I point to X and I point to Y. That’s all.
Carl Zimmer has (with help from Susan Greenfield) created a new Twitter meme.
The neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has for several years been saying “Look out! The internet will rewire your brain.”
She warns that Twitter is turning us into social cripples. When asked for evidence, she either points to papers that provide no support for her sweeping claims, or says that we shouldn’t wait for evidence. Her claims positively hum with contradiction. In order to make new technologies seem truly sinister, she ends up getting nostalgic about television.
She has, too.
When I was a kid, television was the centre of the home, rather like the Victorian piano was.
That made me yell with laughter – the tv as a fireplace.
Carl continues:
Yesterday, The Guardian followed up with an interview with Greenfield, in which she defended herself against such attacks. Along the way, one of the things she said finally rewired my brain into a seizure:“I point to the increase in autism and I point to internet use. That’s all.”Which drove me to Twitter, to sum up the ridiculousness of such a statement in 140 characters or less:I point to the increase in esophageal cancer and I point to The Brady Bunch. That’s all. #greenfieldism
And others joined in.
I point to Alzheimer’s and I point to cheese doodles. That’s all. #greenfieldism
Try your own!
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
I point to Snow White and I point to giblets. That’s all.
At this point, I am pointless.
Off topic, but is freethoughtblogs.com brokeded (yes, brokeded) for other people, or just me?
Let’s keep these at least reasonably plausible, ok? I point to the Internet and I point to Al-Qaida.
It’s brokeded. Somebody at bluehost apparently screwed up the DNS. Working now to get it fixed.
I believe the standard graph for such an assertion is Pirates Vs. Global Temp.
@3: It’s slow, comments aren’t always displaying, and I can’t log in to comment at Brayton’s place despite having signed up the other day. So yes: somewhat b0rked.
Oh: I point at Denyse O’Leary and laugh. That’s all.
PZ – I had a most unpleasant experience with Bluehost as the host for my work site (fairly good traffic, but nowhere near yours). If you want details on the stunts they pulled and who we chose to go with instead, let me know and I’ll email you. I shuddered for you when I saw Bluehost.
I point to Bluehost and I point to ERV.
I point to pineapple on pizza and I point to brokeded Freethought blogs. That’s all.
Oh damn, I was just a second too slow!
I point to Ophelia and I point to an acre of cloth. That’s all.
I point to freethought blogs being broked and I point to the increased sale of hamsters in America. That’s all.
I point to the genus Coffea and I point to unfortunate encounters in operatorless vehicles of vertical transportation within buildings. That’s all.
Of, for the love of… now the internet is making tv look good? And what about all those years of pundits repeating that it was replacing outdoor games, book reading and human interaction with TV that lead to hyperactive kids, low school grades and juvenile crime?
I point to media fads and I point to lazy thinking. That is all.
I point to the lack of pirates and I point to to global warming. That’s all.
I’m still not sure how much of her being fired from the RI had to do with her being a woman, but it’s a damn shame that they ever hired such an antiscientist in the first place. Ben Goldacre has been pointing out her shamelessness for years.
Is it okay if I call her a mediawhore?
derp; Frank already got there. That’s what I get for only skimming :-p
Hell.
I point to Susan baroness Greenfield, and I point to the destruction of the Royal Institution’s finances. That is all.
I point to Deepak Choprah, and I point to punctured colons. That is all.
I point to reduced number of pirates and I point to global warming, that’s all! (hint)
Uh oh! Should have read all the comments. Frank at #6 got to this before me. :-(
Wait, I love pineapple on pizza. Pineapple and jalapenos is god’s own pizza topping.
I point to Supersizing the Mind
…Well, I really do point to it. Good book, with a contrasting perspective…
and I point to ground beef. That’s all.
I point to West Nile and I point to Frankenstein. That’s all.
I point to Brussels sprouts and I point to rioting in the streets of London. That is all.
Loved the Martin Robbins article you pointed to on the main page. (“You point to a Martin Robbins article, you point to-” ohfuckit) “Misrepresented” indeed.
There’s a whole new class of Greenfieldism waiting to happen there: “One simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the sloppy thinking of folks like Greenfield… I make no value judgments, though!”
I point to rioting in London that may be spreading to Birmingham and I point to what appears to be the most recent article mentioning the Prime Minister on the BBC’s news website.
I…what? But…how? Gah?
I point to Elevatorgate and I point to the financial crisis. That is all.
I point to Pharyngula but Bluehost points to itself. That’s all.
I point to correlation and I point to causation. That’s all.
I point to EC comics and I point to psychopaths. That is all.
I live and breath APOE, so sorry couldn’t resist.
Is this meme proving her point?
I point to this meme and I point to her point. That’s all.
I point at the precipitously plummeting pirate population and I point at the person who is posting a cheap rehash joke. That is all (and too much, at that).
(Very difficult to type while one finger accusingly points back at me.)
void main() { char first_thing[] = "First unrelated element."; char second_thing[] = "Second unreleted element."; char* I; I = &first_thing; I = &second_thing; }I point to “non” and I point to “sequitur”. And that is all!
I point to nothing, and to nothing again. The two correlate perfectly.
But I will add this. In my youth I joined in numerous fun gatherings around the family piano, with everyone singing along.Then in later years, after the piano lost fashion, we gathered round the black and white TV set We had a lot of fun reciting the ads from memory as fast as they were delivered. One after another.
Then came colour TV, and even more challenging ads.
The infill between the ads, like movies and game shows, became very boring stuff to wait through before the next batch of ads began.
Talk about mental stimulation!
Ah, those were the days!
I never go near Facebook or Twitter.
(True: I have an aversion to them. But B&W is great.)
I point to granny panties and I point to Ophelia. That’s all.
I point to Alfred Hitchcock and I point to Angry Birds. That is all.
@41 I like that one a lot.
Two knickers jokes already! That Falk bastard has a lot to answer for.
I point to Hitler and I point to Godwin. That is all.
Ah, I’m sorry O. It was made with affection:)
The TV as fireplace is not unreasonable. That’s exactly how my mother-in-law treated it, something to point your face at while you are talking.
I point to negative coverage of video games and I point to comparable negative coverage of TV when it was a similarly new medium. That’s all.
Hmmm, I think I did it wrong.
I point to the decline of cursive writing and I point to nuclear proliferation. That is all.
I point to Pygmies, and I point to dwarfs. That is all.
<p class=”Pat Robertson”>
I point to 9/11 and I point to the ACLU. That’s all.
I point to Hurricane Katrina and I point to America’s abortion policies. That’s all.
</p>
(Hmm, perhaps the Boobquake controversy might be a more entertaining source for the correlation ≠ causation riffing.)
I point to PowerPoint. Economic collapse was inevitable.
I point to same-sex marriage and I point to Pokemon. That is all.
I point to boobs and …
I forget what I was saying.
I point to luvdisc and pointing. That is all.
Great. We finally get a big-name female scientist with whom the average British person reading a newspaper might be familiar with (because of her appearances in the media), and it turns out that she leaves logic behind in the lab when she goes home.
I point to Susan Greenfield and I point to the poor standard of scientific education today. Just sayin’.
ANATHEMA!
I point to lack of correlation, and I point to mushy peas. That is all.
We point the lack of absolute monarchies, and We point to the hockey stick. That is all.
–o–
Skepchick Calendar! Skepchick Calendar! Skepchick Calendar! Skepchick Calendar! Skepchick Calendar!
(Seriously. I’d love to see you in it.)
–o–
“It’s a good thing that women knit. It gives them something to keep their minds busy while they talk.”
Hahhahaha cant resist.
I point to tides coming in and i point to tides going out. Thats all.
Also on a related note, I point to the sun rising and the sun setting. Thats all.
Just joking, Josh. (Well, mostly.)
——
You’ll see me set myself on fire before you see me in a Skepchick calendar!
Not that I’ve ever been asked, or would be.
I point to bat-shit crazy murderous right-wingers and I point to Islam. That’s all.
I point to Geoffrey Falk’s ponytail and I point to lost causes.
I point to the pope and I point to pretty prada slippers.
Well, that would make an awesome photoshoot.
Ophelia, see Calendar Girls (with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters). Then reconsider!
Ophelia wrote:
“That made me yell with laughter – the tv as a fireplace.”
It reminded me of this old far side cartoon:
http://www.finalfocusproductions.com/images/BeforeTV.jpg
Hey Ophelia, I’m not a regular here or anywhere else in the skeptical / atheist community, mostly passerby, occassional lurker, so I dunno why you’re so averse to the idea of appearing on a calender. FWIW IMO you totally should be in it! Like they say live a little, no? (Sorry Jason Rosenhouse) I mean seriously, why not? And I also find it a little surprising the skepchick people havent asked you yet.
Disclaimer : If you find this suggestion coming from someone who barely has three comments to his credit on your site officious / upstarty / presumptuous or if you find this apologising unnecessary / tedious chalk it down to er, I dunno, culture diffrerence or noobishness or cluelessness or something.
Heh, no, that’s ok maze.
Well one I’m ugly, so it would be incredibly weird to pose for a calendar. But two I wouldn’t want to anyway, because my appearance seems irrelevant to my skepticality. If I were hawt I wouldn’t want people slavering at me instead of listening to me (or reading what I write), so it would be a mistake to act as if I did.
Well, how’bout we’ll see you on tv before we see a Skepchick calendar in the fire, place of tv? Or after.
Ugly? NO, never. No woman is ugly, only some more pretty than others… (from `The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’)
You are not ugly. You are merely not patriarchal beauty standard compliant. None of us over 40 is, anyway, so fuck’em.
I point to mass media depictions of women and I point to body-image and eating disorders. Oh wait, that one actually works.
I point to a pint. That is all.
Oh noes, Ophelia! Whatever makes you think you’re ugly? I’d like to make a sophomoric yet valid assertion : beauty isnt entirely about appearance. The reason you’d be a pin-up is not because you have great facial symmetry, but because you’re a great author and skeptic. Isnt that the reason why the people on the calender are supposed to be on it anyway? Or is there additional criteria to look good too?
I think thinking good should be the sole criteria to be on a Skeptical calender and looking good should not count in any way at all, but thats just me.
OK it just hit me you don’t think much of the idea of a calender. Duh!
You have an arguable point, but I still think it’d be great if you’re in it. Oh well. *goes back to running mazes*
I point to fat Buddha and I point to skinny Buddha. That’s all.
Greenfield has been infuriating me for years. She seems to think that she is some kind of wonderful science populariser (did she not have some kind of post like Dawkins’ Charles Simonye thing some years ago, or perhaps she just loves the media spotlight), but she is TERRIBLE at it – she cannot but help be patronising and simplistic.
Well I think so. Isn’t there? I’ve never seen one, and I don’t think I was even aware that there is one until Greta C and Jen McC talked a lot about posing for the next one, a few weeks or months ago. The recent disturbances have made me more aware of it – and it is supposed to be young hot women isn’t it?
There are calendars of writers, of course, so if it were that kind of calendar, I wouldn’t mind a bit. But as far as I know it’s not, it’s cheesecakey. (It’s supposed to be vaguely “ironic” about that, in some way, but it’s still cheesecakey.)
I point to Christopher Hitchens and I point to Peter Hitchens. That’s all.
I point to Miss May and I point to Miss September. That’s all.
I googled. Definitely not a “great author and skeptic” calendar.
Greta C’s not young, though.
Yeah me too, hadnt looked at one, though I had read Rebecca’s criteria for nominating oneself and though there were hints of cheesecakeyness, it also said there that the most important thing was that your work was known in the skeptic community to nominate yourself and also that they had women from eighteen to over fifty on them, so I didnt gather it would be that cheesey. But you’re right the calender is definitely not what I imagined.
The Skepchick Calendar: Boldly exploring the borderlands between irony and hypocrisy.
I point to outbreaks of disease and I point to democratic presidents. That’s all
Yeah, I’m torn on the idea of agreeing with you or agreeing with someone on the More Dog Whistle thread talking about how the women in the calendar choose sexualize themselves, which is different from other people sexualizing them.
On the one hand, the latter is absolutely true. On the other, I hear a lot more about women doing these types of things than I hear about men doing them, which, to me, indicates that even the calendar thing is still affected by sex inequality.
Which leads me to the conclusion (said many, many times by many, many others) that when it comes to sexuality, women are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
On a personal level, it’s very frustrating because I never feel like my choices to engage or not engage in sexual activities or sexualization are fully mine. They are always influenced by how I’ve been socialized as well as the norms of the group of people I’m with at the time.
Good points, Godless Heathen. That context is always there, even if I’m alone with one other person, who is also a feminist and concerned about not pressuring me.
Also, that the calendar images aren’t all of young women is in some ways encouraging, but not because it means the goal isn’t cheesecakey: it’s encouraging to see some recognition that women don’t become asexual or unattractive by the time we turn 30.
Right; women don’t become repulsive until they’re at least 35. That’s very encouraging.
For reference, here’s a promo video for the 2007 Skepchick calendar, posted by Rebecca Watson. It’s only about a minute long and seems to show most or all of the pictures, briefly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bc7uRF_JZI
Lots of topless young women, but most shot from behind, and one from the front but with her hands over her breasts. The others are mostly scantily/sexily clad.
The picture of Watson is about the least actually revealing, but I guess she’s supposed to be naked there in the bed.
The lyrics to the promo music are pretty sexualizing too, in case it wasn’t dead obvious from the pictures that it’s a cheesecake calendar.
Here are the guidelines for submission:
http://skepchick.org/calendar/
They’re very looking for sexy and “titillating.” (But ideally with some indicator of smarts in the picture.)
They really don’t seem to be looking for old, wrinkled, fat, or sagging bodies, and I don’t think they’re looking for anybody too far from popular norms of beauty.
Well, with increasing age, all I can say is, calendars are soo last year!
A friend of mine once, in an altogether different century (not to say millennium) took some pride in having found a “B.C.” comic by some Tim Hart (?) where the calendar freak was asked what he was giving that ant: “A little calendar” -“How in the world can you make them that small?” -“Transistors!”
I’m pretty sure one of the stoneagers was called Thor. Without even checking, I’m also pretty sure this strip is not available on the net. As I said, soo last millennium. (1970’s)
Weell, I’ll tell all you young whippersnappers, it was actually considered rather funny in those days. It even featured a hot chick and a fat broad, and clubs were swung. (What’s a transistor, anyway?) Can I have more memory, please?
Oh, and get that damned shit off of my lawn!
Ya think?
So Sili @ 56 and MazeRunner @ 65 please note – there is no way I would be eligible to do one of those calendars.
I also think they’re an absolutely shitty idea. The excitements of past month give a hint as to why.
Actually it’s kind of like Mooney and Templeton – I didn’t realize people had to apply to do the calendar. So all those people applied…….
cringe.
Between being 50-mumble and my repressed fundamentalist youth, I have no idea what the accepted “enlightened” rules on female sexual display are these days. Up to about 1990, every place I worked had some cheesecake on the wall (and this in a high-tech professional environment, not your stereotyped redneck industrial setting). This was, of course, the Good Olde Days before anti-harassment codes became widespread, and people started taking women’s rights seriously (well, somewhat).
Then it all went away for about 10 or 15 years — sexuality seemed to be verboten (at least in the workplace). But in the early Oughties, along came a younger generation of women who seemed comfortable showing a bit more skin and otherwise being publicly sexual — eg. the Skepchick calendar. Assuming my perception of the trends are accurate (and I readily admit my field of view has not been wide), my interpretation is that during the 80’s and 90’s women were still trying to get taken seriously for their abilities, and it was necessary to just take sexuality totally off the table. But the younger generation — say, the current 35yo and down — feel confident enough in their place in the world that they can afford to be more open about it; that they can simultaneously be appreciated both for their brains and their looks.
I’m not convinced they’re right.
Well, I never heard of Watson before the recent contretemps but am definitely not a fan of some of her activities – that calendar for one and her staged wedding for another. Call me a snob but you-tube is not a venue I would choose for consciousness raising. Some of the criticism for her attention seeking behaviour that sends conflicting signals seems valid.
At least in construction the cheesecake calendars are still there. I’ve many times been the only woman in a meeting at a site office with a nude girl on the wall. It’s not the worst example of sexism I’ve encountered but it does contribute to a chilly climate.
I really don’t blame the young women who play the looks card in that environment. The cute girl gets positive attention and possibly a mentor. The non-attractive and non-flirtatious ones, not to mention the over 30-year-olds don’t get that.
Why does anybody’s “attention seeking behavior” need to be criticized? And why is it almost always women who “are just seeking attention”? Why isn’t Sid Rodriguez criticized for making such a big fuss about himself and his getting married?
I didn’t know about the wedding and looked it up on YouTube. The comments are just sweet.
Surely we can have a discussion about whether a cheesecakey calendar is a good idea or not without putting anybody’s personality on trial?
We had the ‘Calendar Girls’ movie with gorgeous old British actresses doing “old isn’t ugly”. Unorthodox, and positive. It spawned quite a lot of variations. We’ve probably all seen the cheesecakey calendar used as a fundraiser, with some interesting variations. Locally, we had a firefighters calendar raising money for the rural fire service – a female version and a male version. Deliberately sexy, but equal. I wasn’t really familiar with the skepchick calendar, but I assumed it would be a bit alternative since Greta Christina was getting involved. I’d be very disappointed if it were all young, slim, pretty 20-somethings.
Is it a good idea? Well, I lean towards favouring it. The message that women can choose to be sexual in some circumstances, without that implying that they are thereby freely available to all comers is probably too complicated for teh menz’ little tiny heads to fathom. That’s absolutely a problem – but frankly, our existence is enough of a problem for most of them already. Women who are stroppy! Who are not Hollywood-hawt! Who won’t have sex with them!
Surely we should not be restricting ourselves to behaviours that teh menz approve of.
I agree, Cath–’round here we have a fundraising calendar done by the Men of the Long Tom Grange, all posing nude behind tractors and various other bucolic props. It’s sweet and insanely popular, and yet I still wonder if a female version featuring the same age demographic (most participants are over 40, at least) would ever see the light of day, let alone raise any money. if the Skepchick calendar were THAT–a celebration of human beauty and skepticism across a broad spectrum–I’d personally be happier with it. Looking at the video and criteria that Paul W. provided above, though, it doesn’t seem to be that. As presented, the main message seems to be ‘we’re sexy AND skeptical!’.
If people want to send that message on their own behalf, I can’t judge them for it, but it puzzles me that anyone finds it a necessary message to send–why is it important to advertise that skeptical women are also sexy, any more than it’s important for women in any other male-dominated group (or profession) to proclaim this? I’m not being judgmental, I’m just honestly curious what purpose this serves.
All that said, I completely agree with Herrta that participation in/endorsement of a project like this should in no way a) require ‘approval’ or be ‘restricted’ in any way according to what others (non-participants) feel is appropriate or b) that it should serve as any kind of liability w/r/t/issues of sex discrimination, harassment or assault.
I don’t exactly blame the young women who play the looks card…Well, that is, in principle I don’t; in reality I probably do. But blame or not blame, I agree with Eamon: I’m not at all convinced they’re right.
Why isn’t Sid Rodriguez criticized for making such a big fuss about himself? I don’t know, except that in my case I’d never heard of him until recently, and since then all I’ve known is that he was briefly married to RW.
I think the calendar is a sucky idea, especially since it’s based on a “who’s hawtest” application process. Was there ever a calendar of that kind for just skeptics in general, or public intellectuals in general? Not that I know of. Would that occur to anyone? Let’s have a calendar with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Holmes and Katha Pollitt and Salman Rushdie and Martha Nussbaum in sexy poses?
It started as just for women. All that does is to confirm the stupid idea that being hawt is part of women’s job.
I cross-posted with Jen. I pretty much agree with what she said – except that I am being judgmental; I do think it’s a bad idea.
I suppose it might be trying to break the stereotype of the odd ball/hideous geek but that does seem pointless. The goal should be removing the stigma with being outside the norms of beauty and getting people to be more comfortable with themselves. Otherwise you’re just propping up the same issues in a new community.
Exactly.
A good photographer can make anyone look beautiful — provided one understands that beauty means waaay more than “Wouldn’t you like to fuck me?”. Now that might be a calendar project worth doing…..
Not that I consider myself an expert photog by any means, but sometimes I get lucky, so as an example of what I mean, I present if I may, a couple of photos I took of then 77yo Odetta in concert, a few months before she died: http://thinkingforfree.blogspot.com/2008/08/living-legend.html
ISTM, and has been my very long experience, that some (many?) people see beauty where others don’t, and are even surprised that others can’t see what they see. So, `norms’ may just be in the eye of a beholder… or what we are taught, but not necessarily what we personally find attractive. So, @98, I think you’ve said it.
Oh, well, Odetta – of course she was beautiful at 77. Can I post that picture, Eamon?
I didn’t know you and Theo Bromine blogged at the same place!
@102: Absolutely, you can use the picture. And yes, Theo Bromine and I do lots of things at the same place (eg: live, for the past 30 years).
Oh dang, I guess I really shoulda looked before I leaped. Sorry Ophelia. I personally think Eamon, Ophelia, Jen Philips and julian are mostly right.
Also the lyrics on the video say this, or am I hearing wrong?
Not sure here, but that’s more than acceptable self-sexualizing, IMO. It could be that the lyrics are supposed to be taken in context here, but not sure if that’s such a good thing even if. Also I found Greg Laden had a post partly dealing with some criticism peripherally related with the calender here : http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/01/are_the_skepchicks_too_sexy.php
Drat I also seem to have been half-hooked to posting on this thread, now. Again not sure this is a good idea, as I don’t usually do this.
Some lyrics from the music for that calendar promo (“Brains. Body. Both.” by George Hrab):
FWIW, Tori Welles is a porn star. That and the “she better satisfy my brains as well as my loins” makes me a mite uneasy. I find it quite understandable that a guy would want smart hottie, and want to fuck her, but that’s getting a little close to saying the bitch better be hot and better put out. Being smart isn’t enough, and being smart and average-looking and putting out isn’t enough, either. Ew.
Maybe it’s lighthearted hipsterish ironic jokey sexualization, but still. You can’t push the joke that far and have it still be just a joke, or expect that everybody understands to what extent it’s just a joke.
(Also, I forgot to mention that there’s one pair of actual barenaked breasts in the video. That’s not a high count, as cheese goes, but it clearly confirms that there’s actual cheese in there; it’s cheesecake. And hey, that’s about two breasts per minute; Joe Bob says check it out.)
I think this is the sort of thing that seems “hypocritical” to some people. I don’t think it actually is, but it kinda undermines the value of some of Watson’s anecdotes. Who is surprised if a woman selling pictures of nekkid girls, with a promo comparing them to porn stars, with a rap about satisfying some rapper’s loins, gets some emails from some random fanbois about how fuckable she is? (Of course she has a different experience than Paula Kirby with the skeptic movement. Paula Kirby doesn’t sell softcore quasi-porn of herself and other young skeptic women, however hipsterishly ironic and jokey.)
I’m not saying that Watson should get that shit—people should realize that people who wear sexy clothes or pose for sexy pictures are not inviting strangers to proposition them, or to share their personal sexual fantasies personally. (There’s that whole mutual knowledge thing.) They may fully realize that some people inevitably will actually fantasize about sex with them, but still not want to hear about it. (Even porn stars generally don’t want to hear from random strangers fantasizing about them. They get plenty of that, and it’s boring, as well as creepily self-centered for a random stranger to feel entitled to attention from her personally about what he wants to do to her, personally, with his personal winkie.) Even if a woman clearly wants to be publicly “a sex object,” she deserves basic interpersonal consideration.
—
I know a couple of other women who do fairly popular atheist/skeptic videos on YouTube, who do not dress particularly sexily, and do not publish nekkid or suggestive pictures of themselves, or do anything like that, and they get some of that sort of weird sexualized email from atheist men too. (As well as weird blatantly misogynist shit from religious loons, of course.)
That tells me that Watson is not wrong that there’s a certain amount that shit out there directed at visible skeptic/atheist women, just because they’re women, and that impresses me more than most of Watson’s own anecdotes.
Let me be really clear about what I’m not saying—I’m not saying that Watson and other Skepchick calendar chicks are “asking for it.” They’re not. (People need to know that women intentionally being publicly “sexy” is not an invitation to random strangers to get personally sexual.) I am saying that when you see the same sort of stuff happening to women who are very clearly not going anywhere near it, much less “asking for” it even by goofy, clueless standards, it’s better evidence that it’s a more general or widespread problem.
That makes Watson a problematic spokesperson about the issue. Hypocritical or not, it’s harder to understand what her personal experiences do and don’t imply about the experiences of women more generally in the movement more generally. It complicates the discussion a lot, even if she’s not actually sending mixed signals. (Which I think she mostly isn’t, but you have to pay attention.) She’s an easy target.
Arguably, that makes it all the more important to defend her against the unbelievable crap she’s gotten, to make it clearer just where reasonable lines can and can’t be, and not just defend the women who can’t easily be slut-shamed. Either way, it’s a harder rhetorical problem.
Oh, I didn’t know that either, Eamon! Belated congratulations to both. :- )
No need to apologize, maze. No prob.
Paul, yes, all that.
If the discussion had been free from sexist crap-throwing, then it would have been possible to discuss those tensions. As it was, the crap-throwing made calm discussion absolutely impossible. (And yes: this experience has taught me to be more wary of crap-throwing of any kind. It has taught me to regret “The Colgate Twins.”) I didn’t know about it at all until it was about a week old, so the crap-throwing had already gotten well established when I found out about it – on PZ’s thread, just before Dawkins commented. I never saw a crap-free discussion.
Paul W, thanks! I saw George Hrab do that and it really squicked me out. Ew. So glad that someone else sees it, too.
This. I think it’s a real loss for the community that it was not possible to have a rational discussion about any of this, because I think it could be an important and revealing dialogue. I look at Eamon’s comment at #90 and see a lot of good observations, but I wonder a lot about how deep the seeming empowerment of the ‘under 35’ women goes. In general, they appear as Eamon describes, “confident enough in their place in the world that they can afford to be more open about it; that they can simultaneously be appreciated both for their brains and their looks.” This may be true of some, even many, all the way down. But in Western culture at least these women have grown up being bombarded by extremely narrow definitions of ‘beautiful’ (or, more directly, ‘sexy’). Is it possible that the confident, sultry behavior that goes along with that package, peddled to women by the media for our whole fucking lives, is a cultural artifact rather than genuinely acquired confidence?
As a woman who is 40-mumble, happily ensconced in a career and an extremely stable family situation, I would call myself genuinely confident in my femaleness and how it bears (or doesn’t, as the case may be) on my professional and social realms. However, I can look back at the younger me and see numerous manifestations of ‘confidence’- as it pertains to presentations of beauty and/or sexuality–that were completely ersatz, although it apparently appeared genuine to others. I’m obviously not in a position to judge where anyone besides myself is in this process of gaining true confidence–perhaps I was just a late bloomer. But the calendar business makes me wonder. Are these truly confident women, or are they just doing what our culture has told them, relentlessly, what they need to do to appear empowered?