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The second group lesson is easier they told me. They were correct. I was pleasantly surprised as my body did not decide to turn into knee knocking pudding based entity. I sang at an acceptable level relative to my skill. I think I could have used more practice as my Italian text was misplaced at times, as well as my finding a tricky interval from C to G#, but overall I had good experience during my time in front of my peers.
The sour cream of the crop?
What was also nice was that we had time to sing Bridge over Troubled water to the group as well. We snuck it in after Intransigentia’s fine performance in the spotlight. Most of the students by the end were singing with us, it was such a great feeling, almost makes me forget that my voice melted on one of the high G#’s near the end of the piece. Such is life, everyone seemed to have a good time and that was the important part.
Next up, a choral retreat in the misty land of British Columbia. I cannot wait. :)
I am sorta-kinda looking forward to the third group lesson, whenever that may be. I guess I’m starting to take to this whole singing thing.
One of the neat features of a model is that it allows you to strip down the gloss and inessential features that can sometimes clutter arguments and details about a particular topic; in the case of this post the prevalence of the Patriarchy. I am certainly not part of the Blamatariat yet, but I feel that I am moving across the spectrum toward a more informed, knowledgeable state of affiars.
There has been a furour on the Intertoobz as of late over the decision (now repealed) by Blizzard, the makers of World of War Craft, to attach players real names to their characters in game and while posting in the game related forum. The frantic typing and posting resounded across the Net, there are threads about this topic everywhere from Pharyngula to Shakesville.
The questions and concerns raised range from harassment on forums to IRL stalking and worse. A jumping off point in one of the threads took me here to a brilliant post by Nattie on a thread from MetaFilter. I suggest you go read the entire post with the idea in mind that this could be viewed as a primer for understanding Patriarchy 101. To the uninitiated the patriarchy can seem a little bit of a fuzzy concept due to the implicit and ingrained nature of how the P functions. In light of potential learning from this piece I have added hyperlinks to the Shakesville Feminism 101 section for those seeking more illumination than the limited scope provided here.
Nattie says [italics, underlining and links, mine]:
“* If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won’t leave you alone –– and the guys that perv on you treat you in a condescending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuriating and uncomfortable — OR they make a point of constantly telling you how ugly you are and won’t leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn’t matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren’t superficial. Any time the girl posts something thereafter, people will comment on her appearance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.”
The italicized statements are nothing new to the advanced Blamer, but to the uninitiated parsing them out can be
No objectification going on here. We are most definitly not appealing to the male gaze.
very illuminating. For instance, the options faced in the the statement A)”oh I you’re sooo hot I want to frak you” or B)”oh you’re so ugly, you are not soooo not”frakkable”. Both “choices” revolve around the idea that the primary feature of a female is her beauty as viewed by how attractive she is to the male gaze. Not the content of her character, not her opinions, not her factual claims, but just how she looks. So female worth is judged by how good of a sexual object they appear to be.
This ugly fact has a one to one correspondence to the real meatspace world. Women deal with this 24/7,all the time, on all stations full on assault on their identity as human beings.
“* If you ask someone to leave you alone, you’re a stuck up bitch. That means you always have to be nice to everyone. This was both unfair and character-building, because now I’m really good at talking to and disengaging from socially ill-adjusted people without hurting their feelings.”
Again, the social expectations of women are quite explicit and when you go against them you get flayed to the bone because you are not properly performing your sanctioned role. Since when should a person have to ‘be nice’ or be anything all the time or be labelled a ‘stuck up bitch’ (insert your gendered insult here)? As a woman you get to deal with this as well, just because you happen to possess a double X chromosome. There are severe repercussions when Patriarchally sanctioned behaviour expectations are not followed.
* Some people think anything you do or say is attention-whoring, even if you never wanted the attention. If a guy makes a joke in a forum post, he’s a funny guy. If a girl makes a joke in a forum post, she’s an attention whore. If a guy makes a good argument in a forum post, he’s a smart guy. If a girl makes a good argument in a forum post, she’s doing it for attention. She’s ESPECIALLY an attention whore if people like her or agree with her.
* Similarly, people assume that the only reason anyone likes you is because they’re one of your fanboys. So people don’t genuinely think women or funny or make good arguments, they’re just fanboys. If other girls like you, then it’s because women form cliques — even if in the previous breath they were saying that women are all catty and hate each other.
Do you notice the pattern of choices that is become prevalent? Women are presented with two choices both equally shitty that do nothing to further her own autonomy or identity. You can choose either one patriarchally approved stereotype or the other, both damage you as a person.
“A sizable portion of [the population in general]gamers are racist. (Sexism, racism, and homophobia are what make me most uncomfortable about the gaming community; in a serious way I feel more connection to gamers than any other group, so this pains me. Plenty of gamers are none of these things and I love them to death, but I think those same gamers realize what a huge problem it is in the community in general.) An even bigger portion of gamers are just not very racially sensitive — they’ll use “nigger” or “Jew” a lot, for example, even if they don’t think they actively feel anything against those groups, because they think it’s funny. In the same way that saying stuff is “gay” is especially pronounced in the gamer community, even the people that say slurs ironically or by force of habit inadvertently make actual bigots in the gaming community feel empowered because they don’t realize other people don’t mean those things like they do. It is much more common and acceptable to express racist opinions in the gaming community than society at large.”
The quote really speak for itself, but the tacit acceptance of gendered insults and racist putdowns only reinforces the negative stereotypes that have such corrosive effects in our culture.
I have barely scratched the surface of all the issues that could be covered, just with the quoted materials. Frighteningly there is almost a 1:1 correspondence to what happens in the gaming world vs. what goes on in the real world, it is just a little easier to see in the gaming world because people are less constrained by social norms and morality in the mostly anonymous world of gaming. (or shorter the vile sexism and batshite crazy stupidity is easily observed)
A big thank you to Shakesville for having such a comprehensive FAQ for dealing with the multitudinous issues that this particular world of warcraft blip brought up.
July 3rd has come and gone, and I was unaware such an auspicious occasion. I was, as Canadians often are, left out of the loop of all things cool and meaningful that happen on the intertoobz. I did however manage to steal find this cartoon… (see all the entries including the one below here).
Just wait till next year.
I am going to use the discussion points found on RichardDawkins.net as the basis of this feature.
Calilasseia is the author of the post and deserves many rich accolades for assembling so much useful information in one spot. This constitutes an open thread of sorts, please leave your opinions and observations in the comment section.
It is just a short blurb, but an important one as knowing the difference between proof and evidenced support is a key concept.
Enjoy!
[5] Learn the distinction between proof and evidential support.
This is something that supernaturalists never tire of failing to understand, so once and for all, I shall present the distinction here.
Proof is a formal procedure in pure mathematics, and only applicable to that discipline. Proof consists of applying, in an error-free manner, well-defined rules of inference to the axioms of a given mathematical system in order to produce theorems, and thence recursively to those theorems to produce more theorems.
Evidential support consists of providing empirical demonstrations that a given set of postulates is in accord with observational reality. This is the process that is used in the physical sciences in order to build scientific theories. Postulates that are NOT in accord with observational reality are, as stated in [2] above, discarded.
As in [4] above, if you cannot exercise the basic level of intellectual effort required to learn this simple distinction, or worse still, erect fatuous nonsense about “proving” a scientific theory (especially if “prove” is mis-spelt with two ‘o’s), then expect your posts to be treated as a free fire zone for scathing and withering derision.
I guess I get to feel old and snarky today. So be it. I just shake my head when I read articles about people who value ‘sharing’ over ‘privacy’ when it comes to net usage. My cynical weasel whiskers get all twitchy when I read about the sheer awesomeness of social networking. I’ll explain why as we look at the article.
“Two-thirds of 895 technology experts and stakeholders surveyed about the future of the internet believe the millennial generation, born mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, will make online sharing a lifelong habit, suggests a Pew Research Center and Elon University study released Friday.”
Oh fantastic! The generation ahead of me feels all entitled and special enough to think that people actually care about what happens in their pathetically small, atomized existences. I would propose the only time people actually notice your ‘meaningful socially networked discourse’ is when you say something stupid or inappropriate.
Facebooking about the puerile experiences of your life and having them remain on the web for roughly forever just does not seem like a wise decision to me. Mistakes are learning opportunities, but exist only on facebook for the amusement of others. On the other hand facebook does serve a somewhat Darwinistic purpose; that of weeding out extra stupid people who get caught for making threats or cyberbullying while on FB or Twitter. I mean really? Posting threats to someone on your own FB page? You may as well begin playing in traffic right now.
“There were voices saying privacy is going to appear quaint, it’s completely changed, maybe privacy doesn’t exist anymore,” said Janna Anderson, an associate professor at Elon University School of Communications who led the study. At least one respondent wrote that publicness is becoming a public good. “And keeping information to yourself is going to be seen as antisocial.… There were a lot of people saying sharing is the new normal.”
“Sharing is the new normal”, indeed! The intense need for self-gratification seems to be winning out on any sort of rational view of this phenomena. Instead of actually doing something worthwhile you get your needs for acceptance filled by the number of facebook ‘friends’ you have?
“Young people enjoy the feeling of being connected and feel sharing benefits their personal lives, Anderson added. “They understand that there are negatives, but they believe that the upside is dominant.”
Young people are also stupid. They lack the experience and discipline needed to make rational decisions about relatively simple life decisions, nevermind the complexities of social sharing on the Internet.
Have the techno-youth really considered why it is so darn easy to get up and running in the various social networking sites? Why is that? Social networking is the advertisers wet dream. You have peoples private information and various applications and ‘fun surveys’ that collect information about an individuals likes and dislikes. By social networking you are essentially doing the leg work for advertisers as you data-mine yourself for free, plus you have no control over who gets to see your information once its out there. In Canada this has been addressed to a limited extent by the Privacy Commissioner, but I guarantee that the practice is still rampant. How else do you pay for the servers and the bandwidth to keep the FB servers operational?
“Many of those surveyed said new social norms are emerging that reward disclosure among young people, said Lee Rainie, director of the Internet & American Life Project, in a statement.
“Some experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos,” he added.”
Is that not a nice hope? ‘Society will be more forgiving of youthful mistakes…’. That is certainly not the case if you wish to run for public office. So naive experts whinge for a more naive society. Perfect. Anything (anything) you put on the web is fair game. Assume your scribblings will be used against you in the worst possible light devoid of context, to smear and sully your reputation or job application or whatever as IPIP (important people in power) will google you to see if you have indeed made an asshat of yourself on the Internet.
I’ve been good, oh so very good. The lures of WoW and Warhammer have found no purchase in my psyche. With a casual flip of the hand I can justify not spending time in their digital worlds as there are a myriad of more productive and rewarding things to do.
However, BioWare goes and does something like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FItrygx2Jzw
What am I supposed to do against such terrible awesomeness?
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain… Like wind in the meadow. The days have come down in the west, behind the hills… Into shadow….into the lure of the new SWMMORPG.
How did it come to this?
I really think that someone has been massively aerosol spraying the ‘Mission Accomplished’ meme all over the western media. Newsflash bitches: Iraq is still broken and not getting better.
“At least four people have been killed and dozens wounded in a bombing at the provincial government building in the Iraqi city of Ramadi.
Police sources told Al Jazeera that a female suicide bomber entered the deputy governor’s office and blew herself up.”
I am thinking that people blowing themselves up in your parliament buildings is not usually a sign of peaceable progress toward a democratic state.
“More than 20 people were wounded in the blast.
“At least four people were killed and 23 others wounded, including women and children, by a female suicide bomber at the entrance to the provincial government building,” an interior ministry official said.”
Mission Accomplished, indeed. Is this the climate for any sort of reasonable governance to take place?
“Violence in the region has dropped from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but bombings and assassinations remain common.”
Err. No. The situation in Iraq is like trying to paint your house during a rainstorm and the only solution you can think of is using more paint.
“Many Iraqis worry that the ongoing political impasse, with no one able to form a government four months after parliamentary elections, will lead to increased violence.”
Whoa, no functioning government for four months? You think that little tidbit would be making the rounds on CNN and MSNBC. I would think that a nation’s imperialist conquests would be of utmost concern, or at least page two news once and awhile.
I really wish someone in the massive american military industrial complex had done their homework. Iraq was held together by an authoritarian secular regime that actively repressed the various cultural and religious in the region. Did they think that everyone would just kiss and make up after being repressed for so long? How would a democracy function in a society split along almost diametrically opposed religious and cultural fault lines?
Kinda like a chaotic higglety pigglety mess would be my estimation.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…