I think ac convinced me on this point (or a very closely related one) about three arguments back. I'm not sure why you think the etiology (yes, I had to look it up) of this characteristic is relevant, unless you believe the etiology operates at the level of the individual: there must be someone in the weaker position, or we will (as a culture) lose this ability. (I'm not sure about this specific ability, but while ac has convinced me of her larger point, I still wonder if there is, as a mechanical matter, space for the characteristics she wants to preserve.)
I'm not positive, but from what I've seen, I don't think this trait is "coded" as peculiarly feminine in Iranian culture.
I never thought of it as particularly female, either. OTOH, you do come off as nutless. Isn't this a Hegelian idea about the master and the slave? (This is barely remembered from an Intro to PoliSci class.)
Infinity + 1 is just infinity. It's some kind of math thing -- when a bigger infinity is added to a smaller infinity or a finite number, the bigger infinity just absorbs it, kind of like the Borg Collective of the Liberal Hive-Mind.
The post is interesting, although I can't somehow figure out what it would mean to lose the sort of sensitivity ac is talking about. I get valuing it, I'm just not getting to seeing it as threatened.
4: What if each person considered all other persons to be superior? Then the same attitude would exist, without the present system being in place and without being tied to a particular gender.
Whether a situation like I describe can be brought about on a practical level is irrelevant.
Infinity + 1 is just infinity. It's some kind of math thing
Ok, here's how we can get to 1000 posts easy:
Actually, it depends on whether you're talking about cardinality or ordinality. Actually, for a standard definition of aleph-null infinity in mathematics (a lower case omega, I believe, it's the one that looks like a curvy w), 1+infinity = infinity, but infinity + 1 is different from either.
It's a mapping issue if you're dealing with ordinals.
And now the ensuing comments could take us to 1000.
If you were to add a few words about the distinction between the transfinite numbers and infinity, that would be one step closer to 1000. And then if someone commented that they don't give a shit about theoretical math, that would be another.
I don't give a shit about theoretical math. We were doing just fine bickering until Ogged had to go step in and get all snotty about us staying on topic.
55 - Now I feel really terrible, what is the difference between infinite and transfinite numbers? I remember them being used pretty much interchangably, but my class attendance was admittedly spotty at best. I may have been hungover for that particular distinction.
I thought everyone just abandoned the thread because they wanted to run off and discuss oral sex on the new one. Leaving this one to be about theoretical math, apparently.
I thought everyone just abandoned the thread because they wanted to run off and discuss oral sex on the new one. Leaving this one to be about theoretical math, apparently.
There's actually been very little discussion of oral sex on the other thread. And this thread is actually for meta-discussion, bickering and overuse of "actually."
the imaginative faculty, the ability to project yourself into someone else's experience.
It's bizarre how such a valuable skill is simultaneously so disdained. For years I have watched this play out with book recommendations -- women are just flat-out more willing to read about male protagonists than vice-versa, no matter how neutrally presented the options.
It happens with ethnicity too. I was shocked when I realized that parents were using code words to signal that they didn't want their (white) middle-schooler to "have to" read another "multicultural" novel.
I don't know how it became a sign of power not to have to care about another person's perspective. Sometimes I think the only way it will change is when powerful people model a different way.
59: Cantor makes a distinction between the transfinite and the absolute infinite, which he -- fuck, who gives a shit?
Actually, even though commenters evidently got bored with teen oral sex, the other thread has the second example tonight of a pee-pee joke based on Weiner's name. So it's got that going for it.
46- Ogged says in the post he goes on about eliminating traits that signal weakness. And I find it's a general undertone, if not overtone, of arguments around here. But mostly I was responding to the fact that a couple of people have asked if I'm essentialist about this sort of thing, and thought I'd clarify that I'm not.
There was a big thread which turned into discussion of higher math at post 325, which someone remarked was the sum of squares two different ways. So it can be done. But it seems to be in the hoohole ("sum of * squares" is coming up blank on Yahoo!)
Here's that comment 325, but I think the discussion of higher math happened in a different thread. By the way, google seems to be indexing the older threads now, thanks to some magic that Becks worked.
Maybe even more than that. It would have been easier to find the thread if comment counts still showed (note: this is not a complaint): I remembered it being a 500+ thread.
It's just a statement of fact. It's not like there's really any reason to show the old comment counts, especially if google is really going to start indexing the old stuff again.
But it's a statement of fact beginning with a conditional perfect that compares positively with the status quo, and being made within the hearing (reading, really) of people who may have the power to bring the desired state of affairs into being. That's a complaint, or maybe a request.
isn't part of that the fact that novels about women are often 'what its like to be a woman in a man's world' as oposed to male protagonists are just 'what its like to be in the world'? i think that was part of the reason why i didn't like toni morrison (although more about race than gender).
Without the accompanying disclaimers it may have been a complaint, but the disclaimers are there, so it's not. This isn't a case where the authorities are obligated to get involved once a comment has been made and as I have no desire to press charges file a complaint it is not a complaint.
I don't know how it became a sign of power not to have to care about another person's perspective. Sometimes I think the only way it will change is when powerful people model a different way.
It's not so much a sign of power, but a sign of being a member of a powerful class. Joe White Guy (wild stereotyping, talking about broad generalities) doesn't lack the capacity to empathize with women or with minorities (to the extent that he does) because he's necessarily personally powerful, but because the powerful people he's needed to develop empathy with so he could get along in life have disproportionately been white men.
Which makes me think that the lack of empathy is the unusual quality -- women aren't empathetic because they're structurally out of power, men lack it because they're structually privileged. I would guess that a society with a more equal distribution of power would develop not less empathetic women and minorities, but more empathetic men and white people.
(This is vaguely related to the discussion on the other thread about distinguishing people by national origin. It's not that there's anything at all racist about being unable to tell if someone is Chinese or Korean by looking at them. It's that never having considered that it might be an interesting or useful distinction may mark you as a privileged twerp who doesn't think there's any reason anything outside their own group is worth of attention. It's a sort of provincialism that's much more available to members of a privileged group.)
It's not that I think that it's imminently going to be eradicated, it's more what my or your or Ogged's utopian vision implies about what you value in people right now. It's something I think about when I get the sense that people around me prefer the company of men. Or prefer women who talk/act like men.
isn't part of that the fact that novels about women are often 'what its like to be a woman in a man's world' as oposed to male protagonists are just 'what its like to be in the world'?
Argumentative response: Isn't the phrase "a man's world" the same as "the world" from a woman's perspective?
Less argumentative response: There are a lot of good books by women about being in the world that don't get a lot of publicity.
91: Hrm. Let me forcefully separate myself from Ogged -- he's the one stamping out suspiciously feminine or gay behavior, not me.
I do think that a fair amount of what's coded as feminine in our society is that way due to powerlessness, and whether or not it's good in itself, it's not worth perpetuating powerlessness to preserve it. (Hyperbolic comparison: The blues? Excellent music. Probably wouldn't have existed without slavery and Jim Crow. If I had the option of changing history to eliminate slavery and Jim Crow, and that same change replaced the blues with ragtime throughout the 20th century, it'd be musically sad, but entirely worth it.)
I do think that a fair amount of what's coded as feminine in our society is that way due to powerlessness, and whether or not it's good in itself, it's not worth perpetuating powerlessness to preserve it.
Right, but the questions are: (a) is it necessary to perpetuate powerlessness to preserve it, and (b) to the extent that it does reflect "powerlessness," and there are women who are OK with paying that price, what's it to you and why should they care? (I think baa made the latter point during one of these discussions.)
The analogy that's coming to mind is like countries as they develop. You can preserve positive aspects of a culture as the country gets more prosperous and powerful, retaining some integrity and sense of history and so on, realization of where you come from and what was good about that. Rather than just becoming a series of American-style malls.
Well, sure. As I said, I'm not about stamping out anything now coded as feminine. I just want to change the system that shoehorns women into those feminine roles without their choice.
It was a joke in my day about the folk who went to Cuba to cut sugar cane and mingle with the proletariat, but maintaining compassion and empathy while in a comfortable position, without falling into sentimentality is really tough.
Maybe Woody abandoning his family and hitting the roads was an early sympton of the Huntington's, but to some degree Woody thought it was method, not madness.
Names that also come to mind pretty easily, if they are at all pertinent to the thread:Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ehrenreich. Each would carry different stories, different points.
I wonder if Pynchon's isolation, if he is isolated, is a method. A lot of expatriots & self-exiles with a purpose, like Joyce. Monks & priests & nuns, or their equivalents in many religions, didn't vow asceticism as an affectation.
Apart from America, has any country ever developed by becoming a series of American-style malls? Does acquiring a bunch of American-style malls after developing amount to the same thing?
"Argumentative response: Isn't the phrase "a man's world" the same as "the world" from a woman's perspective?
Less argumentative response: There are a lot of good books by women about being in the world that don't get a lot of publicity."
isn't that the same thing i'm saying? if a book is from a woman's perspective, gender becomes a much bigger issue than it would be if the book was male perspective. isn't that classic male privilege? and so if you pick up a woman-book, odds are its going to be on a certain topic, one which i don't usually want to read about. of course there are 1000x as many great books out there than i will ever have time to read, so its more a 'information/finding' issue than anything else.
109: I don't totally dispute this. Nevertheless, I have many times recommended a rip-roaring adventure story with a female heroine (e.g. Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle) to a boy, only to have him turn it down in favor of something much more plain vanilla. This has happened so frequently, and in so many different permutations, that I really don't think it can be boiled down to not wanting to read "a woman-book" because it's on a "certain topic."
Back when I was young and had time to read anything besides blogs I used to actively seek out books by women. It was a thought process along the lines of, "women are different from me, therefore interesting". I must have been unaware of my own privelege or something.
Hey have I recommended Jennifer Egan's work over here yet?
He did it more than once?
I remember him pointing that out often enough to inspire me to write a program for generating numbers which are the sum of squares three or more different ways. The code is on my blog somewhere. Then Wolfson and I got in an argument or something argument-like about C vs. scripts.
109: Yeah, but what I'm pointing out is that in saying "I don't want to read about being-a-woman-in-a-man's-world" is basically equivalent to saying "I don't want to read about being a woman." Which, like, really?
For that matter, writing about race and gender is about what it's like to be in the world. It isn't "on a certain topic." This is a totally bogus distinction. If you don't want to read about being a woman, or being black, it's your business what you do with your time, but you might as well just put it that way.
BV? Are you being ironic? 'Cause that seems perfectly logical, and in fact, makes me happy.
I will now return to driving nails through my hand to distract me from the pain.
Also, when I finished Look At Me (not really spoilers!) I was like, "c'mon, no one's going to get rich or famous showing people's lives unfold on TV and the internet." I now feel dumb.
"If you don't want to read about being a woman, or being black, it's your business what you do with your time, but you might as well just put it that way."
i'm ok with putting it that way; those issues generally aren't all that consumingly interesting to me. its also seem to tend toward being about 'identity' which is kind of wankerish. its not bad, but i wouldn't want it to make up most of my reading. also they seem more appropriate for nonfiction writing.
118: The male privilege remark was ironic, not the rest. Not that I think my younger self was all that smart about gender. I think I had the idea that there was some sort of essence of female consciousness that I could come to understand, which seems pretty silly to me now.
Hey speaking of reality TV, I thought I remember hearing somewhere that there is going to be a reality TV version of Black Like Me coming out soon. Does anybody know about this? A white family and a black family swap people, who are made up to look like members of their host family's race, or something like that?
129 -- Yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of. I guess when I read a post a year ago that says something is forthcoming, it's likely that "forthcoming" will not continue to be a valid characterization indefinitely.
125: Not a different essence, but a different experience, yes. (Some people even think the purpose of reading fiction is not just the pleasure of recognition and identification, but to teach you to recognize and understand things you couldn't otherwise!) So even if the essence stuff is mistaken, I think your younger self was not so dumb.
What I don't get about this conversation is that the young female protagonist was the gold standard of across-the-board popular and high-art novels for England in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Ok, Dickens used orphaned boys in the more usual female roles.)
But tons of people read Pamela (for whose marriage the church bells of England famously tolled) and Clarissa, and the novels of Edgeworth, Burney, Radcliffe, Austen, Sand, and Eliot made cultural waves. Flaubert wrote Mme Bovary, rather than M. Bovary; yes, a line of criticism speaks to his appropriation of female literature, but what Emma's character also signifies is the readiness of that culture to enter into female lives.
4 or 5 years ago I was asked at work to make an animated meeting opener containing a bunch of jokes about reality tv, but I said, come on, that crap is so over. Why a person without a tv was allowed to express an opinion, I don't know, but at least I got out of the job, and by the time it was clear how wrong I was, everyone had forgotten. Yay!
122: Actually, it's not about being told what it's like to be a woman, it's about experiencing life from an alien point of view. That doesn't sound wankerish to me. On the contrary.
Possibly yo-yo just wants to help this thread reach 1000.
But tons of people read Pamela (for whose marriage the church bells of England famously tolled) and Clarissa, and the novels of Edgeworth, Burney, Radcliffe, Austen, Sand, and Eliot made cultural waves. Flaubert wrote Mme Bovary, rather than M. Bovary; yes, a line of criticism speaks to his appropriation of female literature, but what Emma's character also signifies is the readiness of that culture to enter into female lives.
That culture extended into the twentieth century -- Orwell writes about children's books noting Little Women as a general purpose classic, not as a book which it was unusual for him to have read as a boy.
I have a strongly held but poorly supported opinion that the purported reluctance of boys to be interested in fiction about girls and women is a symptom of anti-feminist backlash, rather than something more innate. It seems to be new in the world after second-wave feminism.
141: I can't speak to the 'no backlash' point in Sweden, but you certainly have a media environment affected by US practices.
To take an example, there's a wildly popular educational TV show for small children here Dora the Explorer, which is IME as liked by small boys as by small girls. After it became really popular, a companion show with a boy hero (Dora's cousin) was introduced. That doesn't seem to have been a response to the fact that boys wouldn't watch Dora, because they were, in fact, crazy about the show -- it looks more like discomfort with the idea that a girl-centered show appealed so strongly to both sexes.
The 'boys won't be interested in anything focussed on girls' idea really appears to be top-down rather than a genuine response to consumer demand.
There may be something to that. However, if that 'boys own' culture is a reaction to feminism I think it's a reaction to first rather than second-wave feminism.
The 'boys' own' culture predates second-wave feminism by 40 or 50 years. As someone else remarked, so much of what we think of as 'tradition' was invented more or less wholesale during the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. So, in the UK, you get the Scout Movement, the novels of Kipling and all the rest. Lots of the tropes about 'what boys like' date from that period and the period leading up to WWII.
The idea that boys like action with male protagonists is already well fixed a long time before second-wave feminism comes along.
As an aside: I, myself, am reluctant to read modern literary novels as a genre -- whether written by men, or by women -- so I suspect read rather fewer books by women or with female protagonists than I would otherwise. There's an introspective character to those novels that bores me in a way that 19th century literary fiction -- even a pretty introspective novel like Villette -- does not.
You should avoid all the introspective whiny stuff and try reading modern literary novels that make no sense and contain scenes of explicit sex and violence. Some of them have female protagonists too (e.g. Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica").
The idea that boys like action with male protagonists is already well fixed a long time before second-wave feminism comes along.
This is different, though, from the current belief that the vast majority of boys simply won't be interested in anything with a female protagonist. A positive taste for entertainment with a hero you can identify with is different from categorical rejection of any entertainment that doesn't fit that mold. (For example, girls these days are expected to enjoy books and movies that focus on girls, but not to reject books and movies that focus on boys; boys are expected to be interested only in entertainment focused on boys.)
Second wave feminism might be the wrong date, but I think it's post WW-II rather than earlier in the century.
For example, girls these days are expected to enjoy books and movies that focus on girls, but not to reject books and movies that focus on boys; boys are expected to be interested only in entertainment focused on boys.)
That's surprising. My understanding had been that the motivation for creating female characters like Dora was that women were underrepresented in such situations, and girls were being disadvantaged by that fact.
What's surprising? There's reaction against it, but what's being reacted against is a strong assumption that anything girl-focused is going to be difficult or impossible to sell to boys.
(Mind you, I don't think this is true -- Dora was a huge hit among little kids of both sexes. In response to that fact, a boy-focused version starring her older cousin Diego has been introduced.)
I guess I meant that I thought the assumption was that there was a loss for girls who don't have female fictive models like Dora. Which is to say that there is some value to gender-specific heros. Thus, I'd have assumed as much creation of female analogs to male characters as the reverse. All of which is to say that I would have thought the same assumptions would both produce Dora and motivate the belief that boys needed a gender specific role-model.
That said, part of it is clearly ac's point about feminine characteristics being deprecated (though, OTOH, do female kid characters display characteristics that could be thought of as "female" anymore?).
A positive taste for entertainment with a hero you can identify with is different from categorical rejection of any entertainment that doesn't fit that mold.
The assumption that I'm talking about is that on the one hand, girls, while they want to spend a certain amount of their time engaged in entertainment focused on female protagonists, have no objection to also focusing on male protagonists. On the other hand, boys are expected to object to (or rather, be totally uninterested in) ever engaging with something focused on a female protagonist.
have no objection to also focusing on male protagonists. On the other hand, boys are expected to object to (or rather, be totally uninterested in) ever engaging with something focused on a female protagonist.
Right. But those aren't parallel statements. The parallel statement to "have no objection to..." is that boys have an objection to.... But you've said above that it isn't the boys who seem to mind as much as the adults.
What's not clear is whether, after correcting for a certain deprecation of feminine characteristics, the adults believe that it's bad for boys to identify with Dora. It seems not unreasonable for marketers to spawn two (or more) of everything new, as needed. Maybe they do. Maybe this is the "boys don't play with dolls" bit. But maybe this is just "I'll sell more shoes if I have a white NBA superstar than a black one." That's just a bet, and for a long time it was a pretty good one. In part, I'd want to know how often new hero creations are created in both genders, or both genders after success, I guess.
I think your complaint is about the adults, and I think it's that we make the assumption that girls can be exposed to other-gendered heros and boys can't, and that this is a function of a backlash (or maybe just the first lash) against feminism. That might be true, but I can think of a few other explanations that might explain those facts, including neutral-ish marketing assumptions.
Which is to say that there is some value to gender-specific heros.
I don't get what you are saying here. You mean, that it's good to have heroes of both genders, so that everyone can find someone to identify with? Or that it's good to have, say, girl heroes that are designed to appeal only to girls?
I think your complaint is about the adults, and I think it's that we make the assumption that girls can be exposed to other-gendered heros and boys can't, and that this is a function of a backlash (or maybe just the first lash) against feminism. That might be true, but I can think of a few other explanations that might explain those facts, including neutral-ish marketing assumptions.
The bolded claim is exactly right -- I think this is a adult-driven preference much more than it results from the unedited preferences of actual boys. I'd be interested in what you mean by 'neutral-ish marketing assumptions'.
ha
Posted by badger | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 5:32 PM
We can get to 1000 with this one, I'm sure of it.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:05 PM
How sure?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:21 PM
I think ac convinced me on this point (or a very closely related one) about three arguments back. I'm not sure why you think the etiology (yes, I had to look it up) of this characteristic is relevant, unless you believe the etiology operates at the level of the individual: there must be someone in the weaker position, or we will (as a culture) lose this ability. (I'm not sure about this specific ability, but while ac has convinced me of her larger point, I still wonder if there is, as a mechanical matter, space for the characteristics she wants to preserve.)
I'm not positive, but from what I've seen, I don't think this trait is "coded" as peculiarly feminine in Iranian culture.
I never thought of it as particularly female, either. OTOH, you do come off as nutless. Isn't this a Hegelian idea about the master and the slave? (This is barely remembered from an Intro to PoliSci class.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:28 PM
3: I used "can" rather than "will" on purpose. Statements about potentiality are difficult to falsify.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:45 PM
Given that the threads have been breaking down lately once they get to 800 or so, I remain skeptical.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:50 PM
Okay, fine, it's not going to reach 1000 comments -- cowards.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:05 PM
Have the courage of your convictions, Adam. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you're wrong.
You know what would be awesome? If we bickered for 1000 comments over whether this thread could make it to 1000.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:10 PM
That would not be awesome.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:35 PM
It would be more awesome than the more likely way of reaching 1000 comments.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:47 PM
Would not.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:51 PM
The more you argue, the closer we get to 1000.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:58 PM
Totally would.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:58 PM
Wait. Are we arguing or bickering here?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:59 PM
Is there a difference?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:59 PM
What kind of question is that?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:00 PM
A rhetorical one.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:01 PM
Rhetorical questions are such an annoying argumentative strategy.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:01 PM
Are not.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:02 PM
Aren't they? Could anything be more annoying?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:03 PM
So what kind of question was 14?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:05 PM
I'll ask the questions here, you're the one that started this fight.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:12 PM
So ask.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:15 PM
I did, and you didn't give me a straight answer. So typical of the left-leaning commentariat.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:17 PM
Is not.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:18 PM
Adam and I were bickering, eb and I were arguing. This may not be meaningful, but it makes my previous comments consistent. Happy?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:18 PM
I'm tired of this motherfucking bickering on this motherfucking thread!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:18 PM
Oh now, there's an argument.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:19 PM
Is too.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:19 PM
Is not infinity!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:19 PM
26: No, I am most certainly not happy. Don't take that tone with me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:20 PM
Is too infinity + 1!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:20 PM
Apparently I am the only one thinking at a grade-school level. I'll go back to reading about Renaissance humanism now.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:21 PM
31: Eep.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:21 PM
EB, go to your room.
Posted by E | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:21 PM
E?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:22 PM
35 was me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:22 PM
36 is not a rhetorical question.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:22 PM
Typo.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:23 PM
33: Damn, I was hoping you'd take this thread to 1000 all by yourself.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:23 PM
Infinity + 1 is just infinity. It's some kind of math thing -- when a bigger infinity is added to a smaller infinity or a finite number, the bigger infinity just absorbs it, kind of like the Borg Collective of the Liberal Hive-Mind.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:23 PM
So, y'all notice that ac's post was good?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:25 PM
Was too.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:26 PM
I object to Ogged trying to inject substance into the thread.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:26 PM
Ogged's just trying to hit on ac by pretending to be interested in, you know, her thoughts.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:29 PM
The post is interesting, although I can't somehow figure out what it would mean to lose the sort of sensitivity ac is talking about. I get valuing it, I'm just not getting to seeing it as threatened.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:35 PM
4: What if each person considered all other persons to be superior? Then the same attitude would exist, without the present system being in place and without being tied to a particular gender.
Whether a situation like I describe can be brought about on a practical level is irrelevant.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:37 PM
This bit from something I'm editing totally reminded me of the Unfoggedtariat:
"the number of roosters vying for 'top cock' seems to crow not only all day long but also throughout the night in some places."
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:39 PM
That's one confusingly written sentence.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:41 PM
48: Wait, is that supposed to be "seem to crow" or "seems to grow"?
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:12 PM
"Crow." You can see why it needs major editing.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:14 PM
Ogged's just trying to hit on ac by pretending to be interested in, you know, her thoughts.
Wait, is ac hot? Is it too late now to say the post was good? Damn.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:19 PM
Infinity + 1 is just infinity. It's some kind of math thing
Ok, here's how we can get to 1000 posts easy:
Actually, it depends on whether you're talking about cardinality or ordinality. Actually, for a standard definition of aleph-null infinity in mathematics (a lower case omega, I believe, it's the one that looks like a curvy w), 1+infinity = infinity, but infinity + 1 is different from either.
It's a mapping issue if you're dealing with ordinals.
And now the ensuing comments could take us to 1000.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:34 PM
That is, if anyone gives a shit about theoretical math.
And sorry for overusing "actually".
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:35 PM
If you were to add a few words about the distinction between the transfinite numbers and infinity, that would be one step closer to 1000. And then if someone commented that they don't give a shit about theoretical math, that would be another.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:48 PM
Ogged's just trying to hit on ac by pretending to be interested in, you know, her thoughts.
What do you think he's been doing to you the last two years?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:50 PM
I don't give a shit about theoretical math. We were doing just fine bickering until Ogged had to go step in and get all snotty about us staying on topic.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:50 PM
56: Me? I think Ogged's about the least likely person to hit on me that I know.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:52 PM
55 - Now I feel really terrible, what is the difference between infinite and transfinite numbers? I remember them being used pretty much interchangably, but my class attendance was admittedly spotty at best. I may have been hungover for that particular distinction.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:55 PM
I thought everyone just abandoned the thread because they wanted to run off and discuss oral sex on the new one. Leaving this one to be about theoretical math, apparently.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:55 PM
53: I was talking about that whole Cantor "aleph" stuff.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:56 PM
I thought everyone just abandoned the thread because they wanted to run off and discuss oral sex on the new one. Leaving this one to be about theoretical math, apparently.
There's actually been very little discussion of oral sex on the other thread. And this thread is actually for meta-discussion, bickering and overuse of "actually."
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:58 PM
Hey, it's not just any oral sex, it's teenage oral sex!
Putting that on the internet is like dumping a pile of cocaine in a Motley Crue concert.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:00 PM
the imaginative faculty, the ability to project yourself into someone else's experience.
It's bizarre how such a valuable skill is simultaneously so disdained. For years I have watched this play out with book recommendations -- women are just flat-out more willing to read about male protagonists than vice-versa, no matter how neutrally presented the options.
It happens with ethnicity too. I was shocked when I realized that parents were using code words to signal that they didn't want their (white) middle-schooler to "have to" read another "multicultural" novel.
I don't know how it became a sign of power not to have to care about another person's perspective. Sometimes I think the only way it will change is when powerful people model a different way.
(Like Ogged, starting this blog so we could all muse about gender issues.
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:08 PM
59: Cantor makes a distinction between the transfinite and the absolute infinite, which he -- fuck, who gives a shit?
Actually, even though commenters evidently got bored with teen oral sex, the other thread has the second example tonight of a pee-pee joke based on Weiner's name. So it's got that going for it.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:12 PM
No, no, go on, we need to get to 1000 somehow.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:24 PM
Are we there yet?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:25 PM
Are we there yet?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:25 PM
Are we there yet?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:26 PM
Pipe down back there, or I'll turn this thread around right now.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:29 PM
I'm going home now. I expect this thread to be massively commented when I return tomorrow.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:35 PM
46- Ogged says in the post he goes on about eliminating traits that signal weakness. And I find it's a general undertone, if not overtone, of arguments around here. But mostly I was responding to the fact that a couple of people have asked if I'm essentialist about this sort of thing, and thought I'd clarify that I'm not.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:37 PM
So, ac, how about that interest I showed in your thoughts? Eh?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:44 PM
There was a big thread which turned into discussion of higher math at post 325, which someone remarked was the sum of squares two different ways. So it can be done. But it seems to be in the hoohole ("sum of * squares" is coming up blank on Yahoo!)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:45 PM
Here's that comment 325, but I think the discussion of higher math happened in a different thread. By the way, google seems to be indexing the older threads now, thanks to some magic that Becks worked.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:52 PM
73- Very impressive.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:56 PM
There's more where that came from. Go ahead, think something else.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:00 PM
I don't know if I fixed the hoohole, but I did find that comment easily by searching for "site:unfogged.com sum squares 325" on Google.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:02 PM
No one knows the hooholes like the slutty lesbians.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:10 PM
I have no lifeYou all lack dedication.Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:18 PM
He did it twice?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:19 PM
Maybe even more than that. It would have been easier to find the thread if comment counts still showed (note: this is not a complaint): I remembered it being a 500+ thread.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:26 PM
I don't think you can make something not a complaint just by renouncing it's complaint nature. Cf. "I'm not being creepy, but..."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:55 PM
"its," I meant "its." Fuck.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:55 PM
44 sounds simultaneously like drug and sex euphemisms.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:01 AM
It's just a statement of fact. It's not like there's really any reason to show the old comment counts, especially if google is really going to start indexing the old stuff again.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:17 AM
But it's a statement of fact beginning with a conditional perfect that compares positively with the status quo, and being made within the hearing (reading, really) of people who may have the power to bring the desired state of affairs into being. That's a complaint, or maybe a request.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:26 AM
@64:
isn't part of that the fact that novels about women are often 'what its like to be a woman in a man's world' as oposed to male protagonists are just 'what its like to be in the world'? i think that was part of the reason why i didn't like toni morrison (although more about race than gender).
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 1:00 AM
Without the accompanying disclaimers it may have been a complaint, but the disclaimers are there, so it's not. This isn't a case where the authorities are obligated to get involved once a comment has been made and as I have no desire to
press chargesfile a complaint it is not a complaint.Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 1:18 AM
I don't know how it became a sign of power not to have to care about another person's perspective. Sometimes I think the only way it will change is when powerful people model a different way.
It's not so much a sign of power, but a sign of being a member of a powerful class. Joe White Guy (wild stereotyping, talking about broad generalities) doesn't lack the capacity to empathize with women or with minorities (to the extent that he does) because he's necessarily personally powerful, but because the powerful people he's needed to develop empathy with so he could get along in life have disproportionately been white men.
Which makes me think that the lack of empathy is the unusual quality -- women aren't empathetic because they're structurally out of power, men lack it because they're structually privileged. I would guess that a society with a more equal distribution of power would develop not less empathetic women and minorities, but more empathetic men and white people.
(This is vaguely related to the discussion on the other thread about distinguishing people by national origin. It's not that there's anything at all racist about being unable to tell if someone is Chinese or Korean by looking at them. It's that never having considered that it might be an interesting or useful distinction may mark you as a privileged twerp who doesn't think there's any reason anything outside their own group is worth of attention. It's a sort of provincialism that's much more available to members of a privileged group.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:00 AM
It's not that I think that it's imminently going to be eradicated, it's more what my or your or Ogged's utopian vision implies about what you value in people right now. It's something I think about when I get the sense that people around me prefer the company of men. Or prefer women who talk/act like men.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:28 AM
isn't part of that the fact that novels about women are often 'what its like to be a woman in a man's world' as oposed to male protagonists are just 'what its like to be in the world'?
Argumentative response: Isn't the phrase "a man's world" the same as "the world" from a woman's perspective?
Less argumentative response: There are a lot of good books by women about being in the world that don't get a lot of publicity.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:42 AM
Argumentative response: Isn't the phrase "a man's world" the same as "the world" from a woman's perspective?
For a treatment of a similar theme see Joe Frank's "The O.J. Chronicles" pts 1 and 2.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:00 AM
And, hey, I even empathize with Tim for having to say so many times I've convinced him on this point. That's just how sensitive I am.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:10 AM
91: Hrm. Let me forcefully separate myself from Ogged -- he's the one stamping out suspiciously feminine or
gaybehavior, not me.I do think that a fair amount of what's coded as feminine in our society is that way due to powerlessness, and whether or not it's good in itself, it's not worth perpetuating powerlessness to preserve it. (Hyperbolic comparison: The blues? Excellent music. Probably wouldn't have existed without slavery and Jim Crow. If I had the option of changing history to eliminate slavery and Jim Crow, and that same change replaced the blues with ragtime throughout the 20th century, it'd be musically sad, but entirely worth it.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:27 AM
Are you ragging on ragtime?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:31 AM
I do think that a fair amount of what's coded as feminine in our society is that way due to powerlessness, and whether or not it's good in itself, it's not worth perpetuating powerlessness to preserve it.
Right, but the questions are: (a) is it necessary to perpetuate powerlessness to preserve it, and (b) to the extent that it does reflect "powerlessness," and there are women who are OK with paying that price, what's it to you and why should they care? (I think baa made the latter point during one of these discussions.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:43 AM
The analogy that's coming to mind is like countries as they develop. You can preserve positive aspects of a culture as the country gets more prosperous and powerful, retaining some integrity and sense of history and so on, realization of where you come from and what was good about that. Rather than just becoming a series of American-style malls.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:45 AM
I knew ac hated America!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:58 AM
Well, sure. As I said, I'm not about stamping out anything now coded as feminine. I just want to change the system that shoehorns women into those feminine roles without their choice.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 8:19 AM
I like ac's analogy.
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 8:56 AM
98::like authentic Irish pubs in Phoenix?
It was a joke in my day about the folk who went to Cuba to cut sugar cane and mingle with the proletariat, but maintaining compassion and empathy while in a comfortable position, without falling into sentimentality is really tough.
Maybe Woody abandoning his family and hitting the roads was an early sympton of the Huntington's, but to some degree Woody thought it was method, not madness.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:06 AM
Names that also come to mind pretty easily, if they are at all pertinent to the thread:Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ehrenreich. Each would carry different stories, different points.
I wonder if Pynchon's isolation, if he is isolated, is a method. A lot of expatriots & self-exiles with a purpose, like Joyce. Monks & priests & nuns, or their equivalents in many religions, didn't vow asceticism as an affectation.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:21 AM
Apart from America, has any country ever developed by becoming a series of American-style malls? Does acquiring a bunch of American-style malls after developing amount to the same thing?
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:50 AM
Data point: the not-girly women I've gone out with have also had empathy in spades. But tis true that they're not exactly easy to find.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 11:31 AM
Less than 900 comments to go!
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 11:47 AM
104- I have heard this distinction applied to the way Spain developed versus how Mexico is developing.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:52 PM
"Apart from America, has any country ever developed by becoming a series of American-style malls?"
It's not a country, only a state, but... Dubai?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 2:09 PM
"Argumentative response: Isn't the phrase "a man's world" the same as "the world" from a woman's perspective?
Less argumentative response: There are a lot of good books by women about being in the world that don't get a lot of publicity."
isn't that the same thing i'm saying? if a book is from a woman's perspective, gender becomes a much bigger issue than it would be if the book was male perspective. isn't that classic male privilege? and so if you pick up a woman-book, odds are its going to be on a certain topic, one which i don't usually want to read about. of course there are 1000x as many great books out there than i will ever have time to read, so its more a 'information/finding' issue than anything else.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 2:53 PM
109: I don't totally dispute this. Nevertheless, I have many times recommended a rip-roaring adventure story with a female heroine (e.g. Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle) to a boy, only to have him turn it down in favor of something much more plain vanilla. This has happened so frequently, and in so many different permutations, that I really don't think it can be boiled down to not wanting to read "a woman-book" because it's on a "certain topic."
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 3:06 PM
Back when I was young and had time to read anything besides blogs I used to actively seek out books by women. It was a thought process along the lines of, "women are different from me, therefore interesting". I must have been unaware of my own privelege or something.
Posted by Basil Valentine | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:41 PM
I just saw my first kitten! I am so happy. Also "privilege".
Posted by Basil Valentine | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:51 PM
books by women
Hey have I recommended Jennifer Egan's work over here yet?
He did it more than once?
I remember him pointing that out often enough to inspire me to write a program for generating numbers which are the sum of squares three or more different ways. The code is on my blog somewhere. Then Wolfson and I got in an argument or something argument-like about C vs. scripts.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:56 PM
109: Yeah, but what I'm pointing out is that in saying "I don't want to read about being-a-woman-in-a-man's-world" is basically equivalent to saying "I don't want to read about being a woman." Which, like, really?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:57 PM
vide
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:58 PM
and the result
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:04 PM
114: Yes, really. This seems totally consistent with that stuff about male privilege.
(I'm just clarifying. I love reading about women.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:07 PM
For that matter, writing about race and gender is about what it's like to be in the world. It isn't "on a certain topic." This is a totally bogus distinction. If you don't want to read about being a woman, or being black, it's your business what you do with your time, but you might as well just put it that way.
BV? Are you being ironic? 'Cause that seems perfectly logical, and in fact, makes me happy.
I will now return to driving nails through my hand to distract me from the pain.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:15 PM
113: I just read, and endorse, The Keep. I have reason to think Standpipe in particular might like it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:15 PM
119 -- Could you see Daniel being a regular at Unfogged?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:24 PM
I totally knew where Daniel was coming from.
Also, when I finished Look At Me (not really spoilers!) I was like, "c'mon, no one's going to get rich or famous showing people's lives unfold on TV and the internet." I now feel dumb.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:29 PM
"If you don't want to read about being a woman, or being black, it's your business what you do with your time, but you might as well just put it that way."
i'm ok with putting it that way; those issues generally aren't all that consumingly interesting to me. its also seem to tend toward being about 'identity' which is kind of wankerish. its not bad, but i wouldn't want it to make up most of my reading. also they seem more appropriate for nonfiction writing.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:41 PM
Wasn't, like, The Invisible Man the best thing you read in high school? Come on, you know it was.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:55 PM
Oops. Minus the "The".
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:58 PM
118: The male privilege remark was ironic, not the rest. Not that I think my younger self was all that smart about gender. I think I had the idea that there was some sort of essence of female consciousness that I could come to understand, which seems pretty silly to me now.
Posted by Basil Valentine | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:00 PM
123: Absolutely it was. That's one good book.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:05 PM
Matt -- I just recently read Look at Me but had I read it in 2001, I totally would have reacted that way too.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:20 PM
Hey speaking of reality TV, I thought I remember hearing somewhere that there is going to be a reality TV version of Black Like Me coming out soon. Does anybody know about this? A white family and a black family swap people, who are made up to look like members of their host family's race, or something like that?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:24 PM
I thought they already did that show.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:30 PM
129 -- Yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of. I guess when I read a post a year ago that says something is forthcoming, it's likely that "forthcoming" will not continue to be a valid characterization indefinitely.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:33 PM
125: Not a different essence, but a different experience, yes. (Some people even think the purpose of reading fiction is not just the pleasure of recognition and identification, but to teach you to recognize and understand things you couldn't otherwise!) So even if the essence stuff is mistaken, I think your younger self was not so dumb.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:13 PM
What I don't get about this conversation is that the young female protagonist was the gold standard of across-the-board popular and high-art novels for England in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Ok, Dickens used orphaned boys in the more usual female roles.)
But tons of people read Pamela (for whose marriage the church bells of England famously tolled) and Clarissa, and the novels of Edgeworth, Burney, Radcliffe, Austen, Sand, and Eliot made cultural waves. Flaubert wrote Mme Bovary, rather than M. Bovary; yes, a line of criticism speaks to his appropriation of female literature, but what Emma's character also signifies is the readiness of that culture to enter into female lives.
So what's changed?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:06 PM
Marriage is less dramatic? The consequences of immodesty are?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:14 PM
Novels became "high art."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:17 PM
Is an academic conference about to breakout in comments?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:22 PM
I find the diversification of the media market argument rather convincing, even though I tend to loathe the people who insist on it.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:26 PM
136: What argument is that?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 1:27 AM
4 or 5 years ago I was asked at work to make an animated meeting opener containing a bunch of jokes about reality tv, but I said, come on, that crap is so over. Why a person without a tv was allowed to express an opinion, I don't know, but at least I got out of the job, and by the time it was clear how wrong I was, everyone had forgotten. Yay!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:16 AM
122: Actually, it's not about being told what it's like to be a woman, it's about experiencing life from an alien point of view. That doesn't sound wankerish to me. On the contrary.
Possibly yo-yo just wants to help this thread reach 1000.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:21 AM
But tons of people read Pamela (for whose marriage the church bells of England famously tolled) and Clarissa, and the novels of Edgeworth, Burney, Radcliffe, Austen, Sand, and Eliot made cultural waves. Flaubert wrote Mme Bovary, rather than M. Bovary; yes, a line of criticism speaks to his appropriation of female literature, but what Emma's character also signifies is the readiness of that culture to enter into female lives.
That culture extended into the twentieth century -- Orwell writes about children's books noting Little Women as a general purpose classic, not as a book which it was unusual for him to have read as a boy.
I have a strongly held but poorly supported opinion that the purported reluctance of boys to be interested in fiction about girls and women is a symptom of anti-feminist backlash, rather than something more innate. It seems to be new in the world after second-wave feminism.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:39 AM
I think the same thing is true here, where we've had no backlash.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:42 AM
141: I can't speak to the 'no backlash' point in Sweden, but you certainly have a media environment affected by US practices.
To take an example, there's a wildly popular educational TV show for small children here Dora the Explorer, which is IME as liked by small boys as by small girls. After it became really popular, a companion show with a boy hero (Dora's cousin) was introduced. That doesn't seem to have been a response to the fact that boys wouldn't watch Dora, because they were, in fact, crazy about the show -- it looks more like discomfort with the idea that a girl-centered show appealed so strongly to both sexes.
The 'boys won't be interested in anything focussed on girls' idea really appears to be top-down rather than a genuine response to consumer demand.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:56 AM
re: 140
There may be something to that. However, if that 'boys own' culture is a reaction to feminism I think it's a reaction to first rather than second-wave feminism.
The 'boys' own' culture predates second-wave feminism by 40 or 50 years. As someone else remarked, so much of what we think of as 'tradition' was invented more or less wholesale during the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. So, in the UK, you get the Scout Movement, the novels of Kipling and all the rest. Lots of the tropes about 'what boys like' date from that period and the period leading up to WWII.
The idea that boys like action with male protagonists is already well fixed a long time before second-wave feminism comes along.
As an aside: I, myself, am reluctant to read modern literary novels as a genre -- whether written by men, or by women -- so I suspect read rather fewer books by women or with female protagonists than I would otherwise. There's an introspective character to those novels that bores me in a way that 19th century literary fiction -- even a pretty introspective novel like Villette -- does not.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 6:06 AM
You should avoid all the introspective whiny stuff and try reading modern literary novels that make no sense and contain scenes of explicit sex and violence. Some of them have female protagonists too (e.g. Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica").
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:21 AM
Or I could read a bunch of Kathy Acker and Katherine Dunn.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:24 AM
The idea that boys like action with male protagonists is already well fixed a long time before second-wave feminism comes along.
This is different, though, from the current belief that the vast majority of boys simply won't be interested in anything with a female protagonist. A positive taste for entertainment with a hero you can identify with is different from categorical rejection of any entertainment that doesn't fit that mold. (For example, girls these days are expected to enjoy books and movies that focus on girls, but not to reject books and movies that focus on boys; boys are expected to be interested only in entertainment focused on boys.)
Second wave feminism might be the wrong date, but I think it's post WW-II rather than earlier in the century.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:31 AM
For example, girls these days are expected to enjoy books and movies that focus on girls, but not to reject books and movies that focus on boys; boys are expected to be interested only in entertainment focused on boys.)
That's surprising. My understanding had been that the motivation for creating female characters like Dora was that women were underrepresented in such situations, and girls were being disadvantaged by that fact.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:44 AM
What's surprising? There's reaction against it, but what's being reacted against is a strong assumption that anything girl-focused is going to be difficult or impossible to sell to boys.
(Mind you, I don't think this is true -- Dora was a huge hit among little kids of both sexes. In response to that fact, a boy-focused version starring her older cousin Diego has been introduced.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:55 AM
I guess I meant that I thought the assumption was that there was a loss for girls who don't have female fictive models like Dora. Which is to say that there is some value to gender-specific heros. Thus, I'd have assumed as much creation of female analogs to male characters as the reverse. All of which is to say that I would have thought the same assumptions would both produce Dora and motivate the belief that boys needed a gender specific role-model.
That said, part of it is clearly ac's point about feminine characteristics being deprecated (though, OTOH, do female kid characters display characteristics that could be thought of as "female" anymore?).
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 8:07 AM
Hrm. Let me say this again.
A positive taste for entertainment with a hero you can identify with is different from categorical rejection of any entertainment that doesn't fit that mold.
The assumption that I'm talking about is that on the one hand, girls, while they want to spend a certain amount of their time engaged in entertainment focused on female protagonists, have no objection to also focusing on male protagonists. On the other hand, boys are expected to object to (or rather, be totally uninterested in) ever engaging with something focused on a female protagonist.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 8:14 AM
have no objection to also focusing on male protagonists. On the other hand, boys are expected to object to (or rather, be totally uninterested in) ever engaging with something focused on a female protagonist.
Right. But those aren't parallel statements. The parallel statement to "have no objection to..." is that boys have an objection to.... But you've said above that it isn't the boys who seem to mind as much as the adults.
What's not clear is whether, after correcting for a certain deprecation of feminine characteristics, the adults believe that it's bad for boys to identify with Dora. It seems not unreasonable for marketers to spawn two (or more) of everything new, as needed. Maybe they do. Maybe this is the "boys don't play with dolls" bit. But maybe this is just "I'll sell more shoes if I have a white NBA superstar than a black one." That's just a bet, and for a long time it was a pretty good one. In part, I'd want to know how often new hero creations are created in both genders, or both genders after success, I guess.
I think your complaint is about the adults, and I think it's that we make the assumption that girls can be exposed to other-gendered heros and boys can't, and that this is a function of a backlash (or maybe just the first lash) against feminism. That might be true, but I can think of a few other explanations that might explain those facts, including neutral-ish marketing assumptions.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 8:27 AM
Which is to say that there is some value to gender-specific heros.
I don't get what you are saying here. You mean, that it's good to have heroes of both genders, so that everyone can find someone to identify with? Or that it's good to have, say, girl heroes that are designed to appeal only to girls?
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 8:29 AM
I think your complaint is about the adults, and I think it's that we make the assumption that girls can be exposed to other-gendered heros and boys can't, and that this is a function of a backlash (or maybe just the first lash) against feminism. That might be true, but I can think of a few other explanations that might explain those facts, including neutral-ish marketing assumptions.
The bolded claim is exactly right -- I think this is a adult-driven preference much more than it results from the unedited preferences of actual boys. I'd be interested in what you mean by 'neutral-ish marketing assumptions'.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 8:49 AM