it's nice to see this issue brought up to a large, mainstream audience but the crux of the issue wasn't discussed.

the thirteenth amendment did not abolish slavery, it abolished slavery except as punishment for crimes. what that actually did was nationalize slavery to a state institution, enforced by prison systems. the jim crow era followed, where blacks were arrested for trivialities. in line with the neo-liberal agenda, this is being spun back off onto the market - not because it saves taxpayer money (this is also propaganda) but because it privatizes profit for investors. the privatization of the prison system is the recreation of the plantation system.

the idea that prisoners have all day to think things up is very wrong. rather, prisoners spend most of their time on assembly lines. want an astonishing fact? the united states prison system has a monopoly on paint products in the united states.

as the prison population enlarges, it broadens the potential for use. some prisoners in california already work as farm labourers. the trend is moving towards an increase in this kind of slave labour. and, the possibilities are really limited only by visibility. it's not likely to be long before a company like nike decides it can save costs by using slave labour at home.

the strength of the prison-industrial complex has strengthened and fallen depending on diverse conditions, but it has continued to thrive for the reason that it hasn't been dismantled. it's logic demands that it takes over as much industry as it possibly can. that means these companies have a strong profit motive to enslave as many people as they can, based on whatever justification they can get away with.

the only remedy is a constitutional amendment to ban prison labour altogether. until that happens, we will fight and win and lose in bursts and spurts, and they will continue to expand while we're not paying attention - until that breaking point is reached where they can no longer be stopped.

it's imperative for the continued existence of a free society. there should be a mass movement pushing for this. the abolition of prison labour would pull the rug out from under a swath of social problems.

yet, i've heard almost nobody even consider it.

constitutional bans on prison labour

To: chomsky@mit.edu

hi noam chomsky,

in some sense i feel it would be silly to lay out the argument, but i feel that this is a solution to several of the problems you've drawn attention to over the years. it seems obvious to me that there should be wide, grassroots movements pushing for this...but it's in truth just not something i hear *anybody* saying. so, it would really be nice to hear somebody with a microphone saying it. it's certainly not a radical position, on a global level. so, i'm left to conclude that it's just that so few people seem to understand just how much prison labour is at the core of so many serious social issues. a little light shed on this could maybe light a long overdue, and very necessary, spark.

j

"pew is the most respected polling firm"

i hear this all the time, but every time i've looked at their questions, it's just a lot of propaganda. i've consequently concluded that the idea that pew is reliable is itself propaganda, and that it's a part of the cia-ngo complex. i'd really like to see this line retired. it's nonsense.

it's about as accurate as "cnn is the most respected name in news".

i'm always astounded by right-wing idiots that don't realize that this is a sarcastic diatribe. it's just remarkable.

you see it every year up here in canada on canada day, where neil is somewhat of a future saint in certain broad circles. stumbling, drunk, through the streets, clad in nationalist paraphernalia - flags on sticks, on shirts...

none of them seem to know any of the lyrics, though. well, beside the chorus.

wait. this is a significant cut. no wonder. you know. i'm not old enough to remember hearing this on the radio. was it always cut like this? does that explain it? have most people not even heard the full song?

the bridge is really key.

blake
+ deathtokoalas It may be sarcasm and parody of blind nationalism but who really cares. Every one has there own interpretation of what a song means. Me myself as a conservative like to view it at face value only noticing the good parts about America. If you wanna get deep into music go right ahead but like I said every song has a different meaning to every person.


deathtokoalas
+blake it's more than sarcasm. how do you interpret a line like:

"that's one more kid that will never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool"

in any remotely positive way? you can't. you've just never paid attention.


it's not like it's a shift in politics, or that neil young was unknown, either. he'd been successfully singing songs like this for 20 years at the point of this release.

but, i've met people that think "southern man" is pro-confederate, too.

trev
+deathtokoalas Just the same with Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. It seems America doesn't do irony.

fwiw, bernie sanders is the only sane candidate. but years of hoping kucinich is going to break through have left me pretty cynical about his chances.

this one's for rick perry...

this seems good for rand paul.

what the pauls say sounds good - if you don't know anything about economics. the only outcome of their policies is precisely what they claim their policies are out to reverse.

the only thing that's clear to me is that bush is the shoe-in republican candidate. seriously. he's actually the only serious candidate.

this is the ideal tune for hillary.

i do like hillary, broadly. i supported her over obama pretty much to the end - largely on health care. but, she has this self-righteous streak in her that is very concerning to me.

the establishment will not let her win. ever. she's "too liberal". the bank has not announced it's candidate yet, but whomever it is will beat her.

so, trump wants to use "keep on rockin' in the free world". it's actually totally fitting in an ironic way. and i think we can have some fun with this.

the donald is a man of the people. really.

bbc v. rt is a terrible comparison. bbc has a mandate to publicly educate, and it's for internal consumption. it has satellite stations, but it's all old colonies, and still for internal commonwealth consumption. rt is an international broadcaster that exists to present a russian perspective to the outside world.

bbc needs to be compared to russian language media, and my understanding is that russian language media can be quite critical. westerners may be a little offset by the nature of it (putin has taken a hit in the media for not invading ukraine and letting the russians there be harmed), but it's relatively open. not perfect, but relatively open.

rt needs to be compared to something like voice of america (dare i say radio free europe), which is completely uncritical pro-american hogwash.

i don't watch rt because i'm looking for stable analysis. i watch rt to get the different perspective to balance out the brainwashing. it seems kind of nihilistic, and not particularly up to utopian british press values, but the truth is that oksana is correct.

nobody but your own conscience - except the boss that is taking 95% of your labour. total independence and no male companionship - except the boss on the harness, whipping for more and more product.

"imagine working 18 hours a day for a fraction of what could have been considered a fair minimum wage, and being so trapped in it that there is no time for art, literature or any of the other things that define humans as free. imagine, imagine....imagine being a wage slave."

that's negative freedom, for you. the freedom to be exploited by market forces, and be tricked into thinking it's somehow "liberating".

i'll stick with positive concepts of freedom, thanks - the freedom to exist outside the slavery of the factory, the market and the dollar.

i've been saying this for years: at the core, you're all calvinists.

this is a total straw man argument. this is why we throw around words like cis - because we have no desire whatsoever to infringe on your identity, no matter how much you want to fantasize about us raping you. which is why we chemically castrate ourselves, right?

hear that, guys? best way to get the chicks into you is to castrate yourself. they love that. that's right: bitches love castration.

here's the thing: try being born with a penis and showing up to work just with hair. forget the rest of it. the dominant society can't even get beyond hair length. i have to be a macho idiot in order to get a job in a fucking call center, whether i like it or not. and, you want to talk about being a fake? it's not for my benefit. honestly. it's to get the rest of the world to not place expectations on me that i am entirely incapable of living up to - and completely disinterested in trying to, and failing at.

and, frankly, i don't care about some hypothetical future two hundred years from now, after my corpse has been picked clean by insects and my bones are starting to break down under the weight of massive flooding from carbon emissions. if we were immortal, you'd have a valid argument. in infinite time, we'll get it right! unfortunately, we're all going to live our entire lives within a dominant patriarchal reality, and we're all going to have to find a way to learn to live with it, somehow. your critique is consequently about as relevant to reality as a discussion of jumping into the matrix, travelling through time (although this has been pretty much ruled out, anyways) or quantum computing. i'm going to live in the here and now, thanks, and it means adjusting to the reality that exists, not fantasizing about one that is generations and generations away from any realistic thought of application. you're completely failing the is/ought problem.

"just a sober reading of that seems like it's just a call for genocide."

exactly.

it's difficult. nobody wants to accept it. but, it shouldn't even be surprising any more at this point. the israeli state has really made it's intentions crystal clear. and, the necessary first point - before we can even talk about un sanctions - is that this has to be entirely understood, because it remains this contentious and difficult to grapple with point.

but, my honest and realistic assessment? this isn't a conflict any more, it's an escalating slaughter. the humanitarian focus at this point really needs to be finding ways to get the palestinians out. i don't know what that means. maybe saudi oil money can build them a city on the coast or something. but, there's really not a realistic way to stop israel from slowly regressing to the point of mass slaughter - and it's an inevitability.

something else to point out is that israeli expansionism is generally exaggerated, especially in the conspiracy press. they talk about israel expanding into syria, for example. and this overlaps with the idea of israel as a settler-colonial state - which is broadly true in practice, if not in theory. but, i think we need to be clear about the contradictions here, and why it sets borders around israeli expansionism.

israel wants control of the areas that it believes were granted to it by god. it's crazy, but it's actually true and it seriously drives their policy. if you look at a biblical map of the region, what we today call the gaza strip was where the "philistines" lived. we're not sure who the philistines were, exactly, but they appear to have invaded from greece, and, considering the egyptian name (peleset) may have been the same people as the pelasgians. they're certainly not the same people as the palestinians (who are culturally arabic and actually largely genetically hebrew), but that biblical parallel is a large part of what's fuelling this. every good jew knows that fighting their enemies, the phillistines, is an integral part of being jewish. and, this is why the israeli state allowed gaza to be split out. it's outside of biblical israel.

now, consider a future where israel has all of this promised land under control, and it seeks to expand further. it would require a different justification, which would present two problems: it would need the state to move away from the state religion, and it would create a backlash from religious scholars. god did not promise israel the world. religious thinking is a strange thing for the rational mind to get it's head around, but just understand this: killing philistines is ok. settling historical israel is ok. but expanding beyond that is arrogance, and will no doubt produce prophets warning the chosen people not to disobey god - lest they bring upon themselves the repercussions that their ancestors suffered. so, the state can't get away with this, unless it secularizes. and, if it secularizes, it loses it's base.

that doesn't mean this can't happen, but a secularist and expansionist israel is a very different animal with a very different support structure.

so, it does seem safe to move them to the red sea - even if it leads to israel and egypt squabbling over who gets stuck with a parcel of land that neither of them want to administrate.

let me begin by saying that i prefer hedges' politics, but have to lean towards harris' view on religion - so long as nobody gives him a stick to beat it into people with.

christians have given themselves credit for almost everything we hold value to in society, often with rather warped arguments. ask galileo about christianity laying the foundations of an open society. it's a seemingly laughable assertion - along with the idea that christianity was the "keeper of knowledge" through the middle ages, or that it's the source of the anglo-american legal tradition (which is, in truth, deeply pagan in origin).

it's a fun argument to point to the reformation as the point where things began to change. and, in truth it is certainly true; liberalism as we know it is very much rooted in the protestant rebellion against the catholic church that happened at that time. you don't need to be a christian to realize this. marx and engels made the argument as well.

but, it's very telling to be clear as to what they rebelled against. it wasn't the foundations of the religion, it was human abuses. rather than reject the entire system, which was keeping them chained to the land, they argued for a return to a purer state. even in rebellion, they were unable to unshackle their thoughts from the system imposed upon them by their oppressors. worldly ambitions of various despots aside, it merely demonstrates the depth of their brainwashing.

then, a few hundred years later their descendants were out burning people for "non-comformity". and, when the non-comformists took power on their own, they launched a genocide against catholics. that's not to mention the groupthink dominant in the colonies. this is the basis of the open society? perhaps we may want to look a little closer at the changes that happened during the reformation, and seek another source for the roots of liberalism.

i'm not sure which 2nd year professor that hedges is basing his presentation on, but it might do him some good to assert a little more individual thought into it, rather than repeat these stale (and debunked) arguments.

i was just thinking about this when i was sitting outside. my upstairs neighbour is turning my basement apartment into an ice box with his a/c, and it hasn't been consistently warm enough to even get the winter air out yet. ugh. anyways. a lot of people like harris claim the muslim world needs a reformation (i think i remember him saying that, i'm not going to look it up - but it's a commonly stated thing). i have to disagree. if anything, it's a good case study on the marxist analysis of the reformation. what the arab world needs is socialism. and, to their credit, that's something they figured out - and quite a while ago. but, we stamped it out. and, the ruling class in the region has since reasserted religion. see, it's interesting because this is the marxist analysis of the reformation: you had these people looking to abolish feudalism (for good reason...) and assert a concept of common ownership, and the ruling classes stepped in and pushed down a modified form of christianity, which left the system mostly in place. it collapsed in the end. but, when the dust of the reformation settled, the truth is that feudalism remained in most places. and, it kind of makes you wonder a little.

it is, in fact, clear that ancient greek geometers understood non-euclidean concepts, and it would be difficult to think they couldn't. greece was a maritime culture. there's plenty of comments pointing out the curvature of the horizon, and even a few explicit discussions of the geometry of it.

we can also state today that it is not possible to prove the fifth from the other four. this is a consequence of godel.

but, are the other four postulates truly obvious? i think the first, third and fourth are pretty clear. the second one causes me some pause.

2. Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.

later commentators tried to redefine the concept of a "straight line" to something inherent to the surface. and it's important to point out that indefinite does not mean infinite. but, i think this assumes parallelism in the plane in the first place.

perhaps a better approach is to define the space you're working in in the first place. mathematicians do this regularly when they discuss algebraic structures, so it's kind of weird that they don't when they discuss geometry. this is in fact the necessary adjustment that's come out of the acceptance of non-euclidean geometries, and how mathematicians approach things in practice, it just strangely hasn't been formalized. to be clear: mathematicians don't pretend a geometry applies to reality any more, they just treat them like abstractions and then let physicists deal with the applications. once you've set the actual characteristics of a plane (defined by intersecting right angles), you actually only need three postulates: 1, 3 and 4. two and five follow rather trivially, by the nature of the surface. further, the non-euclidean geometries become extensions of the surface.

it's easy to accuse me of missing the point, but i'm not - i'm actually getting the point, which is that there isn't a universal geometry. the geometry is specific to the surface. it really ought to be formalized that way, by setting down the characteristics of the surface first and then setting axioms as to what you can draw on it.

c'mon. you don't think it takes a pair to shoot up a police station?

re-publishing ambient works vol 0 (inri035)

i've split this off from inri048 into it's own release, inri017. this required shifting the previous inri017 down to inri016, and so forth, to inri001 - which is now inri000.

==

when i sat down to make the ambient works, i wanted a "mix tape" style cd-r of ambient fragments that ran from 1996-2003 as a volume 0. but, when i sat down to actually make it, i ended up with a 90 minute actual mix tape of material from 1996-1999. it actually split itself fairly cleanly into an inri period release, but a number of factors made it a pain in the ass to actually place it there.

i've decided to flip-flop on this, mostly due to the desire to keep the period 1 disc self-contained. i couldn't release something like that without this on it.

what i'm going to have to do is rename the first 17 releases by taking them down a number - so, inri001 becomes inri000, all the way up to inri017, which will allow me to insert the ambient works into that space.

that's going to require a lot of typing this evening which will slow me down another day, but i think it's the right choice.

so, here is the new inri017.

initially written and recorded between 1996-1999 and remixed between 2013-2015. initially released as part zero of a three volume set on may 21, 2015. split into it's own release on june 14, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, pick scrapes, tapes, metronome, synth, electric piano, drum & other programming, sound design, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, loops, sampling, sequencing, sound raider, digital wave editing, production, composition

released december 31, 1999

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

i agree that this is carefully cut up propaganda. but, adults aren't supposed to look to children for wisdom on complicated issues. adult issues. it's kind of a dumb premise to think that somebody is going to be convinced by an eight year old's reaction, when they've already rejected more informed arguments. it's insulting to the audience it's trying to reach, to the point that it's counter-productive. on one side, it's a circle jerk. and, on the other it hardens attitudes through a backlash at the attempted emotional manipulation.

i'd prefer to see videos of these sort focus on intellectual arguments. what we need is a public discussion. this isn't really able to spark one.

spearofconquest
How many kids did they start off interviewing? We only see positive because they just cherry picked the good reactions. where is the blonde boy who asked a how a man becomes a woman? he probably got freaked out and said things that weren't compatible with the two gay guys agenda and yes the men in this video are gay. so obvious.

Brian Mendez
+spearofconquest ofc there is...there isnt any community who everyone gets along, thats impossible....but im saying that they are a huge community, most of them dont hate eachother...

deathtokoalas
+Brian Mendez that's not accurate. there's giant divisions. there's two broad schools of thought on the subject, but, broadly speaking, feminist lesbians tend to reject transwomen. there's been some pretty nasty and pretty ignorant literature written on the topic. an idea that is pretty fastened to lesbian feminist academic literature is that transwomen are driven by the desire to rape women - a claim that doesn't pass the most obvious test, due to the chemical castration involved in the process. like, i haven't had an erection in something like five years - i'm hormonally incapable of it. i couldn't rape somebody if i wanted to (not that i'd want to...). there's also some pretty nasty levels of misogyny in the gay male community, who seem to see the idea as some kind of threat to their own identity. and, while this is wrong, it's not hard to construct the logic - you just need to look at what the british government did to alan turing to see how the issue could be constructed to erase gay male identity. but, i mean, it's not right to blame it on us. trans people tend to have their own issues (i find queeny men to be incredibly irritating, and i find butch women to be broadly misogynist when you scratch the surface on their viewpoints), which aren't limited to push back on the exclusion.

political organizations like to try and umbrella us as "queer", because solidarity produces greater political power. we can all agree that this makes sense. and, the divisions are certainly not absolute. but, "out in the wild", random surveys are going to produce more division than solidarity. it's a nasty reality.

that said, i do agree that this is carefully cut up propaganda. but, i mean, adults aren't supposed to look to children for wisdom on complicated issues. adult issues. it's kind of a dumb premise to think that somebody is going to be convinced by an eight year old's reaction, when they've already rejected more informed arguments. it's insulting to the audience it's trying to reach, to the point that it's counter-productive. on one side, it's a circle jerk. and, on the other it hardens attitudes through a backlash at the attempted emotional manipulation.

i'd prefer to see videos of these sort focus on intellectual arguments. what we need is a public discussion. this isn't really able to spark one.

freshair3451
+spearofconquest  I'm sure they cherry picked the good reactions. It's those that help make the world a better place. The bad reactions can go back to hell where they came from.

deathtokoalas
+freshair3451 well, there's that approach, too. and, when you have roughly the same level of strength as your opponent, it can sometimes be a rational one. but when you're at the bottom of a hierarchy, you need to be a little more careful than that.

at the end of the day, i don't care what religious groups or radical feminists or just plain out assfaces think of me. but, i think it's imperative that some kind of understanding is reached where we can decide to agree to disagree without needing to get oppressive about it.

like, i don't seek active approval. but i do seek mutual respect. and the mutual part enforces on all of us.

damned hiccups.

i am not an amphibian.

or am i?

listen, if there's really shape-shifting lizards out there controlling the world, you'd think they'd have hybridized with regular ape-derived humans, and have half-lizard/half-ape hybrids running around that don't realize it. i don't care if you're a reptilian overlord, you still have a sex drive, and "no sex with ape-humans" has gotta be a helluva taboo in their hidden culture, enough to ensure it does happen.

maybe i'll go to the doctor and ask for a dna test..

"listen. i just need you to check if i'm a reptilian hybrid. it's a perfectly reasonable request. how do we know if we don't test?"

see, this is why we all need sex education taught in grade school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAJ_dupJr7U

fools...

the correct way to make spaghetti is to forget about useless tomato-based sauces altogether and instead put it in the microwave with a half a container of zesty caesar dressing and a half a block of marbled cheese on top of it. optional additions include green peppers, mushrooms, crumpled zesty cheese doritos, fresh pineapple, hot sauce, broccoli and crumpled salami.

two questions.

1) can you all take a shot at defining rape culture? no google searches. just tell me what you think it means. and i won't interject until we've got a good sample.

2) the consent issue had to do with stopping halfway, which was what was happening. the video had not aired. she had the ability to stop. the activist was right; lauren was presenting an irrelevant comparison and didn't seem to understand the correct one.

this channel is run by a well known media personality from canada that is famous for his intellectual dishonesty (he's like a canadian glenn beck, but worse), and you can see his fingerprints in the editing: cutting people off before they respond, provoking violence and then blaming it on the provoked, the use of warped logic and false analogies, baseless accusations (and flat out lies), etc. what he loses in subtlety, he makes up for in bias. entirely predictable. there's no value in pointing out the obvious, as he knows he's full of shit and the audience is just circle-jerking.

i'm more interested in seeing what people think "rape culture" means. so, go for it..

again: it's as clear as day. but, not even the most sympathetic coverage can bring itself to acknowledge the obvious. it is too ghastly to contemplate; yet, it remains blatantly clear.

israel is carrying out a conscious genocide against the palestinian people

you can't handle the truth.

it's a false choice. they can support imperialism, and desire themselves at the top of the hierarchy...

i've seen this come up with panitch in the past: he seems convinced that this idea that open markets creates stability is a real thing, by combining it with a class analysis and globalization. then he gets this idea of a global capitalist class that's all in kahoots with itself. he's not the first leftist i've seen buy into this. it's actually a cross-spectrum status quo at this point, to the extreme that you're likely to get ridiculed if you argue otherwise. but that's a type of enforcement of something that is really just propaganda. what's underlying his argument is buying into this "open markets equal peace and prosperity" thing, even if he's glossing over it with left-wing language.

hudson (who is a little naive, in general) is closer to the right idea in pointing out the globalization is not really globalization but american hegemony. there's a capitalist class in russia, and one in china, and another in india. but the american globalization policy is not to work with them so much as it's to move in. that actually creates a power struggle. in reality, open markets fuel international struggles by pitting one ruling class against another. that's the contradiction of neo-liberalism that hudson gets, and panitch is upholding, and the root crux of their disagreement. it follows that the capitalist classes in russia and china don't have the motives that panitch is suggesting.

and, hudson is consequently making good sense when he argues that this is about circumventing american capitalism, but misses the corollary - to compete and eventually replace it. now, apologists will instantly write this off as impossible. but, the containment strategies exist for a reason. the combined economic power of almost all of asia - and potentially most of africa and south america - is a significant threat to american power, especially if it can pull the germans in. and, if the new system generates enough success, it could very well do that. it's worth remembering that when it comes to unshakable allies, america has none. the closest are canada, britain and israel - but adherence to american dictates depends solely on the projection of american power.

will the third world see a difference? they might get some nicer rates in the short term, as the new system competes with the old one for influence. but, of course, it's not some coincidence that china is looking to fund a development bank in africa. it's colonialism - same old same old. it will give the brics countries more leverage in a wide range of contexts; it will very likely also spark some proxy wars.

but, the idea that globalization has led to a monolithic system of centralized global capital is called the "new world order conspiracy theory", and is john birch society propaganda. the idea that open markets lead to peace and stability is neo-liberal propaganda. the fact is that competition over resources between sovereign states that are hostile to each other continues as it always has, and has no apparent end point in sight.

i don't see a racial motivation here so much as i see a grown ass man fondling a teenage girl in a bikini. i think the proper charge against this officer is sexual assault.

when you have issues like this, they're rarely singular. i would encourage any other women that have been assaulted by this officer to come forward in whatever way they feel comfortable.

dammit, this is so predictable and the entire country is clueless. it's the most obvious thing in the world: obama is a republican operative.

i'm sitting here watching this and thinking "well, yeah. they don't want a long term solution because they want privatized infrastructure. it's a part of the neo-liberal project. so, they're giving you the least they can so they can rip it apart when they get control."

and, lo and behold, what does obama announce? privatized infrastructure.

we saw this with the government shutdown. we saw it with health care. we've seen it over and over again. congress refuses to act on basic and routine legislation, which forces obama into an executive order. he then signs into law what the republicans actually want to do, but could never get through congress. then he spins it as stopping republican obfuscation - when it is, in fact, fast tracking republican legislation.

i don't know if y'all are ever going to figure this out...

jessica murray
the comments on this blog seem to completely ignore the third wave criticism of agency involved with accepting "patriarchal" norms of femininity, or the female power that comes with accepting them. instead, they view women as this monolithic entity that all thinks the same way and has the same opinions. what that does is erases identity in favour of a different kind of oppressive paradigm - one where women are merely chained to a different collectivist ideal. it's no solution, it's just a new type of oppression.

now, certainly a lot of women profess a lot of discomfort at being unable or unwilling to uphold these expectations, and a truly free society would acknowledge that and lift those requirements. i'm going to skip over my anarchistic opposition to a portion of this thinking; if the argument is about how to climb the hierarchy, i need to interject that we ought not have a hierarchy at all. but, this is in some ways "next level" and beyond any kind of immediate concern.

what needs to be addressed is why so many women *don't* feel such a violent reaction. and, on a base level, it has to be acknowledged that it couldn't continue without mass consent. at some point, you need to concede that the reason that so many women are so ok with this is that they are really ok with this. not due to biological determinism, and only partly due to conditioning - mostly due to conscious, individual choice. that doesn't negate your own personal reaction, or delegitimize your own desire to get out of it, but it does necessitate a level of mutual respect for the opinions and desires of others.

when you get to that point, it's no longer such a jump to see how some people born with penises can identify with some concepts of traditional femininity. it's a social construct, disconnected from biology. if people born with vaginas can identify with it, it follows that people born with penises can, too - and that is base, egalitarian logic. it doesn't all come bundled together, of course. i don't make any sense when pushed into a male role, but that doesn't mean i'm going to let myself get chained to a kitchen counter and make sandwiches on command. rather, i'm going to uphold the same concepts of female empowerment that my third wave allies uphold - i'm an individual person with individual opinions and individual aspirations. it just happens to be that, when compiled together, those opinions and aspirations fit into one arbitrary binary partition far better than the other one.

none of this applies to drag queens, who tend not to transition for this precise reason - they don't find themselves on that side of the arbitrarily constructed binary, they just like to put on a costume from time to time and pretend they're somebody they aren't.

www.feministcurrent.com/2014/04/25/why-has-drag-escaped-critique-from-feminists-and-the-lgbtq-community/

Anna
This whole comment makes me sad. I bothered to type out a response that points out the glaring inaccuracies and erasure, but then I realized: this person doesn't care. If they cared, they would never have posted such an ignorant, offensive comment in a feminist space. They would have read the words of the women here, and analyzed their own position. But they didn't do that. Instead, they either ignored the words of the women here, or they read them but disregarded them. And then they gave us paragraphs that others before them have written here, paragraphs that have been disproved and refuted.

So, I'm not giving this person the benefits of my time and effort today, because it will be wasted. It's too bad they keep making the points for us: talk over women, ignore women's words, downplay/disregard women's experiences, tell women what's the correct way to do gender, etc. etc.

Poor thirdwavers, can't see the forest OR the trees, just the pretty branches.

jessica murray
see, i don't really consider you rad fems to really be "feminists", because you don't seem to understand equality - you just want to enforce your warped concepts of masculinity on women, and entirely erase femininity in the process. you seem to think women would behave exactly like men if they weren't brainwashed otherwise, that women exist in some kind of natural hobbessian state. i actually find this very misogynistic; it's typical right-wing bullshit, hidden in the typical foucaldian conservative disguise. you don't seem to want to liberate women, you seem to want to destroy femininity.

i've read your words and decided you're not just incorrect, but you need to be debated and ultimately held accountable for your oppression in denying and erasing my identity. you do not have a monopoly on womanhood because you were born with a vagina. rather than pretend you're beyond criticism, you need to open your mind and listen to what i'm telling you.

and, again: this princess complex you're demonstrating is not feminism. it's misogyny.

i should be more precise: who is the topic of conversation here? it's not you, it's me. that means you need to listen to me, not that i need to listen to you.

mary
" needs to be addressed is why so many women *don’t* feel such a violent reaction. and, on a base level, it has to be acknowledged that it couldn’t continue without mass consent. at some point, you need to concede that the reason that so many women are so ok with this is that they are really ok with this. not due to biological determinism, and only partly due to conditioning – mostly due to conscious, individual choice. that doesn’t negate your own personal reaction, or delegitimize your own desire to get out of it, but it does necessitate a level of mutual respect for the opinions and desires of others."

Chattel slavery was legal for thousands of years not solely because of brute force. Slaves were trained to think of their status as natural. We are facing the same dutiful obedience to capitalism. It's obvious and tragic that people can learn to accept their own subservience and even take pleasure in it.

Many opinions don't warrant respect because they condone structural inequality.

jessica murray
i don't think you understood what i typed. please try again.

Meghan Murphy
Perhaps if people are having trouble understanding what you typed, you might consider making your points more clear. I'm having trouble deciphering your arguments, as I mentioned earlier.

jessica murray
i think i dropped a few words from the initial post , but it was clear from context.

“the comments on this blog seem to completely ignore the third wave criticism of (how second wavers deny the) agency involved with accepting “patriarchal” norms of femininity, or the female power that comes with accepting them.”

if you're still not sure where i'm coming from, i'd suggest reading up a little on it. i can't outline the entire third wave criticism in this post. i meant to reference something that was already understood. but, i took your post as a facetious grammatical attack.

as for this post, i'm trying to get across the idea that you're erasing agency - and the response i'm getting is to erase agency. again: it's incredibly patronizing to tell people that their thoughts are not their own.

and i need to reiterate: this is a point that rad fems are going to have to eventually concede. you can't hold on to this forever, in the face of so many women pushing back on it. you're just isolating yourself.

what you can say is that *you* reject these concepts. what you can't say is that *women* reject them - or at least not all of them. we're all going to accept and reject different aspects. liberation is the ability to make those choices, and live freely within them. and, once you take that step, the trans issue clarifies itself...

Meghan Murphy
False consciousness is an unpopular concept in today's 'Agency is Everywhere!' neoliberal culture, but it's still a real thing. Plenty of oppressed people are seemingly content with their own oppression, women in particular.

jessica murray
i'm glad that you know what i want and should want, meghan. what should have i for breakfast tomorrow?

Meghan Murphy
I have no idea what you want. But that's not what is being debated here... Whether or not any individual 'wants' masculinity or femininity is irrelevant. Both remain part of an oppressive hierarchy that hurts women.

jessica murray
the oppression is the enforcement. would it shock you if the enforcement were removed and women made these choices anyways? woman telling women what to be, what to want, how to live, etc is not different. i'm not going to enforce that on you. i expect the same in return. i have agency. i make these choices. telling me (or other women) otherwise is doing exactly the same thing that you're criticizing.

and, it's why you have this cis distinction. i'm not going to pretend i was born with a uterus - i'm transgendered, i'm not schizophrenic. i'm not going to stand up and talk about contraception, or any of the other things that are inherently specific to the biological female sex.

but, excuse me for pushing back against the idea that my thoughts are not my own. it's pretty patronizing.

--

(several deleted posts)

jessica murray
all of your posts here are incoherent. if you agree that gender is a social construct (as i do) then you agree it can be arbitrarily assigned to people with either birth sex, because you realize it exists independently of biology. otherwise, you're merely contradicting yourself.

--

(deleted post)

jessica murray
i'm a transwoman that wears (purple-pink) sneakers, (tight) jeans and tshirts and tank tops. most transwomen i've met are similar in terms of fashion decisions.

two things.

1) it's mostly a media stereotype.
2) perhaps you've met transwomen without realizing they're transwomen.

drag queens generally identify as gay men, not as transgendered. nothing is absolute, but it's the overwhelming trend. further, transwomen tend to prefer to fit in than stand out - that's the point.

i think the answer to this quandary is that, by becoming the patriarchal-enforced concept of "women", they're actually expressing an internalized perspective of their suppressed heterosexual feelings, and becoming the women they would desire. because strict heterosexuality and homosexuality are as socially constructed as masculinity and femininity, and they are in truth bisexual like everybody else, but can't deal with it.

is it degrading? well, it can be. i don't like these shows, either, and also tend to avoid them. but it's more complicated than that, because it's acting out a repressed heterosexual impulse - it's sexist on a pretty base level, which is *why* it's so accepted.

Anthony L
If Jenner decided he was a black man instead of a woman, painted his face black and made a play on all the stereotypes of what makes a person "black", would he be given this same worship, or would he be called a racist? Serious question, no straw man arguments.

deathtokoalas
with jenner, specifically, i'm not 100% comfortable making this argument - i think you have a mild point. but, more generally, the idea is that the personality already aligns with the effeminate, meaning the individual is actually functionally impersonating being male and the transition eliminates the fraud. you have to begin with the assumption that humans are variable, and the idea of "female" and "male" - on a psychological level - is actually a completely false human construct to begin with.

but, you actually don't generally see transwomen pushing stereotypes like this. you generally see drag queens pushing stereotypes like this. i'll get back to this.

now, is "being black" a similar false construct? i'd argue it mostly is. there's nothing more inherently "black" about hip-hop than there is inherently "female" about corsets. so, you have to look at context...

let's take a step back and actually look at the scenario of a drag performer, instead. is performing in drag different than back face? i'd have difficulty accepting that there's a difference between being a "female impersonator" and a "black impersonator" on the level of what's actually being done. but, there's a big difference in context. "blackface" isn't a problem on the level of the actual make-up, it's a problem on the level of it promoting negative racial attitudes. i don't really have a problem with a white guy being barack obama for halloween - i think this can be done tastefully and the pc reaction prohibiting it altogether is kneejerking and overreacting. in that sense, i may spin the issue around and argue from the opposite perspective - that, if done without implying something racist, impersonating a black person is not more offensive than performing in drag.

the difference is that i've never met - or seen in print - any comparable reaction to drag performances, for the precise reason that they don't tend to be degrading. the closest is the (mostly accurate...) feminist argument that drag performers are interpreting the female through the male gaze in the first place; that is, that everybody in the room understands that this "female impersonator" is only impersonating the female in the context of a warped patriarchal concept of it. it's consequently actually an expression of masculinity.

but, this is a valid point to raise. and i'm interested in seeing what further reactions to it are.

that car

hi.

i acknowledge my memory is sketchy, but i have a memory of a car being given to me several years ago, i think as a birthday present. 2008-2009ish, i think. i was told that i could get the car if i got a license. i responded by saying that i didn't want a car (and i still don't...), and i'd rather see the money put towards paying down my debt. nothing further was ever spoken of it. i think it was blue; i don't even know the names of current car manufacturers.

it's many years later, and my debt is pushing $70,000. now, the blunt reality is that i should have never qualified for a loan in the first place. there's a student loan bubble building that is going to crash the economy, and the end result is going to have to be stricter lending practices. the idea that just anybody can take an interest-bearing loan of that size out is preposterous.

my father always promised to me that he was going to pay some of it down, and the reality is that the bulk of it is the result of going back to school - which i initially only agreed to on the condition that it wouldn't affect my loan, and which was reneged upon at the last minute.

had i taken that money at the time that was wasted on a stupid car and put it down, the debt wouldn't be growing out of control.

now, the chances of me paying this debt are zero. it's just going to keep growing, and there's nothing the state can do about it because my income is roughly half of the poverty line. my monthly minimum payment is twice my monthly income. it's an impossibility, and there's no use in pretending otherwise.

that said, they're threatening to hold a lien on my tax return if i don't address it, somehow. i think i can probably fight this, but then i'll have to go through the process again every year, while the interest spirals out of control. it's really just a stupid situation.

so, whatever happened to the car? and, is there any way i can gain access to it, in order to cut the debt down a little?

j

in fact, the israeli intent right now is genocide. netanyahu has recently admitted that israel is no longer interested in a multi-state solution, and the talks have no end point. palestinians have two choices: leave or die. and, not only the americans - but also the egyptians and the saudis - are entirely supportive of this policy.

chomsky was right to ignore him as a clown. on one hand, he needed to be taken down. on another....at some point, you're just giving a platform to a discredited imbecile that doesn't deserve one.

i was expecting some comments to respond to; i guess i'll have to start it off.

i'm a cultural relativist; i am not a moral relativist, because i am a moral nihilist. but, this does not fall under the category of cultural relativism because it is objectively wrong. cultural relativism refers to issues that are not clearly right or wrong, but take on different meanings in different contexts. it does not refer to things that are disproven, debunked or clearly absurd. let's look at some examples.

examples of cultural relativism:
- snakes and insects (or cows or pigs, or cats and dogs, as it may be) are disgusting and should not be eaten.
- god is a specific gender.
- the punishment for a crime should be whatever.
- circumcision.

examples of things that are wrong:
- creationism.
- caste systems.
- homosexuality is unnatural.
- patriarchy is natural.
- humans cause volcanoes by angering the volcano gods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyLque6D4xY

why wouldn't you wear gloves?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBN-MyZYDNI

i don't think it's useful to look too deep into it as a precise metaphor - it's just general cultural propaganda, of life in a starkly hobbessian reality. as a viewer, you're meant to internalize that.

i mean, i get that hobbes is pretty widely misunderstood. he was actually some kind of proto-fascist, advocating total control in the hands of the state in order to stop people from getting at each other like they are in the show. his description of "human nature" was presented as an obstacle to overcome, rather than an ideal or even an unavoidable truth.

but, a certain misunderstanding of hobbes is very useful for the kind of casino capitalism that the elites in the united states desire, and want us to live by. what hobbes saw as a tragedy is their ideal order, and they've been actively seeking to influence public behaviour to align with this kind of social darwinism for quite a while now, as a reaction to the perceived threat of communalism that hobbes half advocated. i mean, trust me - nobody with good sense thinks hobbes had good solutions. but he at least realized that some kind of collective action was necessary to present a sustainable future.

what the elite have been saying for decades now is "we agree that hobbes was wrong, but we also agree that marx (and locke and rousseau...) was right. which means that our order is not a total failure, because people are malleable and programmable. so, through propaganda, we can create the hobbesian world that doesn't really exist. we can brainwash people into violent, if not always rational, self-interest. then, we can apply the social theories that have been debunked."

it would be insane, if it wasn't so diabolical.

does anybody know what the actual turnover in writers is expected to be?

i mean, fallon is just a bad imitation of leno, really. i was never a leno fan, but i have to give him points for improv that fallon just does not have. besides that, they're more or less interchangeable, and one needs to wonder if it's basically because the writing team stayed put.

it's an honest question, though. colbert made a big point about him leaving his character behind, and i can't help but think that also means leaving his writers behind. meaning, it seems like he's moving into a furnished apartment...

he might slowly get his own furniture over time. but i'm not sure it's wise to expect that much of a departure.

i see he's brought his writing team with him...

that's a positive.

FortyNineHudson
+deathtokoalas Since they're not constricted to writing for his "character", they might actually get to stretch out some more.

Jake Marsing
Colbert brought a number of his writers from the. "Report" including head writer Opus Moreschi. He's also brought on some new faces who're familiar with the format. One particularly promising hire is Brian Stack, who wrote for Conan from 1996 till this year and created some great characters like "The Interruptor," "The NBC Crooner," and "WikiBear." Colbert's hires tell me a lot about what he's planning. Expect if to follow the traditional 6 act Carson structure (monologue, comedy bit, guest 1, guest 1 again or another comedy bit, guest 2, music act or stand up comic, roll credits) it's an old format, but I still think it works. Colbert's show will feel like a more intellectual version of Conan. He'll do topical jones that Fallon can't, and he'll do stronger interviews. I really expect the show to push back against the prom king comedy we've seen in late night over the last two years.

deathtokoalas
+Jake Marsing i think you bring up a good point - colbert's not really competing against fallon. i couldn't imagine there's really much overlap in potential audience; it's almost a clean partition in the possible viewer demographic. colbert is really going to be competing with conan.

i haven't watched late night in a long time; i haven't had a tv in a long time. but, i always preferred conan to the other carson formula shows by a large margin. the reason was that conan was actually funny, and the two mainstays were just bland observationalists - seinfeld without the knack for the surreal, which both stewart and colbert have always had. for some reason, though, tv executives seem to hate him, and it kind of brings up some questions about how colbert is going to get along with head office kind of thing....

but, i mean, it's not like cbs didn't know who they were hiring, and their expectations had to be something a little edgier. i'm curious as to how this will work out...or, rather, how long it takes for colbert to get himself in trouble.

i'll be honest: my immediate thought was that the power structure was trying to shut him down before the next election by offering him a plush job, then canning him after a month. i hope that's conspiratorial logic. but, if it works out that way...well..

Jake Marsing
There are few things more fascinating to me than late night tv. It's the only genre in pop culture really about one person being funny. I think Colbert's got the chops to pull it off. But, you're right, he and Fallon will be doing different shows. Jimmy's will have mass appeal (like Leno's did) and Stephen will play to a more niche audience (like Letterman did). Colbert will be competitive, but I think his goal isn't to be #1. His goal is be a strong #2 with a young audience.

deathtokoalas
+Jake Marsing it's just that one of the things that killed conan was his refusal to pander to sarah palin. conan didn't want to alienate his liberal-leaning viewing base by doing the network's bidding in sucking up to a right-wing demagogue. it's hard to think that these situations aren't going to show up with colbert in this time slot - who is perpetually in an even worse quandary than conan could ever be in. there's all kinds of people that cbs is going to have to scratch off the list of potential guests, because they're not going to go anywhere near him. and, he's going to have to watch his mouth, which is going to upset long time viewers. i can't see how this isn't going to be an issue.

and i suspect it might be purposefully engineered as one.

schwarzeneggar. first week. wait for it.

argumentativeindian
+Jake Marsing Oh, is Brian Stack now writing for Colbert? That's wonderful! I used to love his segments, and was sad to see him leave Conan.

see, this is bullshit. some of it is just being a slob. but it's actually mostly signs that you're dating somebody you're not compatible with. it's more like "signs you need to break up".

- if you'd rather read instagram than listen to your partner? if the person you're supposed to care more about than anybody else bores you to that level? it's time to break up.

- if you understand your partner so poorly that you jump to menstruation as an explanation for discomfort? if your communication level is that bad? it's time to break up.

- if you can't be bothered to figure out birthdays, anniversaries or other special dates? if you really care that little? it's time to break up.

- if you'd rather watch the idiot box by yourself? if your partner's company is that worthless to you? it's time to break up...

Ranita Devonr
I don't get transgender and I don't hate them..what I don't get is why do they get all these surgery to feel like something their not..ur DNA will always be male and to be a real woman u have to have the blood of a woman..not fake boobs and surgery!!! its a psychological identity issue! if he wants to be a woman have a period and get overies or have a baby!! I believe the media praises these mental issues so they can get paid! all those doctors and .photographers get money off of ppl sickness!!

Auzeus
One does not identify their gender by body parts, you sort of know it in the brain. This isn't a mental disorder, read a book.

deathtokoalas
+Ranita Devonr i don't think this is the right argument, but i don't blame you because it's the way the issue has been framed to you and the way things are generally framed to us in a binary-thinking society. black or white. right or wrong. male or female.

to really understand this, you need to acknowledge (at least) five categories here.

1) cis men
2) cis women

these are genetic men & women.

3) transvestites (people comfortable in their birth sex, but who like to role play as the opposite gender from time to time)

these are a sub category of cis men and cis women. i believe this is the correct category for bruce jenner, and that he's acting on impulse in a way that a doctor should have intervened to prevent.

3) trans men (genetic women who have transitioned to living as men)
4) trans women (genetic men who have transitioned to living as women)

these are transgendered people.

there are categories of people in between with extra chromosomes and unusual combinations of organs and stuff, but these are legitimate birth defects and should not be included in discussions of transgender identity.

i am a trans woman. i am not a cis woman. i do not have a uterus. i do not go through cycles. i'll never have an unwanted pregnancy. there are plenty of things of this nature that i'll never understand, and i don't pretend i ever will. i will not speak as a cis female at public events, represent cis women or attempt to tell stories from the perspective of a cis woman.

suggesting that transwomen identify as cis-female and then tearing them down for it is a strawman argument. again: the media has spread mass ignorance on the point. but, in truth, you will meet very few transgendered people that will not differentiate between cis and trans; most fully acknowledge the difference and are very careful in clarifying it. the few that don't have a clear understanding of the difference have either transitioned extraordinarily well (and probably quite young...) or suffer from schizo-affective disorders. and, you're right: you'd have to be a little off your rocker to not realize there's a difference.

but, that does not mean that not(female) = male. there's a wide spectrum in between, and it includes people entirely cognizant of their birth gender that have made an entirely conscious and autonomous decision to modify it, without pretending to identify as cis-gendered members of the sex they weren't born as.

it's complicated. but just understand this: generally speaking, transwomen do not claim to be cis women. we understand that we're transwomen.

Auzeus
Hmmm, I guess that came out a bit wrong. Yes, males have penises, women have vaginas and all that jazz. But your brain is your core. You wouldn't know penis associated with male unless you were told about it, right?

deathtokoalas
well, it's kind of intuitive. i don't think the male/female physical distinction is a consequence of agricultural society. i think this is a base biological distinction, and we can mostly figure it out without being taught.

what's a little more true is that we need to be taught that certain mental traits are associated with gender. we wouldn't know being tough is associated with being male unless we were told, or being compassionate is associated with being female unless we were told.

the physical aspect is biology; it's the mental aspect that is a social construct. falling somewhere in the middle or off to the "wrong side" of this spectrum is partly a result of conditioning, and partly just a result of natural human variation.

but, recognizing that doesn't change the reality of the situation - which is that if you're born with a penis and happen to end up with a very "effeminate" personality, then you're going to have difficulty identifying with what society teaches you to identify with, have difficulty succeeding relative to social expectations of you and try to seek a way out of it, in order to align the physical and mental and reconnect the body with the mind. pointing out that it's a social construct doesn't abolish the social construct, or make it easier to adjust to it.

i'm fairly sympathetic with the feminist position that argues that gender identity issues are essentially the same thing as gender roles, and that abolishing gender roles will mostly abolish gender identity issues, in the sense that letting people adopt the roles of the "opposite sex" will mostly alleviate the desire to actually physically alter themselves. it's a function of the polarized nature of our extreme gender roles and how hard it's pushed down on us to conform to one extreme or the other. it's just that getting past this as a medical procedure is really on the extreme end of that emancipation. and, the biological aspect may be too strong to ever really abandon to the point where gender transitions ever disappear.

again, it's complicated. the literature refers to genitalia as sex and gender as mental. and that's a useful distinction to make if you're writing an essay because it allows you to differentiate between the two different ideas you mean. but, it's entirely ad hoc, shouldn't be interpreted at the level of a scientific definition and ultimately kind of gets the causality a little messed up.

i actually like the roman analogy, but this is a bad interpretation of it. rather, rome is london - and the british empire was the roman empire. the revolution is the partition into "east" and "west" - not a revolution at all, in fact, but a civil war within the british empire that resulted in partition and eventual usurpation. if america is rome, it is byzantine rome; washington is more comparable to constantinople.

now, here's the funny twist: byzantine rome is known to history as the collapse of greek culture into christian ignorance. the same people that invented philosophy and science were reduced to arguing over icons and launching holy wars against the persians, and then the muslims. revolutions were based on minor and irrelevant details in jewish scripture. and, in the end, they stood down and let the city fall - because they truly believed it would put the apocalypse in motion, and they preferred that outcome over the horrible conditions that puritanism places on existence.

america is indeed the new rome. but it's the new new rome. the rome that lost itself to fundamentalist christianity....

for those that aren't aware, this is a psychological test (of somewhat dubious value) to determine self-awareness. it clearly demonstrates what is becoming a widely held consensus: elephants are smarter than chimps. beside that, it's pretty much expected behaviour, with the exception of the gorilla, who would actually be expected to "get it" pretty fast. but gorillas demonstrate variation like every other species. it looks like this particular gorilla is not the hardest chest in the forest.

you're making a very subtle argument, and you're correct on the semantic detail that "gender nonconformity" is not a mental illness - it's just personal expression. but, i think what you're likely coming up against (i haven't read your comments...) is an inability to distinguish between the identity and the dysphoria. and, in truth the difference is pretty blurry having lived through it, to the point that i couldn't imagine somebody with no experience being able to actually understand it. the point of confusion is really quite understandable.

i think it's disingenuous to try and argue that 100% of the negative aspects of dysphoria are from outside sources. a big part of it comes from the reality that the person looking back at you in the mirror is not the person you want it to be, and that's entirely self-perpetuating. the actual medical argument that justifies medical treatment is to prevent depression, which is seen as otherwise unavoidable. one of the primary causes of the dysphoria is the identity mismatch. people that don't have that dysphoria can likely live happy lives as occasional crossdressers, meaning you're dealing with a different issue; the transgendered condition is explicitly defined by the dysphoria caused by the mismatch in perceived and actual identity, which to me sounds an awful lot like a mental disorder.

if there's not a disorder underlying it, it becomes a mere cosmetic procedure, and "gender dysphoria" becomes just another kind of teen angst. i think it's imperative that "i'm in the wrong body" is not understood as the same thing as "this dress makes me look fat".

obviously, it doesn't follow that there's a "cure", or at least not on the terms presented by the right. logically speaking, there are two answers: you can either try and stamp out the mismatched identity, or you can facilitate transition. the general perception is that the latter is usually more successful, and generally preferable, in an ethical sense. but, it doesn't negate the possibility of the first option - although it would require pretty heavy tactics, leaning towards an implementation of the brainwashing scenes in a clockwork orange or some other horrific shock tactics.

but, on a semantic level, the argument presented here is accurate. playing with gender is not a mental illness. rather, gender dysphoria is a type of depression with transition as it's only known (and ethical) solution.

"what i'm saying is that if we support the dictatorship of the two-party system then, eventually, through enough reform brought on by that very dictatorship, it will in time whither away."

is it still a farce, after thirty-seven repetitions? how does that work, exactly?

also, the kind of candidate you envision would be dead faster than you can say "bobby kennedy". don't worry - it will be the action of an islamic extremist.

Aleksandra Markovic
I just have one question for those who are openly in support of Bruce changing into Caitlyn - if your arguments (being true to yourself, acceptance, not living a lie, etc) happen to be used for incest, pedophilia or something like that, would you support that too? That siblings could say that by fucking one another is them being true to themselves and having relations outside the family is them living a lie, same could say pedophiles or those who prefer having sex with animals! Or those groups can demand their rights now that LBGT community is fighting for their rights. Where does it end? Will everything no matter how weird it may seem be accepted cause of the same arguments about tolerance, acceptance etc. I can understand LGBT community, but I can't understand incest or pedophiles. I just can't. But how to differentiate one from another, give rights to one community and not to others who can use the arguments that LGBT uses? Should rights be given to everyone then?

deathtokoalas
+Aleksandra Markovic polygamy is legal in lots of places in the world, especially in areas where mormon and muslim cultures dominate. these are also some of the most oppressive places for queers to live. incest hit it's highest point of acceptance during the religious fundamentalism of the middle ages, when queers were routinely burned in public - often, as witches when they were female. pedophilia has come in and out of acceptance, and hit a high point of acceptance during the moral outrage of the victorian era. further, fluid concepts of sexuality were quite common in the ancient european world, entirely independently of any of these things.

the issue is obviously one of consent and how we define it. but, the reality is that there's no causal connection between any of these issues. mormons can hate guys and have multiple partners at the same time, and don't see a contradiction in it. the hapsburgs had no problem interbreeding themselves into sterility, while enforcing catholic doctrine.

the more reasonable way to understand the issue is by looking at the way society measures it's focus on reproduction. societies facing negative population pressures tend to legislate rules that attack sexual freedom, whereas societies that don't tend to be more open. the united states is not currently facing negative population pressures.

but, if you're curious, i don't personally see anything wrong with polygamy or incest - so long as birth control is used in incest, and then the issue isn't the sexual act itself but the consequences of it. i don't think the state has any business legislating rules that tell siblings not to have sex with each other. i think fetal alcohol syndrome and the effects of nicotine are much larger public health issues. animals and kids can't reasonably consent, but i think the age of consent should be flexible depending on various considerations and shouldn't be enforced to the letter of the law.

the question of whether it's "weird" or not is none of your business. the meaningful question is whether it's harmful.

i mean, those darned muslims. first polygamy - next they'll be....not stoning gays....? letting women drive?

Joshua Pace
+Mili Fernandez Where's the difference? If someone feels like they're a guy or girl, as long as what they do doesn't hurt someone it's fine, so you should be fine with bestiality. If someone feels like they're an animal too, and they want to have sex with animals, then you should be fine and even support it. If it's not hurting anyone, and it's how they really feel, you should approve of it.

Ben Tahash
+Joshua Pace You'd be hurting the animal, dumbfuck.

Joshua Pace
+Ben Tahash The argument still stands, the animal isn't human. If someone owns a dog and wants to hurt it, you could argue that it's their dog, and they can do what they want with it.

deathtokoalas
+Joshua Pace if you could find me talking animals that can express consent, i'd agree with you. the issue is not the act, it's the inability to produce consent. and, no, parrots don't count.

and, no you can't argue that you can beat your dog because it's your property. the fuck is that?

Aleksandra Markovic
Hurtful argument , which was mostly used in this discussion is a relative term because it is hard to tell what is hurtful to others. Pedophilia obviously is, that's not the question. But everything abnormal is hurtful in the beginning, in the sense of adjustment and coming into terms of this new situation.

If you say the argument of not causing harm to someone else, be careful. Incest practitioners can say that in particular if they have no intention of having children, which in their case is the main argument contra given possible health problems, or those who willingly participate in polygamy, given that they chose to live that way and they all are adults completely in charge of their life.

deathtokoalas
+Aleksandra Markovic again: what about people having sex under the influence of alcohol? what about pregnant mothers that drink and smoke and do crack cocaine? or walk through polluted cities, or live near factories? or don't wear sunscreen? or expose themselves to harmful radiation from tv sets and microwaves? when will we pass laws that ban all of this?

it seems like the focus on incest is rather arbitrary, when so many children are already born into so many terrible situations.

siblings have an obligation to use contraception - or get an abortion, if they forget. otherwise, i couldn't care less what they do, so long as it is consensual.

(deleted response)

odisy64
but just like transgender people pedophilia is not a physical disorder but a mental one so is incest, pedophilia doesn't have to hurt someone but it can and transgenders are not immune to the terrible nature of humans , pedophilia hurts the child and transgender people could hurt there parents due to them not being ale to have grand children.

deathtokoalas
+odisy64 it's not my responsibility to please my parents. sorry.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
man, i can't even make sense of the idea of transgendered rights implying a global sharia dictatorship. it's like a grab bag of state created villains, randomly pieced together in a completely contradictory, totally nonsensical way. the only rational response i can fathom is that they'd be too busy stoning each other to take away your guns, or be communists. i think i need a meme of gargamel right now...

if that idea has the slightest bit of traction anywhere at all, i might agree with you that the end is probably near.

if anybody...

.....even one person.....

"secretly, the gay islamists are in kahoots with the nazi russian communists and the irs to redistribute your guns to starving kids in africa"

run with that. i dare you.

(deleted response)

Aleksandra Markovic
+MyMrCookies what about incest then, especially if they do not want to have children and they are both voluntary involved? Would you give incest the same rights then given the criteria you mentioned? That's what I am concerned about and the topic of my comment.

deathtokoalas
+Aleksandra Markovic why are you concerned about who other people have consensual sex with? this isn't an issue where the state or general population has the prerogative to grant rights. it's a tyranny of the majority situation, where constitutions exist to prevent the mob from getting involved in people's private affairs. it's not up to you or anybody else to give or take away rights in this circumstance.

charlene mitchell
+Aleksandra Markovic NWO: "The Course of Tolerance" is what its all about.  This is a prepartory for pedophile, incest, and transhuman intercourse.  People need to be condition for this well in advance of the actual international organizational shift.

deathtokoalas
+charlene mitchell when bush defined the new world order, he defined a system where america gets to rule unopposed because there weren't any pesky communist russians around anymore. this has been accomplished through international financial bodies, multinational trade agreements and liberal interventionist arguments for imperial wars. what, exactly, do you think that these interests have to gain from the slow process of sexual liberation? do you expect them to monopolize the market in horse pornography?

"our evil plan has worked! mwahahahaha! soon, we will have absolute control over...

wait. what is this internet you speak of?"

this guy is an attention whore transvestite, and his enforcement of anachronistic stereotypes is not helping.

you'll never get the right to support "handouts". and, even the left is leaning pretty anarchist nowadays.

there's a big difference between obama saying "i'm going to do this and this and this" and then not doing any of it, and somebody being specifically selected by a committee and then abandoning it. i think the point was kind of danced around: it's a last straw for democracy. if candidates are willing to be contemptuous on such a brazen level, it's time to grab the pitchforks.

but, i don't think this is the answer.

there's the old jeffersonian cliche about an educated electorate, and it's really exactly what you're coming up against here. those lies don't fool me. they don't fool either of the people in the video. why do they fool so many?

but, this is a really fundamental issue. the reality is that if our voters can't be bothered to run a fact check in the internet era then we simply can't have a democracy. the masses should be able to look at the propaganda and scream "bollocks!". and, that's why i actually don't believe in restricting financing: if this is the determinant, the society can't be a democracy, anyways.

you should be focusing more on reforming the education system. you do that, this negates itself on it's own - and we can start talking about democracy as more than a naive abstraction.

i'm just wondering if maybe you might want to take a step back and ask yourself the question of what a convention like this is. there's a bit of a generational disconnect (when i was your age, this stuff was just barely getting off the ground); the comparable attraction when i was young was raves.

some guys were into the music, and i'm sure there's plenty of dudes that are actually into the anime. but, if you asked an average male rave party goer in the early 00s why they were showing up to these parties, the answer would be "it's full of half naked women". then, they'd go home and listen to tool.

it's an old story. consider bars that throw "ladies nights" where drinks are half price. they do that because they have difficulty attracting women, and they know that guys want to go to the bars where the women are.

what i'm getting at is that the industry is likely focused much less around the topic of the convention and much more around the idea of doing things that they think will attract women for guys to ogle.

you're likely actually the product.

it's just another reason to not show up. but maybe it's a bit of a perspective shift to kind of realize that and get your head around it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgKhGIkWfJo

if these conventions are really important to you, you're probably better off starting your own than expecting any kind of serious reaction from the organizers, who are no doubt aware that their entire business model collapses if they try and stand up for you with anything more than empty language.

Luna Lanie
+deathtokoalas While I appreciate your input I don't agree since I've been to other cons and there wasn't this problem. Maybe it's the fact they aggressively marketed this con to the general public but it has changed and I have many people saying the exact same thing about this years environment

deathtokoalas
+Luna Lanie it's just that there's a pattern that comes up if you look at these counter-cultural generational trends - raves, punk rock, hippie festivals. they start off being meeting places for people trying to live alternative lifestyles. but, that turns the attendants into the product, as a market develops. each generation ends up struggling to reassert the foundational principles that were initially present and inevitably fails in the end.

something that worked for a little while when punk rock went hardcore bro in the early 90s was the riot grrrl movement, which attempted to reclaim a female-friendly space through a diy ethic.

as time continues, the continued commercialization is likely to overpower any attempts to reassert foundational principles, and the issue is likely to get worse. if you really want to reclaim the space, you're likely going to have to re-organize alternative structures away from that commercialization in order to do it.

Luna Lanie
+deathtokoalas I totally understand now what you are saying. Time to start planning LunaCon!

finalizing clarity (inri054)

inri035 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/clarity

finalizing the wave (inri053)

inri034 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave

finalizing jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj (inri052)

inri033 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

finalizing strung out / give ‘em hell, harry (inri051)

inri032 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out

finalizing existence (inri050)

no, that was silly thinking...

they're really inaudible in four of the five mixes unless you're listening specifically for them, and they're sparse at that, but i've updated the string mix to be click free. it was mostly noticeable over the end section. i'd have to do this for the chamber mix comp, anyways.

inri031 has been updated and permanently finalized.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/existence

inri031 is going to require some careful thought, specifically with the string orchestra version. if i update it, it will probably be to replace it.

the weather here was really nice all week, but went to shit last night. the drop in temperature gives me an opportunity to get some compost out tomorrow morning. but i've otherwise committed to zero packs of cigarettes over june - and am absolutely serious about enforcing it. i was almost cold turkey in february, but the weather helped. june is going to be a bit tougher, but i'm not cracking. this should hopefully overlap with the web site push, once i get through this clean-up and push through to completed material up to mid 2004, putting aside incomplete material over late 2003 and 2004 for a few weeks.

i have a final appointment on the 16th and will be mailing my odsp on the 16th or 17th, for analysis some time around the beginning of july. i will either be granted a few more years or have three months to get a reaction. i've already decided to appeal, which will probably give me a few more months. but if i have to do that, i will have to drop the website idea and get back to production, because i will be in a race against time at that point. i've already decided that i don't have a future post-odsp. i haven't decided on an exact path, which will probably depend on the nature of the denial, if it happens.

i'm thinking about hitting three shows this month for sure and a few more are maybes, but a lot of it is going to depend on how focused i am on what i'm doing. i could very well not want to go to any at all, depending on factors like the weather, my disposition and whether i think i can get through it without buying smokes. i've previously prioritized the show and said "i'll quit the next day". i'm reversing that priority. if i'm convinced i'm going to crack, i'm going to stay in.

so, this is an important few months for me coming up. by the end of june, i should get through a lot of loose ends and have an entire period of my music career behind me, and i should have a better understanding of how likely it is that i'm going to be able to plan around disability.