Condensations of the transfinite

Open source boob project, what's that?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:02:10 GMT

Sarah has been reading through the Open Source Boob Project kerfuffle (as part of her love of kerfuffles), and on the fandom_wank offshoot for discussing fandom kerfuffles over racism and sexism, Still Not Funny, she ran across a poster who admitted to being initially puzzled over the hubbub and anger, as she assumed that the Open Source Boob Project was a reference to The Normal Breast Gallery, a gallery of a pro-breast feeding site where female readers provide photos of their breasts along with commentary on how they feel about their breasts, in order to build up a collection of pictures of what women's breasts actually look like. It is a pretty neat site (although obviously not work-safe). One of the people on the Still Not Funny mentioned using it to answer her daughter's question "What will my breasts look like?"

Talking about that site reminded Sarah of a site similar to the BMI project, the height-weight chart with photos, which is gradually constructing a height weight chart with each box linking to full body, clothed pictures of readers who are that height and weight.

Looking through that led us to Rob's other project: the silly and delightfully obsessive-compulsive project How much inside?, which explores such important topics as: How many strips of bacon are there in a bag of baco-bits? Can you really fit a million dollars in a suitcase? And who are the crazy people who make a serious go at contest to guess how many antenna balls fit in Chevy trailblazer?

Neat stuff.

Rare that I do a meme

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:37:20 GMT

My family is hard-core academic middle-class (one of my great grand fathers was a coal miner, some of my great uncles were railway men, but my grand parents were a professor, a nurse/research technician, a chemical engineer, and a high school math teacher). My patrilineal line is ridiculous: professor, professor, highly respected painter, director of the US census, military officer and part of the military government of New Orleans, somewhere back there I'm descended from the reputed author of the supposed novel that Joseph Smith is sometimes claimed to have cribbed the Book of Mormon from. My family wasn't rich when I was growing up (we got much richer when my mom started working full time when I was 12 or so) but we were far from poor (even if we did dumpster dive for food occasionally, it was out of a hippy anti-wastefulness ideology, not poverty).

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college (PhD)
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college (I suppose I could italicize this, since she mustered out with a MS rather than finishing her PhD, but a MS in botany and a MA in social work on top of a BA seems like it probably qualifies)
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (only professors as far as I know)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children's books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (flute lessons for 4 years)
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (I took a canoeing class with my mom once)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (white men in button downs with generic academic accents, yup)
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 (carried my parents credit card and was allowed to use it in stores, even though it didn't have my name on it)
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs (my parents paid most of my first few years, but then I took out massive loans for the rest)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (day camp one year, 1 week boy scout camp another year)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels (camping, staying with friends, or rented beach houses, but never hotels)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (but we almost always lived in rentals in town to avoid going to the county schools)
25. You had your own room as a child (once we moved into town when I was nine or ten)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 (once to Hawaii to visit relatives, once to Chicago to visit a girlfriend)
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (I can't really remember, but I knew how much we paid for rent)

In which I break a many month silence merely to rec a site

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 11:05:08 GMT

In case anyone who has me friended doesn't have kleenstar friended...

Eat Poo You Cat the web site.

No, seriously.

BDSM (reposted comment from Alas)

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:01:24 GMT

[This is a comment I wrote on a thread on BDSM and patriarchy on Alas, but I'm pretty pleased with it, and comments are a fragile thing, so I thought I'd repost it here as a well. I think it stands okay on its own, but here it is in context.]

Is BDSM better, equal-to, or worse than non-BDSM sexuality. Actually, that is a crappy way of phrasing it, and much less productive and nuanced than the way bean actually phrased it. Bean's point was much more complex than that, but I think I can say something useful with this simplified version, so here goes.

I think that BDSM sexuality, independent of any other criteria, is a more harmful sexuality than non-BDSM sexuality. Specifically, I think that an eroticization of mutuality is a better and healthier sexuality than an eroticization of power dynamics (power-over, powerlessness, violence and pain). Furthermore, while I can see other sources for an eroticization of power dynamics, I think the overwhelming source of the eroticization of power dynamics in this culture is patriarchy (actually, I think the triple alliance of sex oppression, class oppression and race oppression are heavily implicated, but sex oppression is most heavily implicated). I think that if you have, or are able to develop, a sexuality of mutuality, then you should value it highly. I think taking up BDSM practice because it is cool is a bad mistake if you have or are capable of developing a truly mutual sexuality. I think in the ideal world, there would be no eroticization of power dynamics, and no BDSM sexuality. I think in a moderately ideal world (one where people still suffer through a childhood of relative powerlessness (but not abuse), where people still suffer from painful diseases, where people still fear death and loss, but where sex, class, and race oppression is banished) that eroticization of power dynamics would be far more rare.

I think that the best safe-sane-consensual, active-consent, egalitarian-based BDSM sexuality is still a product of a sick culture, and I think anything less than that ideal is probably harmful to its participants.

That said, I think safe-sane-consensual BDSM practice is vastly better than the current alternative. If I eroticize power dynamics, I am going to play with them for sexual gratification. If I deny this desire, all I end up doing is pushing it underground. I’m still going to play those games, I’m just going to lie to myself and my partner and pretend that’s not what I’m doing. As a result, I’m going to have to play with the real thing, rather than being able to play with the fake thing. If I want a D/S experience, I will have to actually dominate or submit to someone. If I want a S/M experience, I will have to actually torture someone, or find someone to torture me (D/S is much more common in this culture, I think, but there are way too many sadists too, coming up with some excuse to inflict pain).

To my mind, this is what most people in this culture do. Most of them aren’t extreme in their practice, but I see the basic cultural construct of romance as implicit D/S, and I think most people who do romance do it in large part because they eroticize D/S.

I had a friend long ago who explained to me that it offended her that her boyfriend (a better friend of mine) explicitly refused to be possessive, and while he was perfectly happy to be faithful if that was her preference, refused to request that she be monogamous. She explained to me that she actually usually cheated on her boyfriends, but that a non-possessive boyfriend was both insulting and meant that the cheating sex wouldn’t be nearly as a hot. While she was impressively honest, I really don’t believe her desires were at all strange for this culture.

To my mind, she would have been better off if she hadn’t found betrayal and being a possession hot, but I think those structures of desire are hard to reconstruct. If she wasn’t able to reconstruct them, I think she would have been much better off accepting those desires as hers, accepting them as malign, and finding ways to funnel and restrict them, so that she could extract their hotness without getting as badly burned (and without burning her boyfriend). I think that safe-sane-consensual BDSM is a way of doing that.

I have met (to a little extent, I have been one) BDSM supremacists, who believe that BDSM sexuality is more honest than non-BDSM sexuality, because everyone’s sexuality is actually an eroticization of power dynamics. I think they have a point (I think most people in this culture do eroticize power to some degree), but I think they are basically wrong. I think honest egalitarian sexuality, for those who can reach it, is better than power dynamics sexuality. But I think safe-sane-consensual BDSM practice is a better, less harmful expression of eroticizing power dynamics than either non-SSC BDSM or implicit BDSM. And, for those who strongly eroticize power dynamics, I think that SSC BDSM may be either a useful end point, or a useful way point on the way to an egalitarian eroticization of mutuality.

This last point is one that both Thomas and mythago have expressed here and previously. Good SSC BDSM culture emphasizes the critical point that active consent and communication are themselves hot, and that sex that moves away from both of those is bad sex, and is not at all hot. When BDSM practitioners reach the point where they eroticize active consent and communication, they are actually moving into an egalitarian sexuality.

I’m going on way too long, so I’ll stop.

Fetish theory of sexuality, reprint

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 11:38:03 GMT

This is a post I wrote on Alas back in April of 2003. I post it here because a discussion about radical feminist analysis of BDSM practice and desire that I just entered on Alas made me think of it, and I discovered the google cache was its only remaining home.

Since Amp has brought up my fetish theory of sexuality, I thought I would try to explain a bit more clearly (or at least extensively) what my theory consists of. I view sexual orientation as being very far from a binary opposition between straight and gay, or even a gay-bi-straight continuum. For me, sexual orientation is a gross simplification of the specific sexualities of individuals. I think that at an innate level people have raw sexual energy (in varying amounts) which they channel, focus and control by restricting and specifying the scope of situations in which and types of people with whom they will express that energy. I have no idea what governs how people do this restricting, although I think that very few people do it consciously and most do it very early in life. I have no idea how much of that focusing happens by nature and how much by nurture, but I am doubtful that the part that has to do with whether you like the same sex or the opposite sex happens in a completely different way than all the rest anyone's sexuality. I consider all of the ways in which people channel and focus their sexual energy, so that it doesn't spill out into all of their relations with other people, so that it is restricted to a limit set of circumstances, to be a fetish.

In response to Amp's post, Amy expressed disbelief at the idea that attraction to things people aren't born with (say shoes) could be lumped with attraction to genitalia. Kip pointed out that there are plenty of fetish focuses that are bodily traits, so it can't really be reduced to body vs non-body. Kip's clarification fits very much with my thinking. In terms of things that most people think of as fetishes, feet are also something that almost all of us are born with and only a few of us become sexually interested in. Genitalia are something that almost all of us are born with and many of us become sexually interested in. Some of us become interested in one type of genitalia, some of us become interested in another type of genitalia, some of us become actively interested in (simplifying slightly) both types of genitalia, and some of us don't become particularly sexually interested in genitalia as a focus of attraction.

I also think that there are people who are attracted to one sex or the other without being attracted particularly to genitalia per se. There are people who are strongly attracted to a particular set of gender characteristics, for example only being attracted to short, willowy women with long hair who tend to wear skirts and like cooking. Such a person is obviously a gynophile, whether or not they are particularly sexually aroused specifically by female genitalia (obviously, if they are specifically squicked by female genitalia, this is likely to prevent them from being a gynophile, and will severely restrict their ability to find a satisfactory sexual partner).

I think that bisexuality is not (within this theory) a single thing. Instead, it is a combination two different sorts of sexualities. I think that some people who would be described as bisexual don't require that their partner have either sort of genitalia (the "just don't care" camp who would be capable of being sexually aroused by someone who had been neutered or was born intersexed) while others are specifically attracted to both sorts of genitalia (the "like both" camp who might not be aroused at all by someone with genitalia that didn't meet their preferences). Bisexuals can also have either different fetishes for different sexes, or can have the same fetishes for both sexes.

Fetishes are often talked about as being things required for sexual arousal, but I think that many people are not exclusive in their fetishes. Instead, they have a large number of things which are a plus, but which are not required for arousal. I think that for some bisexual people either sex is a plus and for other bisexual people neither sex is a plus, and other things govern their arousal. Likewise, I think that, for some, squicks may be as important as fetishes in describing their sexuality. I think that some people's sexuality is as much defined by who they would NEVER have sex with as it is by who they would like to have sex with.

The fact that sex is generally fairly focused on genitalia muddles the issue of attraction. I think that one can prefer strongly genitally focused sex without being attracted to any particular sort of genitalia, or even particularly attracted to genitalia at all.

To my mind, attempting to divide out and elevate as the all important preference the sex/binary gender/genitalia component from all the other components of attraction, desire and arousal is not the most productive way to think about sexual attraction, particularly since it combines several different aspects into one in ways that I think can be more confusing than less. Are people who are strongly genitally focused in their attraction more like each other in the nature of their sexuality than people who are body shape focused or emotional bond focused or social role focused, or are the members of each of those groups really divided first and foremost into those who like the same sex and those who like the opposite sex, with the particular nature and focus of that attraction only a secondary division within the two blocks? I think that viewing sexual attraction as a matter of a set of positive and negative factors in which partner sex is one characteristic among many allows for a much more nuanced and productive understanding of sexuality than the het-bi-gay continuum.

On the old nature-nurture question, I am not really sure that declaring sexuality to be entirely composed of fetish really provides any guidance. I think that many people experience some aspects of their sexuality as being unchanging and other aspects as being more malleable, but I am not confident that everyone experiences the same aspects as being malleable or unchanging, nor am I confident that unchanging equals nature and malleable equals nurture. Some feel they can determine where their sexual preferences came from, while others know only when they started (and this holds true for both the classical fetishes and sexual orientation). What I am confident of is that sexuality is far too rich, complicated and culture bound to be usefully described as having a simple genetic control. On the other hand, the question of why heterosexuality is a far more common set of fetishes than homosexuality remains an open question, and could conceivably have a genetic answer.

Of course, I am not sure that my concept of sexuality as an amalgam of fetishes really leads to Amp's:
Thinking of it this way makes it particularly bizarre to hear right-wing types calling for anti-gay laws in marriage, child rearing, or whatever. "Your desire to have sex with people of the opposite genitals is just a damn fetish, straight people! Get over it!"

Amp seems to view some of the classical fetishes (BDSM etc.) with disapproval, so I'm not sure why he thinks that declaring homosexuality (and heterosexuality) fetishes automatically means that neither one can be disapproved of, nor that approving of one means you have to approve of the other. I am sure that there are plenty of people who think that heterosexuals who get off on being tied up in ropes shouldn't be allowed to adopt children.

I suppose that the fetish theory of sexuality does have the aspect of dethroning heterosexuality, which might make it seem to weaken heterosexist positions. On the other hand, by making sexuality into a complex and contested construction, it actually allows those who morally favor heterosexuality to feel justified in working to prevent those conditions which they fear might lead to the formation of sexual fetishes that don't fit within heterosexuality.

If one views (as I guess most people do) fetishes as a sickness, then one could decide that the fetish theory of sexuality privileges vanilla bisexuality of the "just don't care" variety as the right and moral sexuality, if one believes that fetishization of sexuality is a bad thing (perhaps on the basis that fetishization is tied to the objectification of one's partners and a transformation of sex from a mutual sharing of pleasure between two people into a ritual act intended to placate some personal demon). However, to my mind any sexuality beyond a purely and constantly masturbatory one must necessarily involve both squicks (since turn offs are necessary to ensure that arousal never occurs under most circumstances) and positive fetishization (since turn ons are required to focus ones sexuality off of the simple, direct pleasure of arousal and orgasm). So even vanilla bisexuality still involves fetishization.

Admittedly, defining a term so broadly that it encompasses an entire field (sexuality=fetish) is generally a poor idea, since it actually ends up defining nothing and generally hampers discourse. In this case, however, I think it is fruitful specifically because it hampers a certain type of discourse in which the sexuality we don't like is treated as an aberration from the natural and correct development of the sexuality we do like. This does not mean that you can't object to a particular sexuality, it just attacks the idea of a natural sexuality which does not need to be questioned and thought through.

Viewing Pegasus while also half way through first season

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:28:10 GMT

This contains spoilers for BSG, both first season (Episodes 1.5, 1.6, and 1.8 in particular) and the latest episode (2.10). Those on my friends list who have yet to see any of it should just pretend this post doesn't exist. I'll be lending you my Season 1 DVD just as soon as we finish watching it. Yes, it is a good show.

After phylogenetics excellent post, I almost didn't bother posting this one (which I started writing Friday night), but we cover somewhat different ground, so I thought I'd put up my thoughts anyway.

I started watching BSG early on in season 2 (I still haven't seen the season 2 opener...), so I have only been able to watch Season 1 since earlier this week. I've made it through Episode 1.8 (Flesh and Bone) tonight, but I had only made it through Episode 1.6 (Litmus) when I watched tonight's episode. Having just seen Episodes 1.5 (You can't go home again) and 1.6 put me in a very different frame of mind than anyone who was watching this episode coming off of the rest of season 2, with season 1 just a distant memory.

Admiral Cain is a total hard-ass. She runs a very tight ship, and has managed to fight an aggressive war against the Cylons, with no back-up and no resupply. She has been coming from exactly the same position Commander Adama wanted to take back in the mini-series: she is a military commander and her country is under attack, her duty is to make war on the enemy until either they are defeated or she is dead. For her, at the moment, nothing comes ahead of that duty. If Adama had not fallen in with President Roslin and the civilian fleet, he would likely be in the same mind-set still (except that he really isn't up to being a hard-ass, and without the goal of protecting the civilians, his ship would likely have collapsed into disarray and complete morale failure fairly quickly, trying to fight a bleak and hopeless war for which their ship is hopelessly outclassed).

As a side note, I have to say that I didn't like 1.5 very much at all. Commander Adama's willingness to endanger the remnants of humanity and cripple his ship's future function in order to embark on a futile search for a lost pilot merely because he loves her and had had a falling out with her just before she vanishes may be sympathetic (I doubt I'd do differently), but it is monstrously selfish and appalling given his position. While the show does point out that his actions are crazy and destructive to the fleet, it bothered me that there were no repercussions to his selfish and insane actions. The ridiculous idea that Starbuck could pilot the Cylon ship gave the episode a 70's scifi feel that somehow made me like Adama's insane search even less (because it emphasized the "the Captain is always right, even when he is completely wrong" feel).

As a further side note, I only liked 1.6 after reinterpreting Sgt. Hadrian's actions as completely reasonable, or at least fully justified. When asked to investigate how the security failed, she asks for to be allowed to run an independent tribunal because she knows that Adama is hopelessly protective of his favorites among his crew (and that she isn't part of his in-crowd), and that her investigation will be hopeless if she doesn't have a free hand. What she quickly discovers is that even with a free hand, her position is still hopeless, because the crew of the BSG has such incredibly bad discipline that when the chief of security, tasked with investigating how a Cylon agent was able to infiltrate the ship, steal explosives and blow himself up, starts asking the crew simple questions, their immediate response to her is to lie. They don't even have cold, calculated lies arranged to protect themselves, they just start lying off the top of their heads, badly, baldly, so accustomed to the slipshod regulations and favoritism and cronyism that marks Adama's command that they just assume that they will be allowed to get away with it.

When she doesn't tolerate their incompetent lies, one of them becomes so flustered that he starts confessing, not to the truth, but simply making up more lies about how he is guilty, clearly shielding someone, but who remains unclear to Sgt. Hadrian. In fact, even though the lies are obvious, discipline and obedience of regulation is so bad on the BSG that it is clear that Sgt. Hadrian's investigation is going to become mired in ridiculous lies, habitual incompetence, and the same garbage that made her previous investigation of sabotage entirely hopeless.

In fact, all of these problems are well known aboard the ship, since they stymied the previous investigation of an attack which nearly destroyed the fleet (and clearly could have if the saboteur had wanted to). What was done to correct this situation after the last attack? Apparently nothing, since the same lack of discipline and covering up of rules violations is still rife aboard the ship. Who is responsible for this absolute failure to protect the ship from infiltration and attack? That would be Commander Adama, whose famous soft-touch has repeatedly threatened to destroy the fleet (perhaps, Sgt. Hadrian is also still reeling from Adama's insane search for Kara in the last episode, or maybe that is just me).

So Sgt. Hadrian uses her powers to drag the Commander before the tribunal and berate him before the civilian tribunal judges, perhaps in the hope of convincing the civilians that he really does need to be relieved of command and replaced with someone who is willing to run a tight ship in a time of war. Perhaps she realizes that that won't happen, but merely hopes to embarrass him sufficiently that he at least gives some thought to the problems that his soft-touch has caused for the ship. Instead, she gets his little self-righteous "This is a witch hunt" speech, before he demonstrates his lack of commitment to civilian government by disbanding the tribunal.

So that is what I was mulling over coming into the most recent episode, dissatisfied with the "Daddy Adama is always right, even when he is clearly wrong" feeling of those two episodes. The hard-ass Admiral Cain provided a wonderful follow-up to this, and I cheered when she reprimanded Adama for his crew's lack of discipline, and particularly for his dangerously over-close relationship with Cara and Lee. Even her willingness to execute her XO for his mutinous rebellion in refusing a direct order during battle (presumably on the assumption that he could get away with it because they were very close, a parallel to and direct rejection of Adama's use of nepotism and unwavering loyalty with his own crew, where direct mutiny is rewarded with re-reinstatement) seemed like a brutal but rational step to maintain discipline in the face of a fantastically desperate situation.

While Adama has not resorted to methods anything like Cain's, the Pegasus has been through a far more brutal and exhausting few months than the Galactica has. They have been fighting alone, with no reason to believe that any other human besides their own crew still lived, fighting to do one thing only: do damage to the enemy. Lee sees no need to have his crew keep score, but then the Galactica pilots are fighting a purely defensive war, flying endless CAPs and only seeing battle when they have to defend the fleet for a few moments before turning and running. Encouraging aggressive behavior on the part of his pilots would only end up with more frustrated pilots on their endless CAPs, and more dead pilots as they fought that extra second to add a notch to their wing, rather than fleeing for the Galactica. The Galactica pilots have the satisfaction of protecting the civilian fleet, being the defenders of the hope of humanity, while all they Pegasus pilots have had the satisfaction of is risking death to kill Cylons.

Which brings us, of course to the aspect of the Pegasus that, understandably, leads most other viewers, who were not coming into the episode pissed off at Adama's lax and self-indulgent leadership style, to HATE HATE HATE the Pegasus and its Admiral: unlike the Galactica, the Pegasus crew have not only not humanized the cylons (most of the Galactica crew haven't humanized the cylons, although many of the main characters have, note the reception Cally gets after her release from the brig for shooting Boomer), but have decided to systematically dehumanize them further by allowing (the male members of) the crew to gang rape their imprisoned Cylon.

I'm torn on whether this is a fair tactic on the part of the show's creators. Rape is a sufficiently hot-button that it immediately throws everything that might have been reasonable and decent about Admiral Cain and the crew of the Pegasus out the window for most viewers. The Pegasus has managed to maintain morale and cohesion while fighting for months with no hope of victory or any end other than death? Yeah, but the Pegasus crew gang rapes their prisoners. Unlike the Galactica, which tortures them (episode 1.8) and gives them summary execution (1.8 and nearly in 2.06). Is rape really that much worse than torture and murder? Understandably, for most viewers, who are far more likely to face rape than torture or murder, rape is far worse. Would viewers have reacted as strongly if Lt. Thorne were merely renowned for his brutal non-sexual torture? Would as many viewers have cheered if Helo and Tiro had killed him while preventing him from torturing her by, say, "merely" half drowning her repeatedly for eight hours? Disturbingly, I think many wouldn't have.

While rape is in fact frequently used as a weapon of dehumanization in warfare, I think that the Pegaus crew indulging in group non-sexual torture of PegaSix would have made the episode much richer, as it would have much more strongly tied what the Pegasus crew did to PegaSix and what Lt. Thorne was about to do to Preg!Sharon to what the Galactica crew have already done to Cylons they had under their power. Yes, yes, Kara tortured Loeben under one of those stupid ticking time bomb scenarios (except it wasn't), but her focus quickly shifted to trying to convince Loeben that, since he would shortly decide to stop feeling pain while she tortured him, that therefore he was just a machine, and eight hours of brutal torture brought her no closer to getting an answer to the ticking time bomb question anyway. Kara's torture easily slid to the same "You aren't human, you're just a machine" focus that seemed to have motivated the Pegasus crew as well in their brutality.

Another weakness of the rape aspect of the plot is that there are seemingly no female characters on the Pegasus. While various theories have been proposed for why this is true within the reality of the show, I think that the most likely explanation is a meta-level choice on the part of the creators, who didn't feel they had time to go into a further side issue of how the female crew members on Pegasus are reacting to this situation. While there is a distinct current of generalized misogyny in the drunk Pegasus pilots, it is also true that women in the military have (recently rather famously) been just as willing to engage in dehumanizing brutalization and sexual humiliation as men. My hope is that the Pegasus plot line continues long enough that we get to see some of the female crew on the Pegasus (I refuse to believe that the Pegasus has no female crew) and how they are handling the situation.

Nonetheless, a fantastic episode, if a little too easy to read as morally simple.

Totally inexplicable if you haven't been following Alas

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 04:00:43 GMT

This is a summary of my interpretation of what happened on a certain open thread on Alas. It is mostly focused on what Amp, as moderator did, and how this played off of various other dynamics, and created others. I have just reread a large chunk of the thread, but by no means all. I am certainly missing dynamics that I couldn't see from my perspective, and I am leaving out most of the actual interesting discussion in the thread to focus instead on how events transpired that gave a clear show of gross misuse of power dynamics, but was perhaps only a bad misreading compounded by ugly historical dynamics. Also, I realized that this was a completely insane thing to be doing just before the end, so the last 48 posts are completely absent from this summary.

Summary:

Novalis posted a bunch of standard psuedo-feminist arguments (of the sort where we can get to equality by just deciding we are all equal) and was being solidly and steadily argued down by a number of extremely knowledgeable and skillful feminists. There was some confusion between Novalis, who seemed of generally reasonably good-will (if willfully naive), and Nomen, who seemed more of a jerk (making "Well, if this is what feminists are like, then I don't want to be one," arguments, questioning Heart's intelligence, and such like). Novalis, steadily losing his argument, got his back up. Alsis expressed her disgust with him in abusive terms (post 119). Robert took this as an opportunity to outrageously insult Alsis (post 121), even though he hadn't been involved. Amp (I think) cross posted with Robert, with a generic request that things be kept civil (post 122). radfem and Molly commented on the misogynist content in Robert's attack and explained why they (and by implication presumably Alsis) had had enough of Novalis (posts 123-127). Alsis told Robert to fuck off (post 129).

This is the point at which Amp blundered badly (as he now agrees, and for which he has apologized, and as a result of which blunder he has expressed an active willingness to rethink much of how he handles things here).

Having misread/overlooked/skimmed the abusive post from Robert, but agreeing with Robert that Alsis had unloaded rather harshly on Novalis, and feeling that Novalis was getting his back up in large part because he was being dog-piled (trying to argue with half a dozen extremely skilled and knowledgeable writers, none of whom are particularly interested in cutting you any slack, is extremely difficult...), Amp stepped in and refused to censure Robert, and chided Alsis for being overly abusive of Novalis, arguing that Novalis could be read charitably as being of decent will, and that it took a very uncharitable reading to see him as of overtly bad will (post 130). Alsis objected (post 131), and Amp defended his interpretation of the situation, including a defense of Robert that completely ignored the fact that Robert had been blatantly abusive and insulting (post 132). Because Amp had missed that fact, Amp's interpretation was completely wrong, and incredibly insulting to Alsis and to anyone else who didn't realize that Amp had been skimming, and had completely misunderstood the situation.

Amp was attacked (quite understandably) for this unfair response to Alsis, but the discussion drifted to Amp defending Novalis, not Robert's attack on Alsis (e.g. post 142 from Molly). Amp continues to defend his position re: Novalis, and makes a comment about being Molly and Alsis being "determined to take offense" (thereby being effectively condescending and sexist, and solidly violating his own rule of reading others with reasonable charity, but clearly foreshadowing the interaction with funnie, and definitely flashing back to the Ms boards) (post 149). Q Grrl calls him on this (post 155 and 156).

Amp shuts up. And he stays shut up for a long while (except to ask if littleviolet is lucky, someone he does remember from the Ms. boards). Sheena asks why on earth he popped back in to ask that, and Amp explains why he has shut up (post 240), which is that basically he is not seeing what others are seeing, so he is backing off to think through why he isn't seeing it (plus he is seeing Ms board dynamics in play, and he doesn't like them).

Amp reappears in post 252 to explain that delays in posting are not caused by malevolence on his part, and to chide Molly for taking the worst possible interpretation of the situation.

Amp then steps in to argue with Robert over Robert's argument against all peaceful movements of radical change (post 257).

He steps in again to attack Robert's claim that Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist (post 287 and 304).

In post 306, he posts to disagree with littleviolet over the character of Alas, pointing out that his purpose for it is to be an [Amp's politics] friendly site for people who disagree and agree with him to argue, and that people with hateful beliefs are permitted to be here, so long as they are willing to argue respectfully.

After argument by various people, Amp reappears in post 331 to ask littleviolet what she sees as being the benefit there would be from Alas not existing as a place for such debate and conversation to take place.

There is further discussion, and in post 341 Amp tells Robert to butt out, as he is not contributing to the discussion. In 343 he calls Robert on one of his more blatantly abusive posts.

In post 360, Amp explains the civility rules. His post is extremely ironic to anyone who actually did follow the Robert-Alsis exchange, as it is clear that he let Robert violate the rules, while censuring Alsis for a similar but lesser violation.

There is a lot else in there, but that is what I have pulled out of it at the moment. I was skimming at the time, so much of this was relatively new to me (I reread and caught Amp's blunder a day or two ago).

First post ever!

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 08:03:32 GMT

So anyone who doesn't usually follow Vincent's blog who is interested in some very interesting discussion of roleplaying games should check out (all titles mine):
Ennead style games
Mechanics, gaming and narrative
Meg-Vince-Em co-GMing mechanics
FitM, FatE, and other terms you don't understand, how to explain Forge derived Gaming theory to non-Forge folks