Anonymous asked: Kinda lost respect for you. While GoDaddy's never capitulated to boycotting (sarcasm), your excuse for not voting is... you don't have enough say? How stupid. People have died for that very freedom. Liberty is a great, great thing. Will your vote decide an election? No. It's kind of like a child folding his arms in the corner because they don't have it there way. What's the point of complaining/writing about stuff that, according to you, you don't have a say in?

While GoDaddy’s never capitulated to boycotting (sarcasm)

Yeah, they buckled when Wikipedia threatened to move. Not a nobody blogger like myself. If I had the sort of power Wikipedia does, I’d make different decisions. I’d have more responsibilities, certainly. It goes back to what I said—GoDaddy depends on Wikipedia for a substantial amount of traffic/revenue. Possibly more than anyone else. It’s all about power dynamics. You should understand these things before you step into an arena of discussion re: political action and social movements.

your excuse for not voting is… you don’t have enough say? How stupid. People have died for that very freedom.

Yeah, and people are dying right now under the impression that they’re doing something worthwhile, that they’re helping the American people in some way. The fact that people have died for it doesn’t mean I have to support it, Toby Keith. Support our Troops is not the same as Support our War. And liberty IS a great thing. It means I’m *able* to vote (which is, on an individual level, an entirely performative, sentimental, and symbolic act), not that I’m *required* to.

Will your vote decide an election? No. It’s kind of like a child folding his arms in the corner because they don’t have it there [sic] way.

No, it’s rather like a child refusing to answer the question “who would you like to make your decisions for you” when he knows that his answer won’t have any effect on the outcome, because someone else is already making his decisions for him. Or an adult doing that. About absolutely anything.

What’s the point of complaining/writing about stuff that, according to you, you don’t have a say in?

Again, don’t grill me for consistency. I’ve said before that part of the reason I talk more about masculism than feminism is that it’s such an underdeveloped and underexposed movement that I actually can open people up to it—I actually do have a say. I’ve gotten dozens of emails/messages about people who have been grateful that I’ve turned them onto certain things.

And apart from that, writing about these things keeps me learning about them. It helps me develop a consistent belief system and it sparks debates with other like-minded people and even opponents. And, when conducted civilly, helps both parties develop as intellectuals.

Going to a booth and pressing a few buttons is not equivalent, or even comparable to, intellectual discourse. You can feel superior if you like, and lose respect for me if you like, but I haven’t been fooled into thinking that the privilege of entering a booth and pressing a button on Schrödinger’s ballot box is empowering.

For future reference, include an email address or something if you want a response to something like this, because I don’t like mucking up people’s newsfeeds like this.

Anonymous asked: Well, in response to your previous ask, I'm a vegetarian because I believe my impact will matter, no matter how small. Don't give excuses for your laziness. If you don't want to do it just say you don't want to do it. Every little bit counts. I know not everyone can to everything, but if it's something you strongly advocate for, it looks extremely hypocritical to go back on your views because it's cheap and convenient for you.

“Well, in response to your previous ask, I’m a vegetarian because I believe my impact will matter, no matter how small.”

Right. You believe that. I disagree.

“Don’t give excuses for your laziness. If you don’t want to do it just say you don’t want to do it.”

This could be rephrased as “don’t explain why you feel a certain way even though I’ve just asked you to, just state that you feel that way. Also I am unbearably smug and superior. Have you seen the photos from my semester in Africa?”

“Every little bit counts.”

This is a lie.

“I know not everyone can to everything, but if it’s something you strongly advocate for, it looks extremely hypocritical to go back on your views because it’s cheap and convenient for you.”

Your definition of “going back on my views” is my not blacklisting every single company that has a sexist ad. You do realize that would mean blacklisting all phone companies, hardware stores, and tons of other businesses? Like I said, I don’t use the same standards to evaluate myself (and other people) as you do yourself (and other people). I’m not particularly bothered if I look hypocritical to you—either way, I’ve never urged anyone else to boycott GoDaddy, which is the only thing that would make me so. I don’t lose sleep over not having given my hosting provider the tiniest slap on the wrist possible.

I will, however, lose sleep if I keep responding to these. In a less metaphorical way. Because I’m going to sleep now.

Anonymous asked: I gather from your answer post about using GoDaddy that you don't believe in boycotting or making financial decisions based on how a company conducts themselves. Is there a limit or is it just about not taking your conveniences away? If a company was (instead of just making disgusting ads) actively using 'your' money to lobby against civil rights- would you avoid business with them? If they were run by Rick Perry/etc would it be the same? Or if other people joined you?

Some of it’s about convenience, yeah. If you boycotted EVERY company that profited from some sort of yuckiness, your life would be infinitely more difficult and infinitely more expensive.

Aside from convenience, part of it’s about the lack of impact that my action would have.
If I did decide to live that sort of life, the tiny impact it would have on each of those companies would be imperceptible. Weigh that against the difficulty and expensiveness of the venture and you’ll see my point.

And don’t give me the “uh no but if everyone did it” because everyone is not doing it. That sort of logic has no place in practical or applicative ethics. The breakdown is this: I could switch to a more expensive (or even equally priced) service, back up and transfer all of my data, lose several days of traffic due to processing time, and what? Let’s go from the bottom up:

• would GoDaddy notice? No.
• would GoDaddy care? No.
• would GoDaddy’s ad campaign suffer? No.
• would GoDaddy’s ad campaign be shut down? No.
• would they realize it was because they objectify women in their commercials? No.
• would anyone learn anything from my taking a stand? No.
• would GoDaddy go out of business? No.
• would it end or even make a dent in sexism in America or the world? NO.

So don’t act like I’m morally obligated to do it. The tradeoff isn’t even worth considering beyond an illogical, sentimental and performative act. And I don’t do those, beyond buying my mother the chocolates mentioned in my last answer.

If your argument is “if everyone did it it would have an impact,” it means that my moral obligation is, in fact, to move my site from GoDaddy and to launch a campaign to try to convert as many people as I can. I’m not going to become a fucking evangelist over this; I just host my website with them. And you know what? I actually USE their service to try and educate and convert as many people as I can towards gender egalitarianism. You’ve got about as much of a point as Karl Pilkington’s head does.

A good example of low-impact combined with inconvenience is the fact that I’m not a vegetarian.

Another one is the fact that I don’t vote, despite having strong political opinions.

So yeah, I’ll pass on social action that’s low impact, but I’ll also give up civil liberties that are low impact. You can grill me for whatever you like, but if you grill me for inconsistency you’re going to embarrass yourself.

When the scope is small enough, I’ll do it. I bought Louis CK’s Live at The Beacon legally and urged others to do the same. Because it was a small enough venture that I felt I really did count, that I really could make a dent if I did it, and I felt I could convince enough others to do it. I did good and it felt good.

And you can call me selfish if you like. I think maybe I am a bit selfish at times—because I’m a human being, and we lucky few have the capacity to distinguish between self and other. I try my best to weigh my priorities and come out with a balance that keeps me enjoying my own life and also doing a fair amount of good for others. If it starts to tip too far in my favor, I’ll notice because I’ll start to feel guilty. If it tips too far the other way, I’ll notice because my life will start to suck a lot.

Anonymous asked: what is your opinion about disney and its mindless gender stereotyping in its movies?

The things we watch/are shown affect us more profoundly than most people recognize. So movies and TV have the potential to do enormous good, but also enormous harm. Sometimes the people behind these images and narratives craft them deliberately, so that they’ll shape us in a certain way. There’s a goal in mind; usually it’s to sell us something—a lifestyle, a product, a belief system.

Disney sells an awful lot of things. An AWFUL lot of things. (And a lot of awful things, incidentally.) So they have a stake in this. And they’ve crafted a formula to keep kids dissatisfied enough to keep buying/demanding things. (I’m talking about their live-action programming, here.)

For me, the gender stereotyping in their animated movies takes a back seat to this concern. Because it isn’t so calculated as the other Disney wrongdoings—it’s not done with intent.

Yes, it’s very convenient for advertising and marketing folks to keep the gender binary split into two neat categories, because they like to know everything about their audience, and thus it makes sense to keep the audience as simple/predictable as possible. But I really don’t believe it’s on their to-do list. Selling princessdom to young girls has been the secret of their success, but as the media landscape changes, they’ll adapt. Whatever they show in movies, kids are going to want to be. And they’ll buy the merchandise.

Mostly the rigid stereotyping in their films is a result of laziness/unwillingness to change a model that’s worked for them. And while lazy writing can be poisonous, for me—like I said, it takes a back seat to actively manipulative writing.

Why Boys Have it Easy (-er) on Halloween

“Slut-shaming” is a very loaded term. It’s a thing, but it’s not applicable here.

Hugo Schwyzer, a feminist blogger and gender studies professor at Pasadena City College, says it well:

…those of us who advocate for girls aren’t primarily concerned that girls are showing too much skin. Rather, the problem lies in the compulsory sexualization that is so much a part of today’s Halloween celebrations for teens. A lot of us are more upset by the absence of options than by the absence of fabric; we know that pressuring girls to act sexy is not the same thing as encouraging them to develop a healthy, vibrant sexuality that they themselves own. I don’t have a problem with “sexy bar wench” costumes; I have a problem when those sorts of costumes are the only ones young women are expected or encouraged to wear.

One year, when I was little, I wanted to be Peter Pan for Halloween. My mom made me a costume and it looked awesome—I was so excited. I got to school, and a horde of Scream killers, Freddies, Jasons, and chainsaw murderers teased and laughed at me for having a “girly” costume. Because from a young age, boys are pressured to assert their junior masculinity in multiple ways, one of them being their Halloween costume. Tights and a cap-and-feather weren’t violent or dominant enough.

Things got better as I grew up. I could be pretty much whatever I wanted for Halloween, because there was a lot of diversity in what I saw other guys wearing. Ninjas, Ghostbusters, and Robots were still there, but so were judges, clowns, Hunter Thompson, mailmen, etc.

In many ways, it’s a microcosm of how media works. The brilliant tagline of Miss Representation comes to mind: you can’t be what you cant see. Lots of media paints a reductive/harmful/inaccurate/impossible picture of men, but it’s diluted by the sheer diversity and variety of male characters there are. There scores of strong and noble heroes, but there are also scores of meek and introverted geniuses, and scores of savvy, calculating villains.

Characters…costumes. You get it.

Now look at women. Look at women on Halloween. My female peers were pressured into being princesses and ballerinas as kids. Then they grew up, and what was the variety they were presented with? Sexy nurse, sexy cat, sexy teacher. Sexy ghostbuster, sexy clown, sexy ninja.

The praise that most frequently falls on a little boy’s ears is “did you lift that by yourself? you’re so strong! you’re going to grow up to be big and strong!” This, of course, reflects and reinforces the values we use to assess males. It outweighs “you’re so smart” and the especially rare “you’re so handsome.”

BUT by nowhere near as much as “you’re so pretty!” dominates the ears of little girls. It’s the go-to compliment. Girls are raised by media and even by unwitting parents to derive most of their confidence from their appearance. They’re taught that their value is in their body and their face, and so it remains that way. And “pretty” eventually morphs into “sexy.”

When my male friend chooses a costume, he might choose one because it’s scary (Werewolf) or cool™ (James Bond) or funny (Austin Powers) or esoteric (Captain Kirk). Some guys think of costumes based on what will show off their bodies, but it’s an even mix. Those guys are out for validation—they want to be looked at and found attractive. And that’s a natural (if often overindulged) desire.

When my female friend chooses a costume, she has to face the inevitable question: sexy or non-sexy? That’s the first question. Our culture has made it so. If she doesn’t want to show off her body, or doesn’t feel she has the “right” body to show off, she settles on a non-sexy costume. Then she has to accept that she’s going to line up for pictures in her cool homemade robot costume with a group of friends that are showing more skin than not, and she’s going to be perceived as the frumpy one. Some people will perceive it as a sign of weakness or unattractiveness or prudishness. Even if she doesn’t subscribe to that cultural mindset, she’s surrounded by people who do.

It’s not like girls naturally have the show-offy mindset of the Chippendales guys, it’s just that they’re told by the culture that it’s all they have to offer.

The argument that dressing in a low-cut belly-shirt and booty shorts for Halloween is an empowering display of the female form will never sit right with me. Even if that is truly the intention in some cases, and that validation and craving desire have nothing to do with it, we live in a culture where a girl’s appearance is viewed as her most important characteristic, and I think these costumes just play into that.

Like Hugo says, “I don’t have a problem with “sexy bar wench” costumes; I have a problem when those sorts of costumes are the only ones young women are expected or encouraged to wear.”

If the same kind of diversity that exists in men’s costumes existed in women’s costumes, it would even out. There would still be “sexy bar wenches” here and there. That just means that someone elected to use their once-in-a-year chance to costume publicly to show off their body. (Like dudes who dress as Chippendales strippers.) I personally think doing that reflects a mindset I don’t approve of, but it’s not really harmful. Just a little annoying and indulgent.

There’s nothing wrong with showing off, but I’d love to see girls showing off by being scary or funny or cool™ or esoteric. Sexy isn’t the only thing worth being.

(Cue the retaliation of: “there are scary-sexy and funny-sexy and cool™-sexy and esoteric-sexy costumes out there!” Right. But why add the compulsory sexy?)

In Defense of Costumes

randomsyncrazy asked: Guy, I am so upset after you posted that meme about culture. It was supposed to be a thing to get people to stop wearing racist cultural appropriating costumes on Halloween, and you joined in with a lot of unkind people who were ridiculing the campaign by trivializing it. I thought you would’ve thought that through :(

I think it’s a silly campaign. I’m certainly not for the flattening and trivialization of different cultures, but you have to be aware that on the other side of that continuum is cultural homogenization and taboo-mongering.

My little sister (who is a junior in high school) and her two friends went as a mariachi band this year. I’ve always been proud of my two sisters for avoiding the slutty costume route, a custom which is increasingly becoming costume de rigueur (pun intended).

Anyway, my little sister called me up and asked me if I left my accordion in my old room at home. I wasn’t going to point out that an accordion and two other instruments wouldn’t actually be an authentic mariachi ensemble, because I was so pleased that even in the absence of my influence (I moved out 3 years ago) she had elected to forgo the shallow and weak validation that can be achieved with a “sexy” costume, and that she’s attracted a group of like-minded friends. Both of my sisters are beautiful girls—they could easily “pull off” the look—but year after year they choose more clever ensemble costumes. My other sister, who started college this year, went out with two friends in homemade Rock, Paper, and Scissors costumes. The year before, it was Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato.

I know this is a little tangential, but I want to illustrate that I’m aware that Halloween costumes both reflect and influence our culture. The slutty/sexy costume trend demonstrates the embarrassingly and harmfully imbalanced value system that’s taught to males about females and to females about themselves. AND by operating by those standards, the problem is exacerbated and the torch is passed to a new generation of young girls.

I do not, however, think that my sister’s choice to don a sombrero and a poncho is based on or propagates harmful racial attitudes.

Halloween costumes have always interested me (the slutty/sexy ones just as much as the others) because they are unabashedly mimetic on the part of the maker and the consumer. A Witch, A French Maid, The Devil, Hugh Heffner—although rooted in reality or rich historical mythology, these entities are reduced to their basic symbols and signifiers in order to be universally understood. Nobody goes as Beelzebub or the fallen angel Lucifer, they put on red horns and a pointed tail and a grab a pitchfork. Nobody goes as plainclothes Hugh Hefner at a restaurant or an event, they put on a red faux-silk robe and puff a pipe. Mimicry is, by nature, reductive.

So let’s study my sister’s costume with mimetic/semiotic sensibilities in mind. Let’s say she wasn’t even being a mariachi musician. Let’s say she was just wearing a sombrero and a poncho and riding a false burro (one of the costumes decried as offensive by this campaign).

Where did she see/learn this image? It’s a trope. Perhaps The Three Amigos. Perhaps (and much more likely) it was an old Looney Toons or Disney cartoon. (These are notorious purveyors of undiluted tropes, both racial and intra-cultural.) Psycholinguistically, this trope was cataloged using the word “Mexican” or even “Spanish.” This is problematic—for a time, anyway. When she went to school and met boys and girls described as Mexican, she’d assume that (or wonder whether) these people exhibited the same traits. That’s not racism (or at least not a deplorable brand), that’s just how your brain works.

As a young human, she would have to gain enough experience with actual 3-dimensional Mexicans to dilute the monopoly that the trope had of the descriptor “Mexican.” As happens with most of us, she would learn to separate Trope-Mexican (the Movie-Mexican™) from real-life-Mexicans based on those experiences. She would learn the things that seem to be true—that many Mexicans seem to be able to speak or understand Spanish—and the things that seem to be false—that many Mexicans hold the burro as their preferred method of transportation.

There is no doubt in my mind that my sister is observant, curious, and intelligent enough to have made this adjustment by now. So when she makes the decision to dress in a poncho and a sombrero, she is not dressing as a real-life Mexican or Mexican-American. She is dressing as a Movie-Mexican™. She is dressing as the trope, as the flattened and distilled idea. And if we understand that, we understand that the costume is not inaccurate or reductive, because it refers to the trope. She is not claiming that her costume is accurate to life, it is accurate to media. Halloween costumes are not intended to be accurate to life, NOR DO THEY HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO BE.

The Movie-Mexican™ trope itself is reductive and inaccurate, because it means to refer to the real-life entity, and does so poorly. Does media have a responsibility to correct this? Certainly. I believe few things more strongly than I do this. But it is not a Halloweener who dresses as a trope who influences the culture. It is the artist/screenwriter who establishes the trope.

Responsible 21st century media, such as Modern Family and Louie, is doing a great job of diluting these monopolies. But where there is money to be made, there will be lazy and irresponsible media (Man Up, Most Reality TV) and perhaps (read: definitely) worse, lazy/irresponsible media masquerading as the opposite (Glee).
(And then those, such as Family Guy, who have a foot in both camps.)

THIS BEING SAID, I am not for the total dissolution and abolition of tropes from media. That would be, aside from impossible and impractical, wholly unnecessary. The most potent and effective measure is to instill media literacy in people—especially in children. If media literacy isn’t required in schools by the time I have children, I’ll quit whatever job I have and become a lobbyist. Before it is instituted, however, it’s up to parents, older siblings, and mentors to help children cultivate a sense awareness of how media works, what media is trying to do, and what it is capable of. Of how things are encoded and how they should be interpreted.

The solution isn’t to abolish the moustachio’d Movie-Mexican™ out of fear that he is endangering the real-life-Mexican with his pistols and his poncho—it’s to make everyone conscious of the distinction between the two. The two CAN coexist—so long as we spread the understanding that one exists in fiction and one exists in reality.

PS:

The boy in the the It’s A Culture Not A Costume poster who holds up the photograph of the “Mexican” costume is dressed in a black T-shirt and wears a necklace. He doesn’t resemble the Movie-Mexican™ in the slightest. But you know what? That makes for a shitty costume. Is my sister going to wear her normal everyday clothes and walk from door to door saying “I don’t really have much of an accent but my mom does and my grandma makes delicious empanadas. I’m not ashamed of my heritage but I don’t wear it on my sleeve because I have a lot of other qualities. Identity is a complex and dynamic thing. You should study intersectionality. Trick or treat!” ?

No. Who wants to dress up as something as hum-drum and realistic as a regular person? We dress as creatures of history and fantasy and fiction—as goblins and caricatured pilgrims. As history is filtered through media and encoded into tropes, it becomes its own type of fiction. If you will…fistory? Ew. Let’s go with pseudo-history. The Movie-Mexican™, is a creature of fiction and pseudo-history. The geisha, the medieval king, the gold prospector—all creatures of fiction or history or pseudo-history.

I interviewed Seth Rogen and Will Reiser about 50/50 for EmMag

emmagonline:

50/50 is an upcoming film, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, about a young and otherwise healthy guy who’s diagnosed with life-threatening cancer.

Also, it’s kind of a comedy .

I spoke with Seth and Will Reiser, the writer of the film and Seth’s close friend, to ask them some things about cancer and movies and cancer movies.

[…]

EM: When did you decide that you wanted to make a movie out of the experience? While it was going on, or after you’d been through it?

SETH: At that time me and his other friends—we just didn’t really want to talk about it. So we would make jokes about it. And the joke we would most often go to was “what kind of movie could we make out of it?” And because we were in the middle of it, we didn’t really have the wherewithal to realize we could just kind of make a movie about exactly what was happening. The joke was we’d make a fucked up version of The Bucket List

WILL: Which we would call “The Fuck-It List..” The whole idea came from the fact that when I was sick—people didn’t know how to deal with it. And they would ask really absurd questions.  People who had actually seen The Bucket List thought that that’s what you actually do when you have cancer.

SETH: The most unfortunate part of Will’s illness was that it coincided with the release of The Bucket List.

WILL:  Yeah, not great timing.

Read the whole interview over at EmMag!

(Source: emmagonline)

On Lions' Pride

Here’s an article I wrote for this week’s Berkely Beacon about activism vs. chic slacktivism, as it applies to a specific LGBT rally on my campus.

It covers the Venn overlap of two of my favorite topics: Gen-Y social psychology and gender issues.

Although it’s aimed at Emerson students, you’ll appreciate it if you’ve ever seen someone wearing an oh-so-chic Legalize Gay shirt and then bragging about how fun it is shopping with their obligatory gayfriend. Or seen people squee-ing and aw-ing at gay couples simply because they’re gay, which is reductive and thinly masked fetishization of the Other.

Or if, you know, you’ve been on a tumblr dashboard for more than ten minutes. Meet our generation.

Louis C.K. has this joke

about a lion who describes humans as wide-eyed, terrified, screaming maniacs. (It’s a lot funnier when he tells it, but that’s the gist of it.)

The joke, although I’m sure you get it, is that since the lion frightens people, he only encounters frightened people, and therefore believes that people are constantly frightened. It’s a question of Ser vs. estar, for those of you who took high school Spanish.

Of course, like so much of LCK’s material, this simple joke is merely the exposed tip of an enormous, submerged iceberg of thought.

(What’s the opposite of submerged? Is the tip of an iceberg just merged? Supermerged?  Surmurged? Hypermerged? Ubermerged?)

Anyway, here’s something to consider: every person you’ve ever interacted with (in person) has had two things in common.

1. They’re a human being.

2. They’re interacting with you.

So…isn’t it entirely possible that many of the assumptions we make about people in general are really just specific to people interacting with us?

If you’re a bit abrasive or offensive, you might get the impression that people in general are sensitive and uncomfortable.

If you’re socially awkward and unpleasant to interact with, you might think that all humans brush people off after a minute of conversation—that it’s a quality of the species.

If you’re Tommy Wiseau, you might think that people tend to laugh at absolutely nothing all the time. Because, you know, he doesn’t know that he’s an absolutely ridiculous person.

Just think about that. As you’re going about your business. If you notice a trend across people that you interact with—consider that it might be you that needs to change.

Anonymous asked: What religion are you?

I’m not religious. Or even “spiritual,” which is a title that some nonreligious people claim and that I’ve never really been a fan of. I’m as secular a Humanist as they come.

It’s complicated, because I believe that on a community level, religion can be a wonderful thing. And from growing up in a Christian family and attending church every Sunday, I saw a lot of wonderful service performed by missionaries and church members, both in the community and overseas.

But the fact remains that, in most cases, to embrace one of these major religions requires you to ignore fundamental natural laws and principles—to suspend or reject basic logic, and that’s a dangerous thing to encourage.

For the last few years that I was living at home, I went to a Methodist church. Methodists are alright; they’re basically Humanists who keep Christ as a mascot. Him being the  reason many Humanist values survived until now, I’m okay with that.

(Plus, growing up religious helped me postpone facing the horror of mortality until I was old enough to navigate that tempest. And I dearly miss the safety and comfort of believing I was the important and beloved child of the ruler of everything, rather than a temporary and coincidental wad of meat. That got me through a lot as a kid.)