’s History of the United States.
WHACKY FUN!
Chigau:
In general, Canada and Canadians have tried to recognize indigenous peoples in the way they prefer to be recognized. It might not be perfect, but at least you’ve all made the effort.
Here in the U.S., oh, so different. The bigotry towards indigenous peoples runs extremely deep, when non-Indian people bother to think of them at all. The mere idea that people should be familiar with the various tribes/nations and use the correct name, why that’s fuckin’ unthinkable! They should be happy to be alive and be good Americans. The attitude is disgusting.
Esteleth:
Stupid question time: who are the People?
@ Caine:
Is that rhetorical? Or were you interested in the perspective of the book?
Yeah, I know enough to know who the local nations are here in Southern Ontario, and we were taught in school about which nations lived where, then and now. Granted, that was in the gifted programme, I don’t know if they did the same in regular classes, we had all kinds of wildly-enhanced stuff, like our art classes were done bi-weekly on day-long field trips to work with the pros at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and for Canadian history we had visiting talks by people like the deputy head of the AFN, if it was called that then, and field trips to all kinds of places, including archaeology digs being sponsored by various nations.
I know ‘tribe’ is important in some contexts, but I like to emphasize ‘nations’ by default, because whites too often forget or never knew that they were nations, no less so than Portugal or Poland*, with different traditions, languages, social structures, religions, everything we use to define a nation in Europe.
* Yes, I know what I’m saying. Not all Turtle Island nations always had the same fixed borders or linguistic makeup, either, being pushed around in political/war/diplomacy before we white folk ever arrived to plague them, just as Poland was/is.
Excuse me, shouldn’t have said “were” nations. Are nations. My apologies.
Caine and others
Sometimes it gets ‘amusing’.
There are Reserves™ in Canada which are contiguous with Revervations™ in the US.
The people who live there have a tendency to ignore the Boundary.
Generally by treaty and/or long traditional unwritten permission of the governments to do so, though. I don’t have any problem whatsoever with members of a nation whose land straddles the ‘border’ between the US and Canada moving back and forth as they like, just as they ought to be able to, on their own sovereign land.
A People’s History of the United States (not “the,” sorry) is written by Howard Zinn.
On the Amazon page, I found this blurb (from Publisher’s Weekly):
I also found this magnificent one-star review:
Really, I should have read it ages ago. Last year my sister (the professor of sociology who specializes in labor movements and thinks that Bernie Sanders is conservative) gave our father (who listens to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly) A People’s History of the United States and Das Kapital for Christmas. I laughed. She grinned from ear to ear. He looked awkward.
Goodness. Some people think of America the way Auel wrote about Ayla – every good thing ever was a result of ‘merica, no one else, ever. Nope. :eyeroll:
Pila, Esteleth, that answered my question most thoroughly.
Caine:
???
Which is a strong point against such a length limit.
You don’t get out of regaling us that easily, Ogvorbis!
:)
–
@Esteleth:
Caine is saying thanks.
@Caine:
ZOMG, I love you for this, Caine (well, I love you again, for this)
That series had 2 themes:
1. Ayla & Jondalar are responsible for all human advancement – moral and technological – that occurred after the invention of spoken language and before the invention of written language (unless one of them invented it in a book after I stopped reading).
2. Jondalar’s huge member is unfit for any vagina save Ayla’s – marking them as destined to be together.
“The USA is responsible for all human advancement post Locke, Bayes & Messier, and, btw, our cocks are bigger than yours,” is indeed an apt encapsulation of far too many right wingers’ world views. Or perhaps I should call it the Palin Doctrine, Charlie?
Poor ol’ Pappy’s Stand Me Up Camp Coffee:
Well, it stood me bolt upright first time I drank it! Musta been all of nine or ten at the time and wasn’t ever allowed coffee at home.
Reminds me; time to go get the coffee maker cocked and primed for tomorrow’s eye opener. (These days I do it a bit differently, without the campfire. But give me one beside a cold stream and I’ll stand you bolt ulpright!)
I put half the required grounds into the filter then sprinkle in some nutmeg and cinnamon followed by the rest of the grounds plus a heaping extra one. I like to sweeten my twelve ounce cup with a heaping teaspoon of light brown sugar and add a teaspoon of finely ground Ibarra chocolate and a short squirt of Torani french vanilla syrup. This week the blend is Folgers Gourmet Supreme, dark.
I like it, eldest daughter and eldest man cub like it, SIL doesn’t drink coffee. So, we is all happy!
Link for Ibarra chocolate.
Link for Torani flavoring syrup.
There is no link for Poor ol’ Pappy. Well, there’s me but that’s really about it.
Esteleth:
Pila – thanks. Pilamayaye – thank you. Language is Lakota.
Crip Dyke @ 480, yes to everything you wrote. As for the Ayla did everything!, oy. I had to give up on those books before I suffered the first documented fatal eyeroll.
…Caine and Crip Dyke, I had no idea who Ayla or Jondalar were, but of course somebody mentioned the magic words ( “huge member” ) so I had to go look…
http://wonkomance.com/2012/10/18/father-of-the-alphahole/
#430, blf, 13 October 2013 at 3:50 am (UTC -5)
To confirm that: someone gave me a bag of Deseret brand Hot Cocoa Mix which is currently sitting in front of me. The back of the bag bears the legend
On the ingredients list, the fourth item reads “COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI” [caps in original]. I’m guessing that this was originally distributed by a Bishop’s Storehouse, for relief purposes. It does have a UPC imprint, a nearly-legible best-by date and lot number, and a Nutrition Facts panel, so it’s probably legal for trade.
Pteryxx:
Oh gods, it was a long time ago now, I guess, but the books we are talking about started with Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear. It was even made into a movie. (Don’t bother.) The initial book was good enough, but it’s not even downhill from there, it’s toss off the highest possible cliff from there. It’s highly annoying in the initial book that the child character, Ayla, is ever so smart and precocious, and discovers *everything*. After that, Ayla discovers/creates/invents ALL THE THINGS EVER. Of course, she can’t be living all alone for long, and soon after she discovers and conquers horses and horse riding and all that, along comes Jondalar, the uber perfect male, with noted massive member, who joins Ayla in becoming one of the most annoying characters ever written.
Let us not forget that Jondalar is the greatest of all cunillingus masters and is chosen again and again across ice age Europe to deflower twelve year olds.
He is so great that all it takes is one time with him and a victim of rape and systemic abuse will be cured and love penises like whoa, to the point that she’ll happily reenact her rape with him.
(I just reread The Valley of Horses, so this dreck is fresh in my mind. Bleh.)
Bart the Bear was one of my favourite actors.
MM:
Oh gods, why? Were you going for self torture for some particular reason?
Chigau:
Bart the Bear did not suck, it’s true.
Chigau
Yet more deeeeep rifts!
Caine
“Surely it can’t be that bad. Surely there’s something redeeming in this.”
Several hundred pages later:
“…wow, she’s actually singing birds down from the sky while her blond Adonis watches her in awe. Fuck this book forever.”
MM:
There you go. The only reasonable response, really. Mine was to toss it in the woodburning stove.
Caine, it had been available as a discount book for 99 cents for the Nook, so I didn’t even have that satisfaction. Now I see why the books were being sold for 99 cents.
MM:
Oh. Yeah, that would be worse. I bought the books waaaaay back when they were first published. Clan wasn’t all that bad, so I went right on to buy Valley of the Horses. That left such a bad taste in the brain, it has never completely gone away.
From Pffft
Archaeologists will tell you anything as long as you are buying the beer.
They have also been known to engage in leg-pulling.
I don’t know that it counts as “research”.
The best bargain book I ever got (hardcover for 4 bucks from B&N) was Death and the Devil by Frank Schatzing.
The bit that pushed me over the edge with Ayla and co. was when she invented sewing needles. I don’t know why. That was the bit that made it clear to me that she was going to come up with every significant innovation from prehistory ever. I did not at the time know the term “Mary Sue”, but I certainly understood the concept.
I currently have the excreable The Mammoth Hunters on a shelf, and if I had a woodstove that is exactly what I would do with it on this cold morning.
COTCB, was a good book because of all the interesting archeological details, clearly based on Shanidar Cave. Excert from the pfft on Shanidar I who is turned into Kreb the Mogur in the book;
Some of the infuriating details in TMH? The focus on Ranec and his magical afro, who is second only to Jondolar in his pleasuring skills, plus he carves amazing things.
The dropping of the leg wrappings scenes becoming droningly repetitive. I swear, every fourth page has this shit happening, ignoring the basic fact that they are traversing/ surrounded by glaciers and it would have been way too cold for constant, outdoor, naked sexy times.
Ledasmom:
That was a sticking point for me as well, the book came close to burning at that point.
Tethys:
Oh lord. I’m so glad I decided to stop buying the books.