Dental dams did seem like a massive overreaction not justified by any actual data about the risk of disease transmission. I'm surprised they lasted as a safe-sex education thing as Lon as they did.
We were never meant to worry, the way that people do, while others plan their future, I'm busy loving you.
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-not gonna use a condom
Am I the only guy in the world who's never wheedled his way in without a jimmy hat? That just always seemed so immature. Also, when you ride the bus, and are constantly exposed to the screaming, smelly, drooling results of people's failure to use a rubber , it's a powerful incentive to wrap that rascal.
Perform oral sex on a man wearing a condom? Is this also a thing?
1: Dental dams are still talked about in official sex ed.
To the OP: Damn, al. You've had some horrible shit in your life, but for a person who's been really unlucky in a lot of ways, you are damn lucky not to have gotten something worse.
Also, I don't mean to schill for Pharma but Vertex and Merck both have drugs for Hep. C which are useful when it's caught early. It's not supposed to be a pleasant course of treatment, and the drugs are fantastically expensive.
I just googled "dental dam", and there's some blog post from a guy asking why women don't demand dental dams for safety reasons, since they do demand (and rightly!) condoms. Who would be more at risk from that one? The woman getting stuff from someone's bacteria-laden mouth or the man or woman giving oral sex?
With rimming the giver is at risk of Hep. A from fecal/oral transmission.
I am awesomely lucky! I got hep C and then magically cleared it immediately to the confusion of my expensive hepatologist. for a long time I got a PCR test yearly to find out if there were any copies of the virus in my blood [irrelevant aside: massive déjà vu looking up the test and listing to beck's "nicotine and gravy." It went on for 20 seconds or more: so disturbing.] nada, zip. they officially gave up in 2005.
Not to undermine the overall point, but a few of those excuses from guys sound pretty reasonable to me (I thought AWB was talking specifically about casual hookups). First, oral sex. Second, if you are in a committed relationship, and the woman is on the pill, and you've both been tested recently, then what is the problem? Six months seems way too long -- I'd always heard that the window was three months for an HIV test.
I thought standard good practice was that you used condoms until you got tested, and that you got tested relatively early in at least a semi-committed relationship, and then you use the pill or whatever other noncondom method you want. And nothing for exclusively oral sex.
I definitely learned that it was 6 months, but I could believe that number was given due to overcaution or lesser sensitivity of older tests.
I'd like to see some numbers from the Dental Dam Manufacturers Association to see if anyone actually buys those things.
IME, women's resource centers buy them. And then buy them again, when all the unused ones expire after a few years. At the WRC where I volunteered in college, they had blueberry flavored ones. Gross!
Here is what the CDC says about the window period for an HIV test. 97% accuracy after 3 months (although most people show within 24 days), with retesting in 6 months to be super cautious.
I'll non-presidentially 'fess up to never having used a dental dam. I also haven't had as many casual encounters as I probably should have.
halford: tests now are accurate after 3 months, but in the 90s they needed 6 months to be sure. and anyway I am talking about guys weaseling after 2 weeks. and dude, did you not hear my friend just now? she has low self-esteem, addict blah blah daddy issues, is easy to wear down. she has had unprotected sex with 4 guys this year that I can think of without asking her. they only ever get antsy because she falls in love and becomes clingy, while they want 3-week stands with a hot younger chick. they start to worry she might accidentally on purpose get knocked up and they start wearing condoms, the latex death knell of the affair.
I'm pretty sure it was three months even in the mid-90s, at least that's my memory. But 2 weeks is too soon, I'm not saying yay for the guys with your friend, and, sure, shitty behavior.
3: I dated someone who insisted on it. Even in 1992, it felt overly cautious.
The only place I ever ran into much condom resistance was in the bay area, which should be shocking, but isn't quite. And I wasn't wheedled--it was simply assumed one was not going to be used until I said yes, one was.
I feel as if I should have more to contribute to all this talk as a once upon a time rather what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous? gay guy person trained in HIV pre- and post-test counseling...
Dental dams were one thing, but the last word in pathological precaution was finger cots.
16: Eww, yeah, those look creepy. Though they might be useful for craft stuff, like to help pull a needle. Hmm.
I got the vague impression from a friend who worked in safer-sex counseling that the dental dam thing was partially out of a sense of solidarity, or that solidarity should be encouraged, or something: that there shouldn't be a class of people for whom safer sex wasn't an issue, even if, realistically, there's no perceptible danger of HIV transmission through lesbian sex (barring minority practices like cutting or something).
what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous?
Popular?
17 Knitting With Condoms will be my next book, after I'm done with my self help best-seller Loving Your Diabetic Cat.
what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous?
the slut of all time?
18: Solidarity is nice, but I also think the dental dam thing undermines overall credibility of the cause and diverts resources away from where they might be better used.
Then again, maybe safer-sex counselors are really in the pocket of Big Dental Dam.
what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous?
Round-heeled
24: I think you're right -- it's the Reefer Madness problem: if they're this wrong about pot, then heroin must be harmless too.
24: But now the biggest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land, it's that Trojan Magnum condom and the Big Grand Dental Dam.
Knitting With Condoms
I would be astonished if this sculpture didn't already exist.
I stayed single for a long time. IME if you (the guy) didn't insist on a condom then a lot of women didn't even bring it up. Particularly true for women in their 30s and up. It feels better for both sexes I guess. I also think that there was an element of pregnancy risk sex being hot, maybe especially in that age group (I used withdrawal and have good control). It came up explicitly as a fantasy at times. I typically dated pretty educated/white collar types so it's not like it was about ignorance.
I was pretty lax, lucky I didn't get anything (that can be tested for anyway).
what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous?
"nice", as in, "maybe you should have been 'nicer' to Principal Skinner."
IME if you (the guy) didn't insist on a condom then a lot of women didn't even bring it up.
I'd think there'd be a fair number of women using hormonal/IUD birth control, ready to risk STIs but not pregnancy, wouldn't you? That may be an individual ranking of possible bad outcomes on my part, but pregnancy just seems like a much higher-odds risk.
29: Warmhearted is my fave.
I was thinking "generous". But my real suggestion is "catholic".
I'd think there'd be a fair number of women using hormonal/IUD birth control, ready to risk STIs but not pregnancy, wouldn't you?
At times, but definitely not always. As I said, the pregnancy risk thing came up explicitly quite a number of times, as in fantasizing out loud about it.
"felicific" (credit to chris y in the other thread).
what's-a-nicer-word-for-promiscuous?
"Fun-loving" (per Class).
I typically dated pretty educated/white collar types so it's not like it was about ignorance.
Unless you specifically quizzed them, I don't think you can rule out selective ignorance on the basis of education and professional class.
Having a high coefficient of variance.
"accommodating"
Extra points for using specifically when prone to using furniture. (Beavis laugh, "prone")
Friendly or limber.
Jeremy Bentham's personal attempt to pursue happiness:
Hopeful to the last, at the age of eighty he wrote again to one of them, recalling to her memory the far-off days when she had "presented him, in ceremony, with the flower in the green lane"
Heh heh. Heh. Fire. Heh heh. Promiscuous. Heh heh.
49: That's kind of sweet, a bit reminiscent of the last reported meeting of Kierkegaard and Miss Olsen.
The Loves of the Philosophers would make a pretty good title for a collection of short, allusive prose pieces.
So, uh, nobody use that, it's mine.
Eat your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace.
52 - is it Mary-Kate or Ashley who likes older men?
Huh. In twenty years, my partners absolutely thought condoms were the default. I never experienced pressure to not use them.
The Kierkegaard reference immediately makes me think of this:
https://twitter.com/KimKierkegaard
The thing in 57 is really fantastic.
I've never been with anyone who suggested using protection for oral. When you're doing that it's really only about non-AIDS STD's or not doing any PIV, since the AIDS transmission risk for PIV with a condom is about the same or higher than for oral without one.
The times I've suggested no condom use is in the context of post-drinking sex when the odds are that a condom will kill my erection. I haven't pushed beyond that if the answer was no. However, there's a good chance I would have if I'd ever encountered a woman who insisted on protection for oral, whether for me, her, or both.
I used withdrawal as a method a decent amount and never had a problem with the discipline aspect. I still worried though.
When you're really drunk seems like exactly the right time to try a birth control method that requires self-awareness and control.
They always say drinking/drugs cause you to make bad decisions about safe sex but my own experience has just been that when I'm drunk I make bad decisions about food.
Drinking tends to cause me to make bad decisions about drinking -- self-referential, but annoying.
It's true. I got drunk recently and had fried chicken. BREADED fried chicken. There is no condom for that.
There's sometimes a condom in it, if the chef hates you.
If you like breaded fried chicken, you can bread stuff quite well with finely chopped nuts. It doesn't stick to the meat as well as flour, but if you're careful it works. And it tastes really good.
I've never been with anyone who suggested using protection for oral.
Whereas I've been in the situation of being the one who's suggested it.
The combination of being a ridiculously literal-minded rule-foillower and coming of age in the late '80s/early '90s (and a hypochondriac to boot) was a bad one.
62 - had a conversation with my 15 year old the other day in which I found out that she has actually listened to stuff I say to her. She was apparently telling her friends to have a soft drink in between alcoholic drinks to let whatever you've just drunk catch up with you, otherwise you won't know how drunk you are. I said that was a good idea, and she said, "yeah, you told me that"! Where is my good parent award?
62: That used to happen when I younger, but lately I seem to have figured out how to stop just before the cliff of losing my ability to stop drinking. I think it might be a gastrointestinal thing (i.e. I get queasy) because it only works with beer.
There was Mac and Cheese involved, too. The next morning I woke up and felt like I'd spent the night with a Hollywood boulevard streetwalker* and hadn't brought protection.
*this is a nostalgia reference
I've actually gotten worse at it again over the last couple of years, which seems weird at my age. I think I may be drinking enough less as a baseline that my tolerance has dropped, leaving me blowing past the number of drinks at which I retain the sense to slow down before I notice it when I do go out.
I mostly just need to give up on thinking that I can spend a long evening drinking anymore, and stop at my third.
Fractionally speaking, a third is bigger than a fifth.
67: I figured my life as a parent was complete when the then teens called to say they had had too much to drink to drive home from the party and so were going to sleep it off there.
61, 63, 69: My bad choices tend to come the next day, when it seems to make sense to eat an entire bag of salt-n-vinegar potato chips and drink a bunch of ginger ale.
I'd absolutely eat an entire bag of salt-n-vinegar chips and drink a bunch of ginger ale today, despite having abstained last night. Maybe I should drink more to give myself an excuse.
74: I totally do not get this. The day after, nothing seems like a worse idea than salty, fatty foods. Some fiber, a light salad, and a trip or two to the bathroom for me.
No, no. That's what bacon and eggs were made for. Salt, fat, and protein. (Not chips. I can't see eating potato chips hungover, somehow.) And Coke, except that we never have it in the house. But if it's available and I'm feeling bad, nothing like a Coke.
If we don't want to take more than two trips to the bathroom, it's probably just as well that I can't find Hamm's for sale anymore.
Discussing hangover cures many years ago, I suggested a cup of tea, a can of Coke, and a spliff. My friend's robust American girlfriend recommended a shit, a shag, and a steak. I was (delicately) horrified.
I mostly just need to give up on thinking that I can spend a long evening drinking anymore, and stop at my third.
"Three and I'm under the table. Four and I'm under the host."
It's the fashion for hard liquor that does for people, it seems to me. If you stay on beer or table wine, you can keep sliding it down a lot longer.
79: A friend of Buck's had an elaborately planned out hangover-morning that was something like that: IIRC it was get up, big glass of water, two ibuprofen, hot shower, back to bed, have sex, go back to sleep until noon, and then a big fatty brunch. Obviously, you need a cooperative partner.
Salt, fat, and protein.
Word. I got loaded last night and this morning's cure was an open faced cheeseburger and some coffee ice cream.
A cooperative partner and a day off work.
I think the cooperative partner bit was integral to Kingsley Amis's famous cure for the "metaphysical hangover."*
*And actual hangover mind you, just the kind that also fills you with self-loathing and dread.
If you're Kingsley Amis, the self-loathing must be pretty much a constant, drunk or sober.
Constant self-loathing may be a very sensitive indicator of being Kingsley Amis, but I'd bet that it has very low specificity.
"He Stopped Hating Himself Today" -- isn't that a country music song?
Booty Call had a bit about the dangers of using saran wrap as a dental dam.
Online article about a journal article about hangover cures from 1961: http://www.theawl.com/2012/07/91-hangover-cures
For example, 22. "Many people chew raw parsnips to get rid of that morning aftertaste."--Bruce Millan, Momo's Bar, Detroit. Theatrical producer and bartender; white, male, about 35; has his own company of child actors who irregularly perform in plays throughout Michigan; also tends a bar full time; also is working for a Master's degree with a specialty in folk drama at Wayne University.
79: Yes. You should have the spliff instead of the steak, no question.
Of course, using aluminum foil out preclude ketchup-play activities.
Just out of curiousity, how many people have a raw parsnip around their house? We've had them in the house maybe 20 days total in the past 10 years.
94. Out of season. November to March, more often than not.
Didn't we figure out here once that Parsnips meant something totally different in the UK vs. US?
I have a daikon (shut up). They sort of look the same. I think the parsnip had a heyday when Atkins was big -- an acceptable root vegetable one could give the cream and butter treatment.
96: I'm thinking of the thing that looks like a big white carrot.
Maybe it was turnips/rutebegas? Did I get drunk, black out, sleep with a prostitute, beat up a homeless guy, and imagine this conversation?
99: I think you're right. The whole "swedes" controversy.
These things. Google doesn't suggest anything else goes under than name.
102: The ones in our store are less bulby at the top, but those are still pretty much big white carrot-looking.
The best hangover cure is a fried egg, sunnyside up and some carbs (toast with butter, or french fries). Also, orange Fanta, but not American orange Fanta.
Drinking also makes me make bad decisions about more drinking, and I've been having the unfortunate experience recently where I feel fine until suddenly I don't, no warning. Also drinking makes me do pushups. I know I'm really drunk when I have an urge to do pushups.
Anyway, to 94, in winter we eat probably more root vegetables than anything else. But not as a hangover cure.
I never have an urge to do push-ups, drunk, sober, or ruefully wishing I could do push-ups.
I had the most delicious rutabagas this winter. There was a lot of pancetta involved.
It looked for a minute there that we might have to send drones to protect to US (and Bulgaria) from the Swedish menace. But apparently not.
I was also puzzled by Alameida's apparent dismissal of the "it's only oral sex" line, so much so that I spent a few precious moments googling transmission rates. One of the very first things that came up was a UCSF roundtable on, yes, the risks of HIV transmission via oral sex. And one of the opening remarks is:
Jeffr/ey D. Kl/aus/ner, MD, MPH: Perhaps we could get fellatio without ejaculation off the table and agree that's an extremely low risk exposure activity?
--which nobody really disagrees with, though, being academics, they have to quibble about phrasing for a bit.
(Though the very first remark, post-introduction, is this nice bit of terminology-clarification: "Ki/mbe/rly Page Sha/fer, PhD, MPH: I think it's appropriate that we refer to receptive sex on a male partner as "fellatio," since that is an appropriate and well described term for the act." Indeed it is!)
As for performing-fellatio-with-ejaculation, there seems to be some disagreement; some panelists think it's 7-10x less risky than receptive anal sex, some think it's even less than this; and it's hard to really tease this out from the data, apparently, because the higher risk activities, which are often not accurately reported to investigators, can overwhelm the effects of the lower-risk ones in the data. One investigator suspects 5-15% of new infections are from that vector, but another says he's yet to see a really documented case in 20 years of following cohorts, and a third, talking about a panel of 100 newly seroconverted folks, thinks that between 1 and 8 infections was via oral, but it's hard to know more due to uncertainty about reporting (and remembering). Still, this finding surprised me:
In July of this last year, a group in Spain published an excellent paper from serodiscordant couples, who were heterosexuals, where they evaluated for risks of HIV transmission through unprotected oral sex, and in over 19,000 unprotected oral-genital contacts with HIV-infected partners, there was not a single case of seroconversion to HIV (Slide 5). This included both infected women and infected men, but the majority of the population in this study was infected men.
Then again, I suppose one can't necessarily trust that a new partner won't come in your mouth without giving you some warning. IBTP.
At least 56 and 66 make me feel less like an outlier (and Natilo, I don't think you are alone). Age, geography, the penumbra of engineering?
Maybe we do some subconscious selection for risk-averse partners.
Like, by being total squares and therefore only being places where I could meet other total squares.
I bet it's community norms. You're a CA hippie -- while you may not be dating solely within the hippie community, you're limited to people who voluntarily interact with your kind, if you see what I mean.
113 crossed with 112, but that kind of thing.
When I'm good and hung over, I can rarely eat or drink anything at all because it will come back up on me. When I do get to the point of wanting food, I want fruit salad. Definitely not salt.
I have a daikon (shut up).
I have a daikon, too! It came in our vegetable delivery box yesterday.
Not at Reed, nor in California, nor in Seattle, am I a anywhere near being a hippie. I may be one in New York, but `total square' is a lot more salient. I wouldn't call Josh a hippie, either -- Josh, are you one in your circles?
West Coast hippies are really free about these, you know, hang-ups? About the future? And the body? I deduce that East Coast hippies aren't.
What's this? You can make creamy parsnip soup. You can make roasted parsnips, either on a pan in the oven, or alongside a roasted chicken. You'll want to mix some other root vegetables in there (chiefly potatoes).
On the other topic, sure, in the communities I frequent, insisting on protection for sex is taken as natural. There's nothing square about it. Sometimes men weep and moan about it, figuratively. Dental dams, though, not so much.
Josh, are you one in your circles?
Hah! Quite the opposite.
I'm very thankful that I don't get hangovers.
clew, I don't understand 118.2. Megan is a west coast hippie. I'm an east coast one. Both of us take birth control/condoms as a given.
I do know some west coast hippies who are all freeee loooove and stuff, who wind up popping out babies rather frequently. I think they must be against abortion, but I haven't had the courage to ask.
Eh. When I lived with hippies, they found me conventional. I have some hippie cred, mostly where it overlaps with environmentalism, but like I said, I'm a risk-averse square at heart.
I should clarify that I've also always thought condoms were and ought to be the default, and in fact felt ashamed about never suggesting them for oral sex; it's only recently that I've started thinking it was in fact reasonable not to. But for PiV intercourse, condoms, absolutely; I think there were only a handful of times my last long-term partner and I didn't use them, and we were together monogamously for 2.5 years. But then, for me, it's not really a hardship, since too much sensation is more often a problem than too little.
If we're going to talk generationally, I was born in 1980; I grew up with media portrayals of AIDS as a deathly plague--raise your hand if you watched "The Ryan White Story" in school--though by the time I first had PiV sex in '98, anti-retroviral treatment was already around (and I in fact met Dav/id H/o a few days after that, at a rather weird gathering of HS seniors & famous folks, though I didn't talk about this with him!).
I might as well repeat what 123 said. Real hippies find me conventional. Non-hippies don't.
I'm not sure what risk-aversion has to do with it.
Mostly, I shouldn't use 'hippie'. I was using it way, way overinclusively, to include people who are sort of left-wing-political about health and environmental issues, who'd I generally expect to be both (a) cautious about health and (b) punctiliously respectful of a partner's health concerns.
I've said it before, but at this point I have no fucking idea what a hippie is. We are now about 40 years from when the concept referred to something identifiable.
124: I was born ten years earlier and we were shown a video in health class starring Rae Dawn Chong: "AIDS Is Hard to Get!" (At that point they were more worried about people thinking they could get it from waterfountains or mosquito bites.)
I use hippie the way LB does. Overinclusive, almost certainly has a compost pile.
127: Yes it is a term that has been rendered meaningless ten ways from yesterday.
128 -- I have a very specific memory of watching that video and can remember it in detail.
Also, speaking of AIDS, when it comes into theaters/onto HBO everyone everyone everyone really really really needs to see this movie. It is really incredible to think, in retrospect, how horrible the AIDS period was and how courageous people had to be to fight against Jesse Helms, et al during it.
Extreme west coast hippies may have taken over the name here (`here' might be `in my head'). For instance, the ones I know take black cohosh and possibly yarrow (that's what I haven't had the courage to ask about!) but they're against MDs so might not have medical abortions. But just because they're much more hippie-ish than me doesn't mean I'm never a hippie, or not a hippie to anyone.
I don't identify as one because the parts of my worldview that look hippie-ish (leftyness, environmentalism, fondness for hens) fits the 1930s as much as the 1960s. This may prove useful in the 2010s, unfortunately. I have an inchoate scale of optimist/realist/defeatist, and hippies and Californians both tend to be on the optimist end.
Their thoughts were merry and worries fleeting --
Of lovers' meetings, of luck and fame --
But ours were of trouble, and ours were steady,
So we were ready when trouble came.
Case that renders 'hippie' useless as an identifier: Berkeley full professors. They're sort of like princes of the seizecinto Church: technically loyal to one thing, deeply involved in its opposite. Oo, do not out me.
Is there a preferable term for the sort of person I and Megan are referring to that wouldn't confuse people? I also grasp for 'crunchy granola' for the same kind of person, but (a) that seems negative/mocking in a way I don't mean to be, and (b) I'm not sure that it communicates any better.
(Full disclosure, this is a group of people that I think of myself as on the edge of -- not really a member, but I sort of wish I were more. I dearly love compost, I'm very fond of beans and whole grains, I like repairing/patching damaged things, I'm reflexively suspicious of The Man, where he can be identified (and where I'm not him, which I sort of am professionally). Hippieish.)
Crunchy conservatives are a thing. Family cloth!
I dearly love compost, I'm very fond of beans and whole grains, I like repairing/patching damaged things, I'm reflexively suspicious of The Man, where he can be identified
I would say 100% of these ideas -- unfortunately! whole grains and beans can fuck themselves -- have now been so thoroughly incorporated into the general urban UMC worldview (e.g., Whole Foods) that they are now basically useless as identifiers of any existing subculture. They are useful only in the shadow world of lazy media cliches where the culture war of circa 1969 fights itself over and over and over again without any reference to reality.
133: How do you feel about bathing regularly? And do you wear pants under long skirts?
I was told by a native of Humboldt that I am not a hippy because I am much too effective, and go on to build the compost piles and raised beds that I mention.
Humboldt hippies apparently lack follow-through.
Not so entirely incorporated into the general urban UMC worldview. Environmentalist stuff like not having a car and beekeeping is trendy on the one hand, and still notably surprising to lots of the people I meet.
139: My niece went to Humboldt State. She lives in Portland now and works at a natural foods co-op.
I certainly wouldn't say that (a) living in Portland, OR; (b) not having a car; and (c) beekeeping are signs of "being a hippie" (as opposed to just being part of some vaguely trendy in a lefty/environmentalist way). But as I say I think the term has pretty much lost all content.
133: How do you feel about bathing regularly? And do you wear pants under long skirts?
One branch of this off the flow chart would lead to 'you are in your 20s in Berlin in the 90s.'
||
OT: I can't make heads or tails of the music thread at CT. I was tempted to comment but I can't figure out what the conversation is supposed to be (if anything) other than people giving long lists of musicians they happen to like.
|>
133: I think that's just a liberal. Which is fine.
To graduate to earthy-crunchy, you'd have to not shave your legs/armpits, and/or procure food from a coop, i.e. bulk beans and grains and dried fruits, and/or make your own granola and hummus and pesto and such, and/or either grow your own food or make your own preserves or have a compost pile, or all of the above. You should be growing fresh herbs and/or have hanging bunches of drying herbs, like mint (for making tea).
To be an actual hippie involves the above plus naked dancing and/or drumming circles and/or occasionally sleeping on the beach or in a cave, and definitely giving a lot of your stuff away to people who need it ... and I'm losing steam on the explanation.
137, 140: Yeah, not all that incorporated in practice. I'm not all that out there in terms of the hippieish ideal, but I'm well to one side of the center of gravity of my UMC peergroup. Silly things, like feeling strongly that no one should wear shoes that hurt their feet (note to friend: I know you say you're more comfortable in heels. You're having a bunion operation. That's the shoes, they broke your feet.) are not shunned, but also really not the norm.
I'm not particularly committed or energetic about any of this stuff, but I'm clearly not in the dead center of the UMC.
133: I don't think liberal describes anything about lifestyle -- that's pure political beliefs and voting behavior.
I think you were right above, with the term "granola". I don't find it negative, but I wouldn't given that's who I am and hang out with.
To graduate to earthy-crunchy, you'd have to not shave your legs/armpits, and/or procure food from a coop, i.e. bulk beans and grains and dried fruits, and/or make your own granola and hummus and pesto and such, and/or either grow your own food or make your own preserves or have a compost pile, or all of the above. You should be growing fresh herbs and/or have hanging bunches of drying herbs, like mint (for making tea).
So, other than the shaving bit, earthy-crunchy = SWPL?
The verse in 132 is nice, whose is it?
Sandals, crunchy diet, and a fondness for the Grateful Dead (American Beauties as a label?). The thing that rubs me the wrong way about people who go in for those things is a combination of firstly optimism about collective good intention and secondly humorless certainty about exactly what is well-intentioned: recycling always, GMO or nuclear never, for instance.
Basically judging people by patchouli or tie-die or a little flakiness about food bugs me as much as judging dweebs by enthusiasm for computers or manga or whatever. Best to either ignore people or put some effort into really paying attention.
Back to the OT, overall there have been clearly more cases in my life of the woman pushing for not using a condom than the reverse. I never felt that to be a problem because either I disagreed, in which case condoms were used, or I was fine with not using one, effectively meaning that was my preference, and then, yay.
I know people I think of as hippieish or earthy-crunchy or whatever who I think of as excruciatingly silly, and people who are sensible and useful and pleasant to be around, in about the same mix as any other terribly vaguely defined cultural group. I don't think it's a useful way at all to differentiate between sane and silly people.
Verse in 132 was Houseman, and I misquoted it, or perhaps correctly quoted a variant in The Invention of Love. Which is also nice.
Oh hell, and now I misspelled Housman. Will listen to Love in Bloom in penance.
and/or procure food from a coop
Live on chicken?
So, if you had a couple of friends who you'd introduced, and who had after a several-year ridiculously romantic-comedy non-dating relationship had gotten together and gotten married, and then they moved away and you lost touch other than Facebook, and then the man called your husband to tell him that he'd moved out after a dozen years of marriage, it'd be the right thing to do to email the woman and offer sympathy and support, right? I always feel weird getting back in touch with people after a long period, but that's the normal human thing to do, I think.
Seems normal. Just apologize for setting her up with the wrong person.
So, other than the shaving bit, earthy-crunchy = SWPL?
I think the SWPL/earthy-crunchy divide can be traced by the focus on tastiness. IME SWPL homemade granola/pesto/hummus is just more delicious than the earthy-crunchy equivalents.
Tell her you never liked him.
(Seriously, just say how hard, and other than that, Mrs Lincoln?)
Chez Panisse: indubitably delicious, indubitably SWPL, I'd say also hippie-earthy-crunchy.
We didn't set them up -- they met at a movie we went to with both of them independently, and they hit it off instantly, and spent the next couple of years as best friends but not dating each other, dating other people off and on. And then all of a sudden they were dating and then engaged and then married quite quickly.
157 was maybe not that serious anyway.
Oh, I know. I'm just bummed. They were really such a romantic comedy that while I feel bad for both of them, I'm largely regretting the loss of one fairy-tale happy ending in my bank of stories.
160: See, I don't get hippie-earthy-crunchy from it at all. Too Frenchified for that.
To graduate to earthy-crunchy, you'd have to not shave your legs/armpits, and/or procure food from a coop, i.e. bulk beans and grains and dried fruits, and/or make your own granola and hummus and pesto and such, and/or either grow your own food or make your own preserves or have a compost pile, or all of the above. You should be growing fresh herbs and/or have hanging bunches of drying herbs, like mint (for making tea).
That describes me perfectly while living in CA (not as much here, I haven't found a co-op), minus the leg-shaving thing, and I'm not sure anyone has described me as hippie or crunchy. I was raised by near-hippies, but I always ended up feeling like I was just SWPL for all of those things.
If you include Waters' efforts to get gardens into schools, it leads back to hippie-earthy-crunchy pretty quick. As does a local, seasonal, organic menu.
Oh hey, I hadn't read Blume's comment when I wrote that....
Why did feminists return to the practice of shaving their body hair, which their antecedents had abandoned in the 70s? I've never understood this. It just seems like a lot of work.
163: There are some romantic comedies about divorcing or divorced couples getting back together.
168: I sure I'm indoctrinated by the media, etc, but I like the way my legs look more when they're not covered in long, dark hair. I do leave them unshaved if I'm not going to be bare-legged any time soon, and if I had finer, blonder hair, I'd probably never bother.
have to not shave your legs/armpits, and/or procure food from a coop, i.e. bulk beans and grains and dried fruits, and/or make your own granola and hummus and pesto and such, and/or either grow your own food or make your own preserves or have a compost pile, or all of the above. You should be growing fresh herbs and/or have hanging bunches of drying herbs, like mint (for making tea).
I do or have done 100% of these things (OK, the first one is cheating) and I don't think anyone could plausibly describe me, ever, as being either a "hippie" or "earthy/crunchy." You are just talking about a huge bunch of things that lots of people do, not markers of an actually-identifiable subculture.
164: But only the bits of Catherine de Medici's shadow that intersect with hippiedom, I'd say. Her shadow is large, and there are French hippies -- see? The guys are wearing pants with skirts on top!
If you include Waters' efforts to get gardens into schools, it leads back to hippie-earthy-crunchy pretty quick.
I would distinguish this as Waters being hippie-earthy-crunchy, but Chez Panisse not. (Also, there's the cost of a meal at CP. Not hippie-earthy-crunchy at all.)
Now I wonder if CP serves kombucha.
As does a local, seasonal, organic menu.
Nah, that's strictly Frenchifying. Maybe it's convergent evolution, but Waters has specifically talked about how she came to realize the virtues of it from her time in France.
168: Not all feminists returned to it.
There are indeed "crunchy" people who are unpleasantly uptight -- often in exactly the ways they think they aren't uptight -- but LB's 152 is exactly right.
I thought of "neo-hippie", and via the tubes I see that it does have some currency. It's a pretty ugly sounding term, however*. There is clearly some identifiable sub-culture which runs from things like the Rainbow Gathering towards more "mainstream" activities like, I don't know, the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
*Part of the difficulty was how broadly "hippie" was used back in the day.
156: I agree. I'm sure she'd appreciate the sympathy and support (even if you don't take sides, but simply are sad for her things didn't work out). Since you haven't been in frequent contact, perhaps the risks are less of getting into the middle of things (as the husband has contacted yours recently).
Why did feminists return to the practice of shaving their body hair, which their antecedents had abandoned in the 70s?
Employability and promotions, IME, followed by sexual norms going back again.
Chez Panisse is kind of ground zero for why the whole concept of the hippie is useless.
Thinking about it more, I find that the distinction I keep wanting to draw between earthy-crunchy and SWPL comes down to material comfort: hippies don't value it (or view it as actively suspicious), SWPL folks do.
Why did feminists return to the practice of shaving their body hair, which their antecedents had abandoned in the 70s?
Oh God no let's not bring that back.
Or what makes you a hippie rather than SWPL is that you just aren't very good at material comfort, like actually building the raised beds (especially ones with corners that don't come apart in the first winter).
Wait... Megan, why raised beds in Sacramento? Why not sunken? Winter crops?
Clearly I need a Chez Panisse dinner to think about this over.
179: This really doesn't jibe with the hippieish people I know, who generally seem to actively enjoy and take pleasure in the granola/beans/herbal tea, even if it's the sort of thing that people who don't like it view as punitively uncomfortable.
180: Hey, speak for yourself. Some of the sexiest women I've ever known have had the habit of "keeping it real Seventies," as it were.
I find the soils here to be pretty clay-ey. And kinda like the demarcation. And not bending so low. But they aren't raised by much. Just bordered with 1x6s.
You are just talking about a huge bunch of things that lots of people do, not markers of an actually-identifiable subculture.
I dunno, man. Maybe you're so deep in it, you can't see out. A whole lot of UMC people have never bought bulk food in their lives.
Maybe, but I don't think doing so, at all, makes you a "hippie." Does shopping at Whole Foods count?
I'm with Halford -- the things that are supposed to be hippie signifiers are just too widespread to pick out hippies, just like many people who aren't millionaires eat arugula and lots of people who aren't geeks saw the Avengers.
Buying bulk food doesn't necessarily make you a hippie (or hippieish, or crunchy, whatever. I don't care what the word is, if you want to actually restrict hippie to "Someone who's still following the Dead because they've been too continuously stoned to figure out Jerry died," that's cool) but it's one of a number of things that go together to identify some people as forming a definable social group.
Not all feminists returned to it.
I think the correct 3rd wave attitude is that shaving body hair and appearing femme is a legitimate choice if the woman finds it empowering.
In practice this seems to mean that 3rd wave feminist women shave their legs if they have a job interview or a date that they think would care, and don't bother to otherwise. I also suspect that this is how things work out in practice for women who are not 3rd wave feminists.
Not all feminists returned to it.
I think the correct 3rd wave attitude is that shaving body hair and appearing femme is a legitimate choice if the woman finds it empowering.
In practice this seems to mean that 3rd wave feminist women shave their legs if they have a job interview or a date that they think would care, and don't bother to otherwise. I also suspect that this is how things work out in practice for women who are not 3rd wave feminists.
I'm pretty sure Megan and Josh are hippies only in the super-expansive culture-warrish sense (here appropriated jokingly, or so I hope) by which the entire subpopulation characterized in panel 3 of this comic is hippies.
191: It's fascinating that America's actual elite is invisible to the maker of that comic.
lots of people who aren't geeks saw the Avengers
Sure. But there are geeks, and lots of them did see the Avengers. You don't pick them out of the crowd by asking "Who saw the Avengers?" But if that's your first question, and your second is "Who saw all the movies leading up to it?", and your third is "In your opinion, what are the differences between the DC and Marvel universes that affect how the movies made from them turn out" and "Can you give me some alternative storylines from the comics that you think might have improved the Avengers" or something like that, you're going to find the comic-book geeks. There's not a geek/non-geek bright line there, but if you tag enough signifiers, you're a geeky kind of person.
Same with being hippieish -- buying bulk food doesn't make you a hippie, but if you do, and you have a lot of concern over environmental issues and impact, and you either have an interest in Eastern religions/mysticism on some level or enough of your friends do that you're fairly familiar with it, and you garden under difficult circumstances, and and and and and, there's a definable group of people you look to be a member of.
145: My aunt was a hippie. She and her boyfriend had a flower farm and sold dried flowers in the 70's, but she never gave anything away to anyone. As she's gotten older (mostly after her mother died) she's gotten more frugal, but I think of that more as her Yankee roots resurfacing.
I don't know how I managed to let my iPhone do that autocorrect.
I also suspect that this is how things work out in practice for women who are not 3rd wave feminists.
Which is an enormous and freeing change from having to be shaved, made up, and hosed whenever awake in order not to feel worthless.
Megan and Josh are hippies only in the super-expansive culture-warrish sense (here appropriated jokingly, or so I hope)
Why 'so I hope'? That is, what would be bad if Megan were serious in calling herself and her friends 'granola'?
have to not shave your legs/armpits, and/or procure food from a coop, i.e. bulk beans and grains and dried fruits, and/or make your own granola and hummus and pesto and such, and/or either grow your own food or make your own preserves or have a compost pile, or all of the above. You should be growing fresh herbs and/or have hanging bunches of drying herbs, like mint (for making tea).
I've never thought of any unfogged person I've met as being a hippy or even close. I'm certainly not. I don't buy anything in bulk (where would I put it), have never tried drying herbs and have failed at growing them, never grown my own food, never had a compost pile. I do make pesto, and possibly such, but that's about it.
Semi OT- The French retail food experience: so, so overrated. Currently in affluent French suburbia and the supermarkets suck, the little food shops have been mostly driven out by strip malls that make the worst US endless strip mall suburbs look like works of art, and there are no genuine farmers' markets. Both the American and French food scenes have been revolutionized over the past thirty years.
But there are geeks, and lots of them did see the Avengers. You don't pick them out of the crowd by asking "Who saw the Avengers?" But if that's your first question, and your second is "Who saw all the movies leading up to it?", and your third is "In your opinion, what are the differences between the DC and Marvel universes that affect how the movies made from them turn out" and "Can you give me some alternative storylines from the comics that you think might have improved the Avengers" or something like that, you're going to find the comic-book geeks. There's not a geek/non-geek bright line there, but if you tag enough signifiers, you're a geeky kind of person.
This one is even more ridiculous. Your precision subculture targeting would pick up the group "most mainstream teenage boys, i.e. the audience for one of the most mainstream films of the year."
Oh, it's shopping out of bulk bins, ie taking exactly what you need and leaving behind the packaging (and then putting it in pretty jars, if you're me), not like, Costco shopping, that's meant by bulk beans and grains.
Or at least, that's what I assumed.
Except for the Rainbow Family, it was officially over by October 6, 1967.
shaved, made up, and hosed
This phrasing made me think immediately of Silence of the Lambs.
Your precision subculture targeting would pick up the group "most mainstream teenage boys,
And it would totally miss the group that would respond to the question "What alternative tropes and plot elements from other parts of Whedon's oeuvre would have improved the movie without alienating the mainstream audience."
Teraz, I met Parsimon at unfoggeDCon 2, and I think she qualifies.
I just hung out a load of laundry, on a brilliantly designed line installed by my 97-year-old landlords before line-drying was illicit anywhere. Not hippie. Also switched out some more of the weekly quart of AA batteries in the renter's-delight rolling solar recharger; nerd hippie. Did not get it together early enough to cook beans in the solar oven; totally hippie, except they would have been Rancho Gordo beans, so SWPL instead?
Late thought; we've been ruling some stuff out of hippiedom specifically because it's successful (profitable, delicious, etc.). But that's ceding the powers of Spam too much advantage in the culture wars.
I daren't like a thing that might be hippie. I'll
Pick off the winners and rename them SWPL.
198.last: Huh. A friend of mine lives in France (not far from Ge/ne/va) and reports precisely the opposite experience.
Like I said, hippies find me conventional, but I've lived in (and am directly working on re-creating) communal housing and haven't eaten a tomato out of seaon since 1994 (overwhelmingly, but not absolutely). Don't own a car. Keep bees. I am definitely part of a subculture, and pretty neutral about whether you call that subculture "hippy" or "granola".
Clew, solar cooker is creeping up my list of switchovers. I use a crockpot these days and since I'm planning an overnight soak and a daylong cook anyway, why am I do this with (entirely renewable, cause I pay extra) electric power?
Please tell me how easy it is...
(Although today is freakishly cold here. In the 70s.)
I wouldn't describe myself as terribly hippie-ish, but I do very much like the flaxseed-and-hemp granola I buy from the bulk bins at the co-op. I don't make the yogurt myself from milk from a cow I've met, so there's always that to look at as a distinguishing factor.
199: "Most mainstream teenage boys" would not be able to answer the third question... although the geeky ones, maybe.
199: I don't understand your point. Is it (a) there's no such thing as a comic-book geek; (b) you wouldn't find more comic-book geeks in the audience for the Avengers than by say, grabbing random people from the supermarket; (c) the specific questions I listed in 193 would be insufficient to accurately identify the real geeks; or (d) something else I've completely missed?
If it's (c), guilty. I don't have the shibboleths at my fingertips, and was gesturing at the kind of questions that would find the geeks, rather than intending to accurately devise a geek-screen.
Solar cooker is freakishly easy in foggy cool *Berkeley* five months of the year, although we have one of the nicest movable ones (steel reflector, huge glass lidded outer bowl, matching black-enameled steel inner bowl). We've baked bread with a good crust in it.
The cardboard-tinfoil-ovenbag ones are fairly cheap and fine to practice with. We have at least one spare reflector, if you're around Berkeley way ever and want to pick it up.
Megan, I have a solar cooker, and it is SO AWESOME. It works really really well for anything that you would cook in a crockpot (beans, stews, soups, etc.). But it's better than a crockpot, because it doesn't add any heat to your house, and in LA (or probably Sacramento) in the summertime, even a fractional degree of added heat can be intolerable.
Why 'so I hope'? That is, what would be bad if Megan were serious in calling herself and her friends 'granola'?
That was in reference to other people calling them hippies, not whatever they might choose to call themselves.
I wouldn't mind getting a good one, if I knew I would use it often and for years to come. Because seriously, I live in Sacramento and make beans at least a couple times a week.
Mine has a reflector (basically, a folded panel of cardboard covered with aluminum), but I've never had to use it. Then again, I've never baked bread -- possibly the reflector would be necessary to get the oven hot enough to develop a crust.
I don't think it's interpreted as a hostile descriptor by people who are (pace Halford) reasonably close to the sort of person described by it.
I'll go searching, but do you have brand recommendations?
(Also, and this is a funny problem to have, there is almost no piece of my lot that gets direct sun for long. I mean, people planted trees to get exactly that effect. I am not sure where I could put a solar cooker at my house.)
the specific questions I listed in 193 would be insufficient to accurately identify the real geeks
This. There's probably some identifiable subset of people we'd recognize as really being hippies -- maybe the Rainbow Family. But so many of the markers people claim as representing purported hippiedom are so incredibly widespread, even in combination, that the term has become pretty much meaningless.
People assume I'm very hippie. Like, the doctor assumed I'd want a delayed vaccination schedule and just out of the blue started discussing possibilities with me. (I did not want one.) I've had several people comment after they get to know me that I'm not as hardcore as they thought I'd be. I'm not exactly sure what I do that sends such strong signals.
217: I suppose I can assume good faith. The imprecision still bugs me.
219: Seriously, what's Megan? She's not a member of the Rainbow Family. Anything hippieish she mentioned in 207 is something that, individually, any UMC person might do. But she thinks she's a member of a subculture ("granola" or whatever). Is she just deluded, there's no such subculture, or if that's not your claim, what is?
220: That is so weird. It seems like they're confused? Nose piercing + retro-ish clothes = hippie?
Is she just deluded, there's no such subculture
Basically, yes, for any meaningful definition of "subculture." Or one that means something beyond "educated, lefty-ish, environmentalist urban professional."
220: I bet in your case it's that you come off as no-nonsense feminist in a way that's more unusual in Texas than it might be someplace else. Feminist + mother is one of the things that signifies hippieishness to a lot of people.
224: You've probably got a lot of lawyer friends who are educated lefty environmentalist professionals. How many of them do you think keep bees, refuse to eat out-of-season produce on principle, would consider using a solar cooker, don't own a car, and and and? I disagree that there's no cultural distinction there.
People have said/thought I'm a hippie. People have said/thought I'm a Bolshevik. People are (frequently) morons.
More charitably, a bunch of terms have been so drained of meaning, people don't hardly know what to think.
At least no one has ever called me a geek. To my face.
218. This is the one I have. It's fairly sturdy, and I've had it for a couple of years now. I use it constantly during the summers (not this summer, b/c I'm not in LA), and it's holding up well.
223: It is weird! My other theory is that said something that I thought was mild, but was interpreted as judgmentally liberal early on, and that (in combination with wannabe-hipster ill-fitting clothes) registers as hippie?
People have said/thought I'm a Bolshevik.
Said to my father in a bar in Queens sometime around 1962: "Look, [Breath] the only reason anyone talks to a Communist like you is that you can play ball."
I assumed we got the nice one from Solar Cookers International, but they're only showing the cardboard ones. There's no branding at all on the steel one -- musta been made by some hippies. (Very possibly made by and for African refugee camps.)
Can't help you with the shade problem! You need to rotate a reflector, so moving it with the sun isn't much added trouble if you're doing it by hand. Doesn't help much if you work elsewhere.
211: My point was just that the heuristic used to identify hippies is about as precise as one that purported to identify comic book geeks by asking who saw the Avengers (or even "who saw the other giant blockbusters that lead up to it"rule of thumb: makes billions of dollars?probably not a subculture.)
Things that used to be hippieish are now pretty mainstream, and almost everything on that list I see as pretty SWPL. No one would think of me as a hippie and I've jammed my own jam and refinished furniture and bought bulk food and I can make vegan cupcakes.
Or what 25/26 said. Although the phenomenon pre-dates having kids.
227 -- a lot of them? I guess I don't know anyone besides Megan who keeps bees, that sounds time consuming and is illegal here. The managing partner of my corporate law firm has a solar cooker and likes in-season produce, and another partner bikes everywhere.
233: Or maybe we're all nerds and hippies now. BWAHAHAHAHA!
Well, I did really like the Avengers and then I went home and had some jam, so, maybe!
Of course there are identifiable hippies. Dredlocks, patchouli, men who wear skirts, birks, women not wearing a bra, that sort of thing. Maybe it's just a set of fashion choices and not an outright subculture, but of course they exist.
235: The point was how many people do you know who tag a lot of things along those lines, not one or two. Any individual thing, not a bright-line rule. When you amass enough signifiers, you're looking at a member of a subculture.
Aha! Our nice one is a HotPot, distribution somewhat shaky. But, babe, looka the parabolics.
I've taught some stereotypical nerd dudes to cook using a pressure cooker ("It can explode! It's cool!"). Big parabolics have a serious risk of setting the neighbor's roof on fire.
233: Would it be fair to say that you agree that geeks exist, just that identifying geeks with "Anyone who saw the Avengers" is oversimplified? And similarly that you agree that there are people who can reasonably be described as hippieish/crunchy/granola/pick whatever word you like, and are just arguing that "the heuristic used to identify" them (not sure by whom) is oversimplified?
I don't really disagree with 238, but the term gets used in so many different ways to identify people who are not those guys. I'll give you "anyone who looks like they could plausibly be in the Rainbow People is a hippie" but that's not how the word gets tossed around.
239: Presumably Amazon could do the principal components analysis.
I have not gotten *any* real work done today. Enablers.
I'm comfortable calling someone with a professional career who goes to work every day on time granola based on the lifestyle choices Megan and others have made. Hippie? Nope.
Knut yelling at waves again, I guess.
I would totally grant that that subculture isn't the same as the people who dress like heebie-geebie describes. I do think my subculture is their descendants, though. (My naked vegetarian co-op in college still had the signs up from the previous people living there, One World Family.) Sure, "hippy" is a sloppy and overused term. But I'm also distinct from UMC folks who have cars and eat bananas.
I think 242 means that I agree with Halford then. To me, a hippie has to dress the part. Otherwise it's just a bunch of sensible, healthy, admirable lifestyle choices.
It's that the term gets used in so many different ways, and includes a set of purported signifiers that are so common and diffuse that, as I said originally, I have no fucking idea what people mean by a "hippy" these days.
(My wife and I were last seriously referred to as "hippies" in February 2012, btw.)
248: You should have a sign outside your house with a tear-away counter that says "N Days Without A Hippie Name-Calling".
241: I'm honestly not sure. I agree that there's no bright line. But if you tell me someone is a hippie, I'm not going to know what you mean unless I know more about you. And if you tell me someone is really into canning, restoring vintage furniture, biking, and herbal tea that's compatible with them being a lot of different ways. Most of it is that I think the term doesn't mean much (hence the arugula comparison) as it might have forty years ago.
Halford, I'd be really surprised if you have no fucking idea. I bet you have a vague outline.
If I described an acquaintance as a hippy, would expect the acquaintance to:
Drive an SUV or a Prius?
Go off-roading or go hiking?
Go on vacation at Disneyland or to Costa Rica for some eco-tour?
Sure, any of those could be a one-off. But there is a culture there, and you know what it means, even if SWPL people also do those things and they don't wear the clothes.
You know what it means, at least in broad outline.
I could assume that you weren't referring to some people. But I'm not at all sure who would be included. Eg are we talking about all people who are more likely to drive a Prius than an SUV, go hiking, and prefer Costa Rica to Disneyland? Because you've just picked out plausible characteristics of pretty much all younger UMC leftish professional types (if you don't believe me, check out OK Cupid sometime).
251 -- Prius? Costa Rica? Hippies don't have vacations, surely.
OK, if you make kombucha, you are a hippy.
That shit freaks me out. I'm sure it tastes fine, I have nothing against fungus generally, and all that. But something about the process gives me the collywobbles.
Here's a nerd-hippie-comment-moderation question for the lawyers (BLOG IMPLOSION): is this likely to backfire?
all younger UMC leftish professional types
Hey now. You're starting to narrow the field (down to where there is a great deal of overlap). Before you were holding out for all of UMC (comment 137).
Maybe all it means is younger, UMC leftist types, but you can guess that they're likely to buy bulk food and hang clothes on the line, and live out some of the ideals of the 60's hippies. This descriptor is not so empty as you claim.
Maybe besides "granola" you could call these folks "green".
Couldn't tell you without really chewing through the text of the proposed statute for a while, and even then I wouldn't be confident before seeing it operate. I'm not clear exactly what would be the difference about the motion to dismiss in a SLAPP case as opposed to the current motion to dismiss standard, for example.
OK, if you make kombucha, you are a hippy.
Ha, I just ten minutes ago was looking at instructions for making kombucha and thinking for the first time that I maybe should try it. Homemade yogurt, ginger ale, and sauerkraut haven't killed me! And yet, I am not a hippie, though I also buy food from the bulk bins and grow my own herbs. Including chamomile. Maybe there's some equation where the hippie characteristics are cancelled out by every bicycle owned past the first one.
256: Could it be the fact that they call the mushroom a MOTHER?
But sourdough makers have mothers, too. You can also call the grody thing in kombucha a SCOBY. (Symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, of course.)
Maybe there's some equation where the hippie characteristics are cancelled out by every bicycle owned past the first one.
Nice, that does sound about right!
I am currently drying some herbs myself. But I can cancel that out with my Apple products.
I'm increasingly convinced that `...but not a hippie' is a tactical error like `...but not a feminist'. Trying the alternative: Fuck yeah I'm a hippie, because on eight points out of ten the hippies turn out to have been right.
(Still not convinced by patchouli and optimism.)
257 -- I know an enormous amount about (the California) anti-SLAPP law and work with it almost every day, both bringing and defending against such motions. Since I do so, I'm not super interested in wasting time discussing it here, but, based on the California experience, I doubt an anti-SLAPP law would be tremendously helpful in discouraging meritless claims. Bringing an anti-SLAPP motion is itself time-consuming and expensive and uncertain of victory, and that law is definitely not a panacea for people without a lot of money threatened with meritless suits (it has other important uses, but it hasn't really succeeded in discouraging harassment suits).
The better solution for discouraging meritless claims would be for Courts to get stricter about imposing Rule 11 sanctions.
It seems to be a California thing, mostly, so I don't have much of an opinion on it. I don't like fee shifting, much, because the fee issue can quickly overtake the merits in looking at settlement value for broad categories of cases.
It also seems to me that a better way to go than a federal statute might be an amendment to Rule 12 making more explicit the ability to raise legal privilege as a defense at the outset -- notwithstanding/not taking as true the allegations of the complaint. IME, it's a lot easier to get a Rule 12 motion granted in federal court than in most state courts, even those that have the exact same wording for their versions of Rule 12. This might be the most important reason that California and Massachusetts needed the statutes. (According to Wick, a 2009 survey found about 1,700 anti-SLAPP filings, of which nearly 1400 were in California, and half the rest in Mass.)
I'm not sure, though, if the EFF is trying to have a preemptive federal statute: a case filed in Montana state court could be dismissed by a federally based anti-slapp motion, or maybe even removal of the case. That's a big deal, in either case, and the unintended consequences have to be thought through.
"Harassing," that is. "Harassment" suits are something else.
264: If I've been sounding heated about this, I think it's because I agree with you here. You don't have to be a hippie just because you buy bulk foods. But there's something that seems misguided to me about erasing the fact that lots of things that just seem like sensible lifestyle decisions are traceable to a hippie subculture sensiblity.
To be clear, I wouldn't be upset about being a hippie. I just don't think anyone who knows me would classify me thus.
If you won't accept October 6, 1967, surely you'll accept the 38th of Cunegonda.
269: Oh, certainly -- that's around where I am. No one would call me a hippie, but I certainly do a lot of hippie-derived stuff, and I generally kind of like the subculture.
I was about to say exactly 255. That seemed to capture the subset of my former housemates who I'd describe as pretty hippy.
251 -- Prius? Costa Rica? Hippies don't have vacations, surely.
I find myself thinking about some of John Hartford's songs about hippies (back in the day).
One day about twenty-five years from now, / When we've all grown old from a-wondering how, / Oh we'll all sit down at the city dump, / And talk about the Goodle Days. / Oh you'll pass the joint and I'll pass the wine, / And anything good from a-down the line. / A lot of good things went down one time, / Back in the Goodle Days.
I'm also not sure I'd classify people who do hippie-associated things but do them completely from self-interest as hippies. This is why SWPL is such a useful H_0. But wait, that also rules out a lot of universally recognized hippies who were only in it for the sex, drugs and prog rock (or whichever). Hm. Classifiers are hard.
Thanks for the law talk, lawyers. My confusion is on a higher plane.
Off to pick up a free-range, never-frozen, heritage-breed, CSA chicken!
I think one key difference between SWPL and hippie is how fully you participate in consumer culture. SWPL stuff is bought new and hippie stuff is used or homemade.
No one would call me a hippie, but I certainly do a lot of hippie-derived stuff, and I generally kind of like the subculture.
I think I've said before that my parents are an interesting example of people who were and have been on the very square and conservative edge of the counter-culture for a long time.
One one hand they helped found and run an adult folk music camp, it's hard to get more hippie than that. On the other hand they had their first kid relatively young, got married and have lead a responsible and respectable life. They have friend who have done things like raise goats or make their own clothing, but they don't do that much of that (not quite true: my mom has done pottery, beekeeping, and gardening -- all pretty seriously)
I feel much farther removed from any real counter-culture than them.
I was apparently raised a hippie and didn't even know it! Portland OR, bulk foods, recycling, farmer's coops, homemade granola/muesli/pesto/jam, compost, not using the dryer in the summer, VW Bug, etc. etc. By all accounts I look pretty square though, so no one has ever called me a hippy.
Growing up, shaving body hair always seemed optional, and I assumed that most young professional women would have armpit hair. I didn't even realize you could shave anything besides your armpits or legs until I was in college. I did start shaving legs and armpits in high school. I pretty much keep my armpits always shaved, and shave my legs sporadically, but since I have blonde leg hair it doesn't really show. I don't know if not shaving was ever widespread, even in the 1970s, so I don't think it had to "come back" into fashion?
Oh, also!
With real hippies, shouldn't there be significant drug use?
One one hand they helped found and run an adult folk music camp, it's hard to get more hippie than that.
I can think of several ways offhand. Counterculture, I'll grant. But I continue to think "hippie" ought to refer to a more specific subculture.
I am perturbed by how the issue of definitions riles me up, though.
Why can't we all just get along? Why does Megan or Blume need a subculture to be slotted into?
I think moderate pot use and occasional shrooms is what I'd peg as crunchy. I know LSD is classic for hippies, but it's also a synthetic chemical. Bonus points for peyote or any other quasi-religious drug use.
So, upon reflection, maybe I was more of a hippie than I thought. When I was young one goal in life was to be a folksinger. I used to play an air acoustic guitar and sing "Blowing in the Wind" in my room as practice. My parents had this song book which was a combination of 60s folk songs and religious music, and it was compiled by someone named something like Sven Svensson and published by a Lutheran press. We used to sing out of it a lot on camping or car trips. I also learned a lot of old war protest songs from my German godfather. For years, I assumed Vietnam war protest songs had been written by either Northern Europeans and/or Lutherans.
On the other hand, my mother didn't call herself a womyn, didn't henna her hair or wear crystals, and wasn't either Wiccan or a lesbian, so she seemed pretty mainstream to me.
As I see it the problem with real-life hippies in America today is there is no rural place to live that does not have a reactionary right-wing populace, except certain college towns. Therefore people who look and think like hippies either live in cities, or engage in actual rural activities by forming self-sufficent communities / cults.
Fuck yeah I'm a hippie, because on eight points out of ten the hippies turn out to have been right.
Earth shoes? Peter, Paul & Mary? Macrobiotic food? Alienating the working class? Sha Na Na? Phish? Drum circles?
Note: My previous comment does not apply to California.
218: what about on a flagpole or elevated platform of some kind?
282: The U.S. is a huge country. If "real-life hippies" wanted to live in a rural place away from a reactionary right-wing populace they could find a place. Many "hippie" rural communes were founded in the 60s and 70s. Some still exist. But most "real-life hippies" probably just don't want to take it that far.
282: I think Ashland, OR sort of qualifies. The area around it is very conservative, but right in the town there are a lot of lefty, hippyesque types. It's pretty expensive to live there now because of the Shakespeare festival---which means that many people who might want to live an 'authentic' hippy life are priced out.
284: There are reactionary right-wingers in rural California too, Ned.
I can think of several ways offhand. Counterculture, I'll grant. But I continue to think "hippie" ought to refer to a more specific subculture.
I think this is exactly right and may get to some of the tension that Halford is feeling (and clew in her reference to "bobos") that none of these markers are particularly counterculture anymore and hippies were clearly a part of (and sub-set as you point out) of that counterculture.
Depending on your perspective that's either because the counterculture has been co-opted or because it was able to many of its positions mainstream (and probably some combination of the two). Hence the problem of coming up with a word that describes people who take a particularly intense interest in a set of beliefs/behaviors which are otherwise relatively common among young, lefty, educated types.
My parents were hippies, and I was brought up somewhat within that culture. Long hair, vegan, hippy clothes, pacifism (state pacifism, not interpersonal pacifism), left wing politics, etc. I don't think I could easily define it in terms of some set of necessary and sufficient conditions, though. Complicated by issues of social class, time (70s so lots of hippy tropes were fairly mainstream), and geography (central Scotland, not some west US rural idyll).
Yeah I think 282 is nonsense. There are tons of rural areas that have arguably hippyish (god damn that term again, this is what is causing the problem) folks living in them. For example, people growing organic produce or living off the land or whatever.
I dated a guy who lived in Arcata, in Humboldt county, and that is one damn hippie-ish place. Everyone I met supported themselves growing pot and re-invented themselves as artists of various kinds. What killed me was how the days just dragged by. "Let's go to the store!" ends up being two days later. It just took days to accomplish any small task. It was a very weird scene.
287: And they all have whooping cough!
I'm going to maintain that hippie ought to be reserved for those that dress the part, and that green/lefty be used for those who live the lifestyle but look mainstream.
292: never go to my dad's house. going to the post office to pick up the mail is like a fucking multi-day journey through a treacherous mountain pass, and is often abandoned at the slightest pretext, involving keen peering at the eastern sky. god forbid we should have to drive the 30 minutes to savannah. you might think that not smoking those three huge joints before noon would help, but you'd be right. we do get out on the river every day and see bald eagles and dolphins and beautiful birds. just don't...need anything from the store. ever.
OMG but grocery shopping while extremely baked is awesome.
I know, but you know how I can't handle movies or live music? Sitting around for three days while stoned people debate heading to the grocery store ends up making me go crazy. Can't we at least take a walk? Not anytime soon, but we can start discussing it!
293: I didn't even want to get in to how much I hate their anti-vaccine ways. Not really communitarian-minded people.
This thread became very long when I wasn't looking.
275 is absolutely true.
276: On the other hand they had their first kid relatively young, got married and have lead a responsible and respectable life.
There's nothing un-hippie about that at all. Whence the idea that seems to be floating around that hippies are irresponsible? I don't know, but it's unfounded.
294: hippie ought to be reserved for those that dress the part
Possibly. But it's those who, dammit. Or damnit.
Whence the idea that seems to be floating around that hippies are irresponsible?
I don't think that's new (see 273) but, you're right, let's just say that by most standards of the sixties/early-seventies my parents were pretty square and conservative. They were just also counterculture in meaningful ways.
302: If you can't be a ham and do Hamlet, she will not give a damn or a damlet.
283: Excellent after a night of dancing; irrelevant; looks tasty, low-input and reasonably healthy (advocated by nutcases, what isn't?); okay, seven out of ten; what? the doowop cover band? How is that hippie?; irrelevant; and I'm in favor of participatory entertainment even when it's not my taste.
Even what we now call classical culture didn't amend the 20th century, after all. Music never matters as much as we feel it must.
what? the doowop cover band? How is that hippie?
Probably in reference to their big breakthrough coming when they preceded Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Fun fact: Sha Na Na founder is now a Linguistics prof at Hofstra.
Huh. But, you know, I can dance to it, works for me.
On the discussion of that word, the only folks remotely in my circle who I would really feel comfortable calling hippies these days (or neo-hippies) are one set of my youngest kid's friends and their families. Almost all live in rural areas (Appalachian) and tend to have very modest incomes (a few have jobs at small rural colleges). Common themes are arts and crafts, organic/home farming/gardening, and a fairly explicit rejection of "mainstream" llfestyles.
Know a lot of urban folks who have the "hippie-ish"/SWPL (context is everything) attributes discussed above and would be called a "hippie" by, say, Romney voters.
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I just indulged in some straight-up Nosflovian little bitchery in response to a FB friend posting a James Taranto piece about "you didn't build that" gate.
Included references to question-begging and acoustic terminology, and the exact same phrasing Neb used with me re an article that did not meet his standards: "But Matt, that is a terrible argument."
It was gratifying.
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acoustic terminology
by which I mean, he said the argument was "resonating" and I said that I thought the more correct word was "amplified."
the whole exchange will probably just confirm for his friends that liberals are snobs. and no one will understand it. but I entertained myself, and that's more important than finishing this RFP response.
also he's a tobacco lobbyist in Switzerland, so this is not a relationship I'm too invested in.
292: Shades of Warren Ellis imitating Alan Moore: "Warren ... I have changed ... from one meal ... and fifty spliffs a day ... to three meals ... and thirty spliffs a day ... and ... I feel ... positively ... energized...."
||Why is hiking downhill so much more tiring then hiking uphill?>|
292: Nelson, B.C. and Arcata should have a hippie-off.
It's called opportunity cost. One way to get down the hill would be sledding, which would be tons of fun. Not only are you expending effort hiking, you're giving up the chance to descend in other ways.
2: Don't worry, Natilo, you aren't the only guy in the world who hasn't. Well, I guess it might depend on how specific you want to be, but still, I'm pretty sure.
I'm also pretty sure I've never had rutabagas, despite how interesting the name sounds, or parsnips, and mmmaybe turnips but I wouldn't swear to it. I'm curious.
Hangover cures: a lazy morning seems to do it. I like a salty, fatty, protein-heavy breakfast if have the time for it whether hung over or not. If I'm hung and don't have the time for that, ugh, I try to avoid getting in that situation in the first place. One time it happened relatively recently, I just took tylenol, drank a lot of water, and suffered in silence for a couple hours. Definitely wish I hadn't biked to work that morning, though. The bumpy street didn't help.
"Hippy": I'd agree that the term is too vague. I'd almost use it as restrictively as alluded to in 188 ("Someone who's still following the Dead because they've been too continuously stoned to figure out Jerry died"). I say "almost" because that's unrealistic, but off the top of my head I'd say drugs and tie-die and a laid-back, bohemian attitude and an appreciation for nontraditional mysticism are necessary and probably not sufficient conditions. All that and more describes a friend of mine and I would indeed call her a hippie (ironically, she's a manager in a branch of DHS), so it's not an an empty set even today, but it requires more than just composting.
Technophobia also seems to be part of it. Or many "phobia" is putting it too strongly, but some degree of averseness. There are plenty of people in Vermont who call themselves artists, get half their calories from their gardens, and start wearing sandals in April. (Hyperbole.) The ones with blogs seem much less like hippies to me.
199
Your precision subculture targeting would pick up the group "most mainstream teenage boys, i.e. the audience for one of the most mainstream films of the year."
Either this is ridiculous hyperbole or you have a completely different idea than me about how many teenage boys currently read comics.
Whence the idea that seems to be floating around that hippies are irresponsible? I don't know, but it's unfounded.
Hunter Thompson (who may or may not be full of shit) talks about Haight-Ashbury flooding with hippies in the late 60's, not working enough to feed themselves and prompting aid-collectives like the Diggers' soup kitchens and some calls for moving out to rural communes.
re: 315
The nontraditional mysticism wasn't a part of the hippiedom of anyone I knew as a kid [my parents and their friends], but perhaps they were atypical? Nor was tie-die. And yet, I'd describe them as pretty much classic mainstream 60s/70s hippies, albeit poor and working class.
316: Also a main theme of the title essay in Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem".
Fun fact: Sha Na Na founder is now a Linguistics prof at Hofstra.
Interesting. Their original bassist is a lit prof at Texas Tech.
I think they were all at Columbia together.
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I just realized a task I was trying to complete was much more difficult than I expected, until I found a nifty Python module to do it, written by some sort of cousin of alameida, judging by his hifalutin name.
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Skipping most of the thread:
I also haven't had as many casual encounters as I probably should have.
Me neither. Although this gets back to the "raised during AIDS" thing. I've mentioned the girl in Brasilia who wanted to take me back to her place, but I was just terrified.
it's ok jroth, she was probably going to drug you and steal your kidney.
