one coin, two perspectives
February 2012
January 2012
I just got into a very, very long facebook argument....
That ended with:
“I think you’re really passionate and you stand for good things and I mean that honestly I’m not being patronizing but at some point this has to stop. We know your point, and you won’t convince us further, so is there any logical next step instead of quitting?”
Oh my god. This actually happened. And this is why I’m a feminist.
Because privilieged assholes like this guy don’t even realize that they’re sexist, classist, and all the other ists that went into this and I’m sure many other conversations he’s had.
I just responed “Hahahaha” because I couldn’t even think of a way to respond this bullshit. The other person in the argument said “this is clearly exhausted, let’s leave it at that.”
And I will, because they just gave up. And I can’t waste any more brain cells on this.
Wow. That actually happened.
This guy also told me to go to bed earlier in the conversation.
Yeah. He’s not trying to be patronizing. He’s just trying to be patronizing and get away with it…which was the basis of the whole argument that occurred!
Wow. Well now I’m going to go do my homework, because like hell I’m going to bed. I have a life. I actually don’t live my life around privileged men and the conversations I have with them.
FYI.
Also, yes, I think it’s worth it to argue with them. Because I used to break down and accept that “I was probably wrong” in these situations. Now I can see through bullshit, because I waste time on people like this. Now I know when I’m right, and I stick to my point until it’s made or the other person gets tired of fighting me.
I won. Even though I didn’t change their sad boxed in minds, I still won. For me. Some day in the future this skill will really, really come in handy.
I was also involved in this debacle. It boiled down to a group of people refusing to admit that their words had meaning outside of what their mythical intent was (having never made their specific intent made known, to boot), and then getting annoyed when two individuals called them out on it. We hit all the bingo terms (‘It’s a JOKE!’ ‘Must everything be serious!?’ ‘I’m going to post some random stupidity because it’s diffusing!’). It was infuriating.
But both of us made our points known, and you know, there’s something for it. We didn’t shut up. We spoke until we made our stances known and refused to just ‘go to bed’.
I have a storied history with this guy. I guess I’ll continue to be known to him as the Botetourt Bitch. And you know what? From now on I’m wearing that goddamn nickname with pride, because to be known as a bitch by him is to be known as a heroine for the values I support. I tried being friendly towards him, really I did, but I can’t find him amusing. I just can’t. I don’t know how some of my friends do- I’m not capable of that mental disconnect, I’m not capable of accepting that that’s just his nature and being okay with that, and I’m not capable of handwaving just how mindbreakingly rude he is to me because I have the gall to oppose his views diplomatically.
And yeah, now I really need to do homework, but wow. That happened.
Play
1:49
slut-shaming, asoiaf fandom
Looking over some of the comments since the release of the new trailer and god, people who are slut-shaming are diametrically missing the point.
Because here’s the thing that often happens with women in Westeros: they’re built up to be images, not people. GRRM even makes it easy for us by giving the trifecta of feminine ideals in religious iconographic form: the Mother, the Crone and Maiden and it seems to me, that the ladies who bring out the most vitriol in fandom (in other words, not the Briennes, not the Aryas, not the Ashas) are the ones who are trying to - or forced to - occupy roles of perfect “womanhood”.
These women are constantly dictated to on how they should look, how they should behave. Fandom seems to always forget that Sansa Stark doesn’t hitch a wagon ride to King’s Landing to land her golden prince, no, she’s engaged to Joffrey by her family and her enthusiasm to marry him is partly natural, but it’s also partly knowing her place, it’s knowing that she’s expected to be excited at the prospect of marriage, excited at the prospect of being a wife and Queen and trying to fulfil those social expectations. Similarly, Margaery Tyrell presumably doesn’t want to seduce her brother’s lover away from him but she goes along with the Baratheon marriage and she has to sleep with Renly one way or another, because it’s what society demands, that the he has to have an heir and it’s her job as the good, dutiful wife to provide him with one.
So yeah, these women go ahead and accept social convention and then guess what, they get punished for it. Sansa spends her youth trying to be the perfect “maiden” (which involves yes, a great deal of superficiality because femininity, as a construct, is conditional upon appearance) and then is condemned for it within the books - censured as a shallow, vapid girl by the Lannisters or worse still, has her looks used against her when men come pawing. Similarly, Cersei doesn’t want to sleep with the Kettlebacks (not that there would be anything wrong if she had) but she does it, because she knows in their eyes - in society’s eyes - the only real power she can wield is of a sexual brand. And when she does, when she gives in to what she’s been told all her life, that her body is the only part of her that matters and so she better use it, society punishes her for the very thing they leave her with no other option to do. The slut-shaming is already in the fucking text. We as readers aren’t supposed to look at it and think, “Hey, that’s right, Sansa really does lead all these dudes on.” No, we’re not supposed to be that obtuse or that superficial in our reading, we’re supposed to look and go, “Hey, these women are being constantly screwed over by the social structures they live in and that’s a darn shame.” Why does that need to be spelled out for you, fandom?
I'm currently geeking out over the physicist that's going to be giving a guest lecture at my college.
Help. I think I get to meet this man as I’m one of the organizers for it as the library is a big part in it.
Oh my god.
You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral →
cuethefire.tumblr.com
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that tk
Aaron Freeman
This is a Hawkeye appreciation post
It just about killed me when only two people in one of my classes knew of M*A*S*H. GOD DAMN YOU, ALAN ALDA, YOU PERFECT HUMAN BEING.
(Guys he also played and more or less cowrote the biographical play QED about Richard Feynman, starring AS Richard Feynman, do you understand my distress. Do you.
Nevermind the fact that Feynman was more or less a dick, I still love him, in large part due to this man.)
