that guy writes pretty well. freudenschade.
I can't stand his writing, actually. So many one-sentence paragraphs in so many interminable posts. Very, very dull--a prime candidate for a "shorter" series.
Yeah, I don't get this one either. He goes on at length to say there are types, and AA is typical in a certain way, but he doesn't then illuminate the type with so much as "crone".
Also, his lede anecdote is too long.
Didn't find it so illuminating, either. Maybe you have to have read the other post of his about Farrah Fawcett? Because I find that Farrah Fawcett clarifies everything.
I have a prejudice against anyone who says, "I'm a storyteller."
JL, I'd enjoy reading a shorter Lance Mannion.
Actually, I'd enjoy writing a shorter Lance Mannion. But every time I try it just feels like I'm writing against type.
Typing against type?
Armsmasher, a crone is an archetype not a type. But I tried to take care of that in my post today, which is of course too long and full of lots of short paragraphs. Sorry.
Apostropher, thanks for the link and the compliment.
That post was awesome. You guys are biased against professional writers. As a professional writer, rather than a technical writer (or "lawyer") you learn to write nine-word paragraphs and you realize that it actually gets your point across more clearly than anything else.
The BatSignal works again!
Let's experiment: that Scarlett Johanssen sure can act.
It's nothing personal, Lance, just a style preference. 8 may be right on the point of clarity, but it slows things down too much for me, especially given the length of the posts. I should note that my own writing sucks ass.
9: I don't think Scarlett Johanssen watches her referral log.
Hello? . . . Sorry, I think you dialed the wrong number. . . OK. 'Bye.
Not to start this again--and maybe this wasn't actually Lance's point--but what struck me is that there might actually exist in the world individuals who meet the definition of the term "old crone," and that being the case, Ann Althouse might be one of those people. That is, sure, it's a gendered term, and it's negative, but it might also be accurate in some cases. Such as this one.
Just as the term "lecherous codger" might be accurate in some cases. Mine, probably in fifty years or so.
Partly, what ogged was doing below was to turn the sexist tables on Althouse in ironical fashion. But partly too, an old woman overly concerned with the sexuality of younger women--what is the term to describe that woman other than "crone"? It's not the pleasantest of terms, but neither is it profane, nor IMO, particularly more offensive than the term "lecherous codger." I think we should be allowed to use both terms where they apply.
So now, vampire brigade, or whatever name you've chosen, attack. Or tell me you don't respect my opinion, or what have you.
Scarlett Johanssen watches her referral log.
There's no need to be obscene, JL.
You know, text, it's possible, but a person can waste a lot of his description-of-the-world-as-it-is capital on silly sexist baiting of people. My suggestion is, build up the capital, and preserve it, for use on such occasions. (If this is in fact such an occasion.)
If your point is that ogged's behavior is often foolish, I'll not fight you there. I think, in the crone thread, a lot of the conflict arose from earlier instances of foolishness.
I guess, barring terms that are actually offensive (which maybe aren't ever truly descriptive anyhow) we ought not have to build up capital to describe the world as it is. I like words.
Also, "crone" is not the word for someone who's jealous of younger women. "Crone" means old, withered, ugly perhaps witchy in appearance. "What is she, Snow White's wicked stepmother?" is in fact, actually descriptive. Now, I don't actually think ogged intended those words to be descriptive, so this isn't even intended as a criticism of him, but that understanding of what he said doesn't work.
Well, you can describe the world as you think it is all the time, of course. Whether other people accept it as true—and, in particular, don't balk at the enforcement of stereotypes—is about their perception of where you're coming from.
yeah. "crone" does seem to describe appearance primarily. well if ogged had written "jealous old prude" my point might have been more persuasive.
Hey, I said "sour, nasty prude" on that thread, and I don't think anyone called me out except one of the Instatrolls. And since that one didn't bring pastry, it doesn't count.
On further review, two of the Instatrolls.
I'm glad that the top hits for pictures of seagulls weren't related to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, because then I would've had to beat up the Internet.
Yes, baby turtles. And pee and comity.
Whether people accept my descriptions as true remains to be seen--it probably has more to do with my ability or lack thereof to describe things in a convincing way than anything else.
Same for ogged. I'd be much more comfortable criticizing his writing for accuracy or its ability to compel than by labeling a sentence offensive, full stop.
"Sour, nasty prude" lacks the hard consonants of a properly satisfying insult. Hard c sounds people. Go forth and spread the good word you cocksucking crones.
But a lot more goes into blogging than pretty or compelling sentences. Maybe ogged's an ass for using the word "crone." But then I'd rather just insult him for it, and leave off with the rule making.
Thinking of it in terms of capital preserves the idea that you can say anything you want, doesn't it?
text, this is the lamest defense I have ever gotten.
As opposed to thinking of it in terms of good or bad writing? Maybe. There's probably some truth to the idea that we all have a certain amount of capital here, to go out on limbs from time to time, without losing all credibility.
Or we could just think of it as that you can only write tedious, long, unconvincing posts so many times before people stop reading them. Either way works, I think.
text, I said this in the other thread, but I didn't propose a rule. Not in the sense that I can control ogged and not even in the sense that I would prefer the word "crone" never to be used. I said it didn't come off well in context. I said I didn't think it was well functioning irony. I said I wouldn't use gendered insults for women in a conversation on feminism. Later I suggested I generally didn't like them, in part because they were condescending, but even that doesn't rise to the level of rule. Maybe other people proposed rules. I don't know.
Tia, if you don't like the term "rule" then can I use the term "prescriptive guideline"? This:
"I said I wouldn't use gendered insults for women in a conversation on feminism."
Looks prescriptive to me. Aside from that, was the conversation really about feminism? Do threads here ever have a single official theme? Not if I can help it.
Really, for me, this blog is about trying to write clever things, reading clever things, and occasionally having a substantive conversation in between trying to think of something funny. If this blog is also going to be, primarily, about raising the collective feminist consciousness, the result should be pretty interesting. I mean it will be. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
poop.
No, text, *I* wouldn't. Like, in my own practice.
Hey, I was happy to talk about male bonding on Entourage. And I was trying to break a certain boring pattern of talking as much as anything else.
and like ac said, if you don't want to talk about feminism, don't provoke us. you brought it on yourself. asked for it even.
I asked for it, yes. And I often do want to talk about feminism, or sometimes I do. I really do mean this should be interesting. This blog may be, more or less, about feminism for awhile. I'm still going to make cock jokes though, and point out when something sounds silly.
Tia, when you say "I wouldn't" the implication is, "and neither should you." Otherwise the following description is completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
For instance, we might be petting kitties. And I might say "I wouldn't pet that kitty over there, the one made out of fire." And the implication would be, "don't go pet the kitty made out of fire."
Which is basically what I'm doing right here.
Maybe it would be helpful to examine some less prevalent stereotypes for a change.
But I'm not making a big point here. You make prescriptions that one shouldn't use gendered terms when discussing feminism. I'll make prescritpions that we shouldn't be tedious.
So let's talk feminsim. I was going to make an Ali G joke here, but I couldn't remember the quote perfectly.
Puerto Ricans really aren't morning people.
Sikhs hide hard-boiled eggs in their turbans.
That one's true. It's in their bible-thingy.
But it's true. I once knew a plumber who, verily, knew very little of the human soul.
And Ethiopians really are good at starving.
I would think 38 would be of particular interest to Ogged.
I can't think of a German connection to an erection-having bronze. But I'm sure a case could be made based on the Biennale archives.
Czechs are the Alabamans of Europe.
This, however is false. It's the Hungarians.
36 is being proven true right at the moment.
text, actually, no, it's not. that's the implication of "I don't like that you do this." the implication of "I wouldn't do this," is that I wouldn't do it. It came up because Dr. Slack asked us what we thought of "sambo," employed by a black man for another black man, and I said I didn't think I could speak to that case, but I wouldn't do it to a woman.
Later I said, "I don't like it," but this was very late in the thread and I think the rule-making perception arose earlier. I don't generally like it. The reason I brought it up not liking it generally was because usually, if people who are mostly on the same page, are going to do something someone else expressed some personal discomfort with, normally, if they were taking in the whole context, there might, though maybe not necessarily, be a nod to that.
And it *is* what you're doing right there, and I'm glad that you recognize it. I'm engaging with you without believing that you're trying to control me, too.
Seriously, you said you didn't like what AA said. Are you trying to control her? Stifling her freedom of expression? Honestly, I think this "we should all be free" model of expression is kind of impoverished. Speech is an act, it has effects in the world and moral consequences. There are better and worse ways to speak. I am happy to be engaged on the way I do.
There used to be a proof, now lost in the mists of time, that you can't make a list of 50 stereotypes, no matter how hard you try to make each one absurd, that won't include some true ones.
which is to say, I do have prescriptive beliefs about how to talk about feminism, but no iron clad rule about "crone." I thought ogged didn't pull it off well but that's not making a rule. I said I would have done something different in his place because he didn't pull it off, IMO, in that instance.
That one about celebrities being molested as children reminds me—I remember Dr. Drew on Loveline would always ask callers with a high or squeaky voice if they'd been molested. Is that really an indicator?
Sure you could! Here is an algorithm:
1. Make your list.
2. Get someone else to make a list.
3. Remove the true ones from your list and your pal's.
4. Take the union of your lists. Are there more than fifty? Lop some off arbitrarily. Are there exactly fifty? Big win! Are there fewer than fifty? Repeat from step 2 with a new person.
Alternately, you could do it by yourself, modifying the true ones until they're false.
I don't think you understand, Ben.
I'm no genius.
True or false, I'd say that the list does offer some of the less prevalent stereotypes. Aside from the one about Puetro Ricans, I mean.
22: Speaking of seagulls and Jonathan Livingston, I was a little disappointed that all of you are so out of touch with your inner child as to miss Little Mermaid references.
Canadians do lack direction and purpose.
farah fawcett and anne althouse are insane but I think they are insane in different ways. I don't really think it makes sense to put them down as a single type.
It is somewhat of a stretch to find anne althouse jealous of the women in the photograph. Anti-clintonites just find pictures of attractive women and clinton together to be inherently hi-larious.
Sexism has its harshest impacts on the unattractive. Yet, it currently seems to be a requirement for feminist media figures and high profile feminist bloggers to be attractive. I can understand historical reasons for this, but it is still odd.
Czechs are the Alabamans of Europe.
This, however is false. It's the Hungarians.
This is all misleading - both of those countries possess great beauty and energy.
Czech Republic = North Carolina
Slovakia = South Carolina
Hungary = Georgia
Bulgaria = Alabama
Romania = Mississippi
Slovenia = Florida
Croatia = Louisiana
Serbia = Texas
Montenegro = Lubbock, Texas
Macedonia = Arkansas
Bosnia/Hercegovina = Kentucky
Albania = Cuba
Moldova = El Salvador
Tia, it's a little different, my writing that I disagreed with a woman with whom I have no contact, and your writing "I wouldn't do X," to someone with whom you correspond regularly, and was in fact doing X. Not to say you should never write "I wouldn't do X." Write away. By all means, engage in your moral act of speech as you see fitting.
Will no one spare a thought for the Roma?
That's a work of genius, Ned. I defer to you in all matters of Eastern European / Southern American state comparison.
Bulgaria is a beautiful country too, or so I'm told.
38 - I'd think #6 had some relevance to the Unfogged community.
65 - but does it possess any energy?
Canadians do lack direction and purpose.
I know some, and know of many others, who make me wish this were more true.
Odd about tree climbing: when I was a kid in the suburban part of Ottawa, there wasn't a climbable tree within miles — believe me, I looked. I found Ohio to be vastly wilder and more forested, with a much more varied ecology. Vines you could swing on, like in Tarzan movies! I camped all over the state as a teenager.
[assuming that the sexism discussion has partially moved here]
At the risk of starting trouble I'm curious what people thought of the following Q/A from Bill Simmons?
Q: I'm in a mixed fantasy league through friends here in D.C. A guy in the league comes up to me and says, "So, is your boyfriend doing your picks for you?" I am by no means a feminist, pretty neutral, but I took offense to this considering I probably have way more knowledge than this dumbass on the subject of football. I thought about bringing up this guy's total inadequacies as a softball player on our company softball team but I thought I better not totally destroy him. ... So my question, since I couldn't think of a good response at that particular time, I was wondering, given my position, what would you have said? --Gena, Washington, D.C.
SG: See, this is why girls shouldn't be allowed in fantasy football leagues. The guy wasn't being sexist -- he was simply busting your chops. This is what happens in fantasy leagues. For instance, in the draft for my West Coast league on Tuesday night, my buddy Sal took the time to Xerox my sidebar of fantasy sleepers/stayaways from last Friday's column, then hand it out to everyone else in our league so they knew who I liked. That's why God created fantasy leagues, so guys would have new and elaborate ways to make fun of one another for four months each year. . . .
Here's what you should have said, Gena: "No, I did the picks myself -- and it's just too bad we're not having a 'guys with the smallest schlongs in the room' draft, because I'd have you going in the first round." Or you could have said, "Wait, I thought this was a draft to pick the worst softball player; I have you ranked first on my board." He wouldn't have said another peep.
Look, I have no problem with girls playing fantasy football -- OK, maybe I do -- but if you're crossing the gender line for a guy's league, be prepared to hurt someone's feelings. For instance, on Tuesday night, our friend Elliott picked Fred Taylor in the sixth round. Three full rounds passed, then my friend Hench made believe he was shuffling through a magazine and said, "Good news, Elliott, I finally found the page that Fred Taylor was listed on." Killed the room. It wasn't just the sarcasm but the PATIENCE. That's what made it so fantastic. So if you want to play with the big boys, be prepared to bust some chops. That's all I can tell you.
I note both that the insult Gena asks about is gendered in a way that none of examples Simmons uses are and that I think the response works well in the column and that the Fred Taylor joke is funny and worth repeating.
To take this away from unfogged for a moment, do people think Simmons response was a good one, should he have answered it differently, or should he have just left it out of the column?
I'm too dejected about last night to answer any fantasy football questions. My game was all sewn up, with just the Jags defense left on my opponent's side. The only - only! - way I could lose would be for the defending Super Bowl champs to get shut out on Monday Night Football. And what are the odds of that happening?
In other words, screw you, Ben Roethlisberger. I may hate you forever.
I think it was a good response. I'm just beginning to be aware of how common and pervasive this behavior is, and I'm a fifty-four-year-old man. If this is what's actually going in many social interactions, among men, then those of us who haven't learned it, men and women both, need to know it.
The advice is reasonably good -- I don't think she's got a better response than to snap back, hard.
And if she can't bring herself to talk that way, because she has no interest in that game, she should at least know where it's coming from, and what is and probably is not meant.
73: The advice sucks, because
Here's what you should have said, Gena: "No, I did the picks myself -- and it's just too bad we're not having a 'guys with the smallest schlongs in the room' draft, because I'd have you going in the first round." Or you could have said, "Wait, I thought this was a draft to pick the worst softball player; I have you ranked first on my board." He wouldn't have said another peep.
are terrible comebacks. IIRC, in some prior point in the discussion, the woman points out that she's won a couple of times. In such a situation, you should always go to the grand-daddy: "Scoreboard."
OTOH, of course the proper response to Gena's coworker is a dick size joke. I'm just too pissed off at the Steelers to come up with a good one right now.
OTOH, of course the proper response to Gena's coworker is a dick size joke.
I've done that under similar circumstances (getting razzed by a fellow crew member on a sailboat I was racing on as a teenager.) He took it kinda hard.
He took it kinda hard.
Hey, if you can't play with the big kids, stay in the wading pool.
I think the mono's getting to you, Apo. He took it kind of hard ought to be the canonical call for the "ATM" response.
71: It's not so bad. You still have the Panthers.
Simmons might well be wrong. He's of course right that razzing your friends is an important part of fantasy sports, as well as many other activites. But I don't think he's right that it's normal to go after someone who's a semi-strange in your fantasy football league. Then again, if you're both in a fantasy football league with someone and play softball with them, you've been probably gone drinking together once or twice, and at that point you're close enough to take shots at each other.
Montenegro = Lubbock, Texas
If the word "Montenegro" means what I think it does, this couldn't be more wrong.
How common is it, in groups and activities where this is going on, for there to be guys who don't seem to be playing? I think I've been that guy most of my life, and it's often been accepted and tolerated. Sometimes I've been aware of it and sometimes I haven't, but I've never played.
I think the mono's getting to you, Apo.
Today's my second straight day home from work. The stuff didn't really start to kick my ass until this weekend.
the canonical call for the "ATM" response.
Seemed too easy.
You still have the Panthers.
Two more injuries and they'll be starting homeless people on the O-line.
I have almost no interest in football, but I LOVE talking trash. If that's what happens in a fantasy football league, I gotta join one.
I don't know if I'm talking to you after what you said about Rose Levy Berenbaum's pie crust.
Fantasy football is what will make you love football. I had pretty much stopped paying attention to it until the gambling and trashtalking add-ons emerged. It's probably the best thing that ever happened to the NFL, since now millions of people care about every game instead of just their home team's game.
Fantasy football is what will make you love football.
Fantasy football is D&D for the failed high-school athlete set, Apo. Fantasy basketballl, OTOH,....
It's probably the best thing that ever happened to the NFL, since now millions of people care about every game instead of just their home team's game.
This is probably true, but I avoid fantasy leagues, because I don't want my rooting, which is based now on good vs. evil, to be corrupted by other concerns.
(I'm about 65% serious about this. Should I add this kind of parenthetical to all my comments?)
Maybe only to the ones about which you're 65% serious, but if you do, you should remove the second sentence.
At Ultimate tournaments, everyone stays to watch the finals, heckle and play fantasy Ultimate. It is very odd to be representing a small portion of the crowd as you play.
LB, you mean "pie" crust.
which is based now on good vs. evil
Your own categorization of good vs. evil, or a standard one? AFAIK, there are only a couple of "good" teams and a couple of "evil" teams in the standard schema. Maybe there are a few additions every year based on personnel, but the majority of games aren't coded.
My own totally idiosyncratic and not at all consistent categorization.
89- You should attach yourself to one of those monitors that light up the different areas of the brain in use during a thought, and give us a constantly updated stream of pictures.
My own totally idiosyncratic and not at all consistent categorization.
I don't know if "total number of black players exceeds league average means 'bad'" is idiosyncratic, exactly.
83: I think it's very common. In every social group I know of, including office, there's either one person doing fantasy football type things or one person who really would rather die. Almost everyone in my office is involved in a fantasy football league, but I am not. It's just not something that interests me. (I grew up a Browns fan, so of course I hate anything joyous or good.) Nobody cares that I don't care about their fantasy football; were anyone to start caring, I would remind them that I, the gay guy who doesn't enjoy sports, won the NCAA basketball pool that he entered solely for the sake of irony.
I would say he is correct about that vibe being a big part of it. Almost everyone in my office who joined the office fantasy football league seems to have done so to give each other excuses to talk shit.
Nice try, Timbot, but you know that I hate whitey more than I hate blackie.
What lobe does the kidding?
With this crowd, probably the hypothalamus.
98: This discussion reminds me: watch the first thirty seconds of this Vick highlight clip. I don't follow football, so I don't know if that's totally normal, but it looks unreal.
I think you should change the mouseover text to read "approximately 65% bullshit." That would make everyone happy.
I'm kind of fond of the current mouseover text.
it looks unreal
It is unreal, which is to say, a special effect in a commercial.
I'm more or less willing to believe any physical claims made about Michael Vick. (A commercial? Really?)
A commercial? Really?
Yeah, by the same people, I think, who did the one with LeBron sinking 70 foot rainbow fallaways.
104: Vick has some sick physical abilities, including crazy arm strength, but he's really a mediocre passer. The only two seasons his completion rate was higher than 55% (56.4 and 55.3), his TD-to-INT ratios were 14-12 and 15-13. You can, however, hide a multitude of sins when you canrun faster than everybody else on the field.
Did you know he throws with his left hand, but writes with his right hand?
97: My impression too. "Giving people shit" is revolting to me: I, as you put it, "would rather die." And as your comment also suggests, the pattern of who does and who doesn't is thought by most people to be highly gendered, including gay/straight as well as man/woman, although we can also see here that there are women who like it.
What I wonder is whether it is easier for men who despise it like you and me to get along than it is for women who do, in an environment where women are scarce. I would guess yes.
fantasy football questions
You ALL have small schlongs, and Ogged's mama did your picks for you. My team's been slaying!
107 -- I've tend to avoid "talking shit" but occasional exceptions are made for close friends. I've also never participated in fantasy football, and the fantasy basketball leagues I've been in have been almost devoid of entertaining trash talking.
Proof, as always, that YMMV.
Actually, part of what has interested me about these various descriptions of sexism is that my communication style contains a number of qualities that are heavily coded as male, but also omits some traits (like the generalized trash talking).
So, L, do you play fantasy basketball . . .
I stop paying attention to basketball when the players graduate or drop out. There's no Kansas City or New Orleans team to cheer for, and no inherited preferences. I can't bring myself to pay attention to sports in which I don't care about the outcome, and I'm not going to just arbitrarily choose a team to be mine. So anything I happen to know about NBA players is dated and pretty irrelevant.
On the other hand, it turns out I'm almost certainly some kind of fantasy sports messiah. So I should probably look into it.
I stop paying attention to basketball when the players graduate or drop out.
Huh. The NBA only started being really interesting me once I reached the point where I'd seen 'most everybody in the league play in college.
Vick has some sick physical abilities, including crazy arm strength, but he's really a mediocre passer. The only two seasons his completion rate was higher than 55% (56.4 and 55.3), his TD-to-INT ratios were 14-12 and 15-13. You can, however, hide a multitude of sins when you canrun faster than everybody else on the field.
Yeah, but this just makes me wonder if we rate QBs correctly. He's really just playing a different position than everyone else; it doesn't make him better than the other QBs, but it makes it hard to compare him to them.
My impression too. "Giving people shit" is revolting to me: I, as you put it, "would rather die."
I give people shit for fantasy leagues. SCMT's line is a good start.
"Fantasy football is D&D for the failed high-school athlete set"
My reaction to Simmons was "The dude wrote for Jimmy Kimmel. What do you expect?" But I did notice that he turned "mixed fantasy league" into "[woman] cross[ing] the gender line for a guys' league."
I like to give people mild shit about sports, see 80, but I don't like fantasy football. I also think that the amount of shit you get to give people is affected by how well you know them (contra 81, there are people I've been out for post-sports drinks who were in no position to make Jewish jokes to me), how sensitive the subject is, whether your remark is actually funny (Simmons gets away with some stuff here),whether they're really getting pissed off, etc.
So, I think Gena probably should've come back with a good one (maybe the softball thing), and the guy might be being a jerk anyway. Depends on other circumstances, perhaps. And ogged is right about fantasy football.
107: I work in an environment (and, in my experience, a field) where women are very underrepresented. Of the three women on my team of 60 or so people, only one has ever entered into any of the sports pools or fantasy leagues, and she was too beloved and too respected for anyone to shit-talk her. For many of the guys on my team, it would be like shit-talking a much-loved aunt. Also, she mopped the floor with them, so maybe that had a hand in it.
I would say, however, that my experience and their experiences have been about even on the whole not-participating thing. There's no pressure to participate and no retribution if I/they don't participate. We all get asked, every time, if we'd like to participate, sometimes as a genuine question, sometimes as an effort at simple politeness. There seems to be a genuine effort on the parts of the participants to make sure that (a) none of us who are disinterested also feel disinvited and (b) we are left alone when we say no. Though the vast majority of them are in some league or another, there are also a few straight men on my team who don't participate and I would say they are treated no differently. On the rare occasion one of us does participate (such as when I entered the NCAA pool on a humorous lark, or when the woman I mentioned above entered another pool just for shits), it is greeted with enthusiasm.
However, and I think this is very important, not everyone on my team who does participate is participating in the same league. Quite frankly I expect there might be a different atmosphere if they were all in the same league. That there are many different leagues represented - one in-office only, plus several others to which other members of the team belong - probably stops short any "but we're all doing it" talk before it ever starts.
