Playing a board game with a few friends the other night. We'd just finished one round and a fifth player arrives: he's going to be using the last remaining colour, which happens to be purple. One of my friends exclaims:
"Ha, man, you get to be purple, the gay colour!"
I glance at him.
He gets defensive: "Hey man, I was just joking!"
"Really?" I ask. "I don't get it, then. What's the joke?"
He's not having any of it: "Man, we all know how you feel about the gays."
I'm a little incredulous, now: "Really? How's that?"
At this point he's getting exasperated: "You never used to be like this, professor."
I fire back: "This isn't about getting a PhD, it's about being a good person."
He lets it go: "Whatever." I don't push the issue any further. We get on with the game.
In a way, he was right: I have changed. It's not that I wouldn't have disagreed with his comments in the past, I just wouldn't have challenged or vocally questioned them in even the incredibly minor way I did this time.
So yes, I have changed -- and I certainly hope I will continue to.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
In Which I Compare My Friends to Scottish, Spacefaring Pterodactyls
Chatting with Tlönista over coffee the other day and the inevitable question comes up: how did I go, in two years, from neo-atheist student organizer to picking fights with MRAs?*
Honestly, I'm still not sure -- it's a story I'll have to unravel sometime. For now, all I can suggest is that I'm where I'm at now with regards to feminism is in large part because of some incredibly patient and fantastic friends.
Much like the Yehat uplifted the Shofixti and introduced them to interstellar travel, these folks really made me aware of a lot of issues I had never given serious thought to. I owe them a great deal, and I hope they will look past my questionable metaphor to see the underlying sentiment.
*Not to say that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, it just worked out that way in my case.
Honestly, I'm still not sure -- it's a story I'll have to unravel sometime. For now, all I can suggest is that I'm where I'm at now with regards to feminism is in large part because of some incredibly patient and fantastic friends.
Much like the Yehat uplifted the Shofixti and introduced them to interstellar travel, these folks really made me aware of a lot of issues I had never given serious thought to. I owe them a great deal, and I hope they will look past my questionable metaphor to see the underlying sentiment.
*Not to say that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, it just worked out that way in my case.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
"Masculine Geeky"
Huh, you're saying it's not that women just don't like math and science, it's that they're turned off by the overwhelmingly masculine and sexist state of these fields? Who would have thought?
I think "masculine geeky" is an alright term for what this article describes -- although it might be thought of more technically as a type of "subordinate masculinity" which pretends to be different from, but really emulates the more mainstream hegemonic form of masculinity.
I think "masculine geeky" is an alright term for what this article describes -- although it might be thought of more technically as a type of "subordinate masculinity" which pretends to be different from, but really emulates the more mainstream hegemonic form of masculinity.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Men Who Buy Sex
Over at Border Thinking, Laura Agustín links to an article on the clients of sex workers. It is an information-packed and short read, and describes Canadian research on the topic -- so of course I recommend checking it out.
On the topic of clients, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think it's all too easy to think of the clients of sex workers (also known as johns or kerb crawlers depending on your side of the Atlantic) as monstrous or in some way "different" from other men. Even some who recognize that laws against sex workers themselves (that is, against selling) are counter-productive and absurd may want to criminalize the demand end of the equation. Taken to the extreme, we get shaming campaigns and the existence of "John schools" which can amount to little more than ill-informed "lessons" and diversion from prison time.
It's gotten more difficult lately for me to think coherently about sex work and especially clients, given that my views on feminism and gender relations have changed substantially in the time since I first became interested in the topic. Yet I still don't think that these extreme reactions to clients are helpful to anybody: clients, sex workers, or the communities in which both live and work.
On the topic of clients, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think it's all too easy to think of the clients of sex workers (also known as johns or kerb crawlers depending on your side of the Atlantic) as monstrous or in some way "different" from other men. Even some who recognize that laws against sex workers themselves (that is, against selling) are counter-productive and absurd may want to criminalize the demand end of the equation. Taken to the extreme, we get shaming campaigns and the existence of "John schools" which can amount to little more than ill-informed "lessons" and diversion from prison time.
It's gotten more difficult lately for me to think coherently about sex work and especially clients, given that my views on feminism and gender relations have changed substantially in the time since I first became interested in the topic. Yet I still don't think that these extreme reactions to clients are helpful to anybody: clients, sex workers, or the communities in which both live and work.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Race and Gender in Heroes Revisited
I stopped watching Heroes after the second season, but if you differ from me in this regard then you may find this image over at SocImages interesting.
On a related note, I wrote about gender and race in Heroes a bit over a year ago here. That site isn't monitored anymore, so if you have any comments on that piece, please leave them here.
A further caution: my views on the topics discussed have changed in the year since that piece was written -- I think I would probably be far less forgiving were I to write it now -- but the general claims made therein still seem sound.
Now that I think about it, I never did end up watching Heroes again after writing that post. The letter to Tim Kring accompanying the image at Racialicious seems to indicate that things have not improved since then.
UPDATE 02/12/09: Reading my old post at RBF more carefully reveals some pretty fucking awful ablist language. I considered taking this post down when I realized this, but I'm going to leave it up for now as a testament to my mistakes. Certainly I don't think I had anywhere near my current (admittedly still not good enough) level of awareness of ableism when I wrote the piece last year. I apologize for that part of the post -- I fucked up.
On a related note, I wrote about gender and race in Heroes a bit over a year ago here. That site isn't monitored anymore, so if you have any comments on that piece, please leave them here.
A further caution: my views on the topics discussed have changed in the year since that piece was written -- I think I would probably be far less forgiving were I to write it now -- but the general claims made therein still seem sound.
Now that I think about it, I never did end up watching Heroes again after writing that post. The letter to Tim Kring accompanying the image at Racialicious seems to indicate that things have not improved since then.
UPDATE 02/12/09: Reading my old post at RBF more carefully reveals some pretty fucking awful ablist language. I considered taking this post down when I realized this, but I'm going to leave it up for now as a testament to my mistakes. Certainly I don't think I had anywhere near my current (admittedly still not good enough) level of awareness of ableism when I wrote the piece last year. I apologize for that part of the post -- I fucked up.
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