Is extreme prudishness, hatred of sex workers, complete desexualization of culture, and treating of women (even by avowed feminists) as fragile flowers in need of protection necessarily concomitant with movements like #metoo?
I hope not, but it sure seems like everyone wants it that way.
I admire programmers because that’s something I could never be.
I can program just fine, when I care to. It’s not math and not really math-like (despite what you’ve heard) so I have no problem with it cognitively. However, I absolutely despise debugging and dread doing it. It’s a horrible despair-filled activity that vitiates all life and all hope. I’d rather wrench out my own fingernails than debug a broken program for two hours. Been there, done that — no desire for a repeat.
Thus, I admire people (like my partner) who can do that, as it seems about the most difficult and for me the least rewarding activity on the planet.
Since debugging is 80%+ of programming, it is not a vocation I want any part of.
In the larger picture for humanity there are only two important tasks:
fixing the environment; and,
self sustainable space colonization.I know a lot on the left hate #2, but keeping all our eggs on Earth is moronic, and the last 200 years (and the dinosaurs) prove it.
— Ian Welsh (@iwelsh) May 2, 2018
The Left is only 80% idiot, while the Right is about 98%. There is a difference, and a significant one, but never forget that “80% idiot” part.
As for space colonization, indeed. We’ll certainly be extinct within 10,000 years without that.
To be completely clear, I don’t have any real sympathy for incels. They’ve largely created their own problems, their solutions are idiotic and redistributing sex as they imagine it won’t help and is not practical for human rights and bodily sanctity reasons. It’s a terrible idea and concept and wouldn’t even help them because it’s not actually what they want. (What they want is the respect of other men when they, for instance, walk into a bar or restaurant or party with a really hot girl, etc.)
That said, they have (like Trump voters) identified an actual dysfunction in society and are responding to it in the least productive way possible. The dysfunction has nothing to do with sex and women are not in any way at fault and are not the solution — no more than all of the rest of us are. So they are on the wrong track, steaming the wrong way fecklessly but with great conviction, solving no problems and causing much pain in themselves and others.
Nevertheless, the ones who should offer some sanity and actual solutions are often only a little better because they are also firmly embedded in zero-sum-game neoliberalism and also cannot imagine any preferable future nor path. Feminism is mostly harmful in this context because it cannot escape and has been fully and utterly captured by the reigning ideology and culture.
Cultures and civilization malfunction and fly apart when there is no valid path ahead. We are seeing this now, and will see more of in the future.
If it feels like 1914, there is a reason for that.
CAN PEOPLE JUST STOP FUCKING SAYING THE PHRASE “REDISTRIBUTION OF SEX” LIKE IT IS AN ACTUAL THING. Sex is not a commodity. Women are not a commodity. Sex workers are not a commodity. Sex is an ACTIVITY. You can’t “redistribute” sex any more than you can “redistribute” dancing.
— Jaclyn Friedman❄️ (@jaclynf) May 2, 2018
Wishful thinking. Under neoliberalism, sex is a commodity just like anything else. Just because a number of pseudo-feminists like Friedman and evangelicals wish to punish women they dislike doesn’t de-commoditize sex or sexuality in the Western neoliberal world.
So many people make statements without thinking about them even for a single second.
Of course sex can be redistributed under neoliberalism. It is, all the time — just in ways that neoliberals (and we’re almost all neoliberals as that is the ruling ideology) approve of.
So much stupid, so little time to cleanse brain.
(To be clear, I fucking despise incels and everything to do with them, but unfortunately their opponents are often no more capable of seeing the world as it is.)
Let’s take it back to 1997:
I did not listen to Kim Richey in 1997. That, it turns out, was a mistake.
Things that I think are (largely) genetic and though alterable by culture to some extent, and can vary between individuals, but that are mostly just raw human nature:
That many/most women are attracted to taller men, and automatically reject shorter men without a second thought. I don’t blame women for this because I think it is (largely) hard-coded, within certain cultural parameters.
That many/most men are most attracted to women 20-28 or so. I don’t blame men for this because I think it is largely hard-coded — again, within certain cultural parameters.
Trying to change these behaviors sans genetic editing will be like attempting to push against a planet. Just won’t work. Yeah, for each of these the other side will tell you how shitty and horrible and wrong the other side is, but they literally cannot help it. Pathologizing these behaviors won’t help. Of course, women will tell you how being attracted to only tall guys is “different,” and men will tell you how it’s also “different,” but that’s post hoc rationalizing for an inbuilt imperative. Don’t believe a word of that from either side.
Facebook is launching a dating feature.
This is great. Truly. It enables your selectivity to increase markedly. Here’s how: don’t date anyone fucking stupid enough to use Facebook dating.
Even with Firefox etc. attempting to destroy it, switching to MacOS for my main OS did more to improve my productivity than any other single technological change I’ve ever done.
Glad 5K coaxed me in that direction, or otherwise I might still be stuck in terrible Windows hell or working on the perpetual-tweak OS, Linux.
I still use those OSes, don’t get me wrong. But most of the time I am in MacOS and it’s much better.
Firefox will show sponsored content that’s personalized but private.
Utterly predictable. This was the route Mozilla’s been steering towards firmly for more than half a decade. It’s essentially what my Reddit account was shadowbanned for even discussing. Of course, this is only the first step. Luring you in and lulling you into assent with false privacy promises is how it starts. But we know how it ends.
Every platform and browser is compromised and nearly non-functional, to be fair. Perhaps Mozilla’s Firefox is the least non-functional. But that’s like being the least moronic of all the morons — not that great.