Here is a great analysis of the odd shape of gender bias in certain visions of the future. Read it well. There are a number of worthy points to take away and cherish like shiny beads.
Do it!
Fear of a Feminist Future (The alt-right hopes to be saved by the apocalypse)
All of it!
Good read on how not to seek equality between the sexes.
Don’t be that guy.
Remember when life was simple? You know, when you were young and didn’t know shit? Feeling stupid is a good thing. It means you overcame ignorance. But knowing means knowing the connections and the connections get complicated. So there.
Here is a great article discussing one particular mental ordering (autism) and how diagnosis changes and does not change lives. I find this story to be compelling because it lays bare the defining mental orders and how mental ordering defines individuals.
My usual metaphor for brain traits is an enormous equalizer loaded with perhaps billions of sliders. You could conceptualize these sliders as broad categories like autism or obsessive compulsive disorder, but it may be more appropriate to scale the sliders as individual traits like those which make up the diagnostic criteria for the various mental states we have so-far defined.
In any given individual a particular slider may be higher or lower depending on various contributing factors. It would be somewhat rare to locate someone who had all the sliders for a particular concept (autism or even masculinity) pushed all the way to the top (or pulled all the way down), but we should expect that for any given individual few sliders would be resting right in the middle.
(This model should work for genetic expression as well.)
Food for thought.
Something I point out repeatedly is that masculine images are pointed toward a mountain peak where no oxygen tank can take us. Please read this article discussing certain clues a piece is sexist against males:
Five Signs Your Story Is Sexist – Against Men
I think the assessment of Scott Pilgrim is the only flaw in the article. Pilgrim fights males and females, is more capable of expressing his emotion than is the female he pursues, and of course the female certainly does not fall into Scott’s lap.
Aside from that the article is flawless.
Share your thoughts? No pressure.
flat tvs, check. portable phones, check. personal computers, check. flying cars ….. i feel ripped off.
the 70’s LIED!
And who is wearing shiny silver clothing?!
No one!
and no moon colony!
fucking fuckers
I was really planning on getting in my flying car, wearing my silver suit, and visiting my friends on the moon colony this weekend. I’ve had this planned since childhood.
Elon Musk for president!
i agree. and rupaul for VP.
it would be the smart and sassy ticket
Finally a VP people would notice.
right?
From the essay The Value of Free Thought quoting from page 95 onward (perhaps written in 1944):
The theory of the Nazis, however, is definitely worse [than Soviet Marxism under Stalin]. Let us consider its salient points. There is a master race, the Germans, which i sdivinely ordained to rule the rest of mankind, not for their good, but for its own. Originally it was thought that races akin to the Germans shared some of their merits, but this turned out to be a mistake; in Norway, for instance, there are no genuine Nordics except Quisling and a handful of followers. Non-Aryans are specially wicked, and the most wicked of non-Aryans are the Jews. The Japanese, on the other hand, are so virtuous that they may count as honorary Aryans.
The Germans, alas, have been corrupted by Jewish influences, notably Christ and Marx. What they were before this unfortunate poison got into their blood may be seen in the pages of Tacitus. When it has been eliminated, they will again perceive that war is the noblest of human activities, and the opportunity of tyranny its most splendid reward. Other nations, strange to say, seem blind to the superiority of the Germans, but it was hoped that tanks and planes would prove efficient missionaries of the new creed. This hope, however, is now rapidly fading.
No such tissue of nonsense could have been believed by any population trained to examine evidence scientifically, and to base tis opinions on rational grounds. Self-esteem, personal, national, or human, is one of the great sources of irrational belief; in the case of the Nazis, the self-esteem is national. Education should be directed, in part, to teaching the young to think independently of their prejudices, especially their collective prejudices, which are politically the most harmful. But this is not done anywhere; every national government finds national self-esteem useful, every rich government finds admiration of the plutocracy useful, every obscurantists government finds credulity useful. Nowhere, therefore, except among the esoteric elite of a few universities, is anything done to promote an honest attempt to decide questions according to the evidence. And so credulous populations are left defenseless against the wiles of clever politicians, who lead them through inflated self-esteem to hatred, from hatred to war, from war to universal misery. The modern advances in the art of propaganda have been met with no corresponding advances in training to resist propaganda. And so the populations of the world, one by one as ‘civilization’ reaches them, go down into a dark pit of madness, where all that is worth preserving perishes in aimless slaughter.
The creed that I am preaching, if it can be called a creed, is a simple one: that, if you have an opinion about any matter, it should be based on ascertained facts, not upon hope or fear or prejudice.
From my small hardbound copy of Understanding History (1957).
Here I will offer reinterpretations of things humans say. The purpose is to show how odd the original thing said was. We’ll see how well these translate.
My imaginary friend has a purpose for your pain, a reason for your struggles, and a gift for your faithfulness.
With my imaginary friend all things are possible.
I never thought sobriety could be this satisfying. Since I put down the drugs, my imaginary friend has blessed me in immeasurable ways.
Don’t worry, my imaginary friend is never blind to your tears, never deaf to your prayers, and never silent to your pain.
Looks like female students in the US and male students in France may be unfairly judging teachers based on a gender bias. Please read this article by NPR:
Why Female Professors Get Lower Ratings
It is of course tantalizing to speculate how this research may play out, but it is also important to remember that a bias can be very difficult to locate and even harder to eradicate.
Some sentences to help keep certain words aligned.
Then it is better than that.
It’s not in its nature.
They’re going there with their families.
I allot a lot to each lout.