Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2500-2504 (29 July- August 2, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 06 Aug 2013, 13:16 ---He was comparing her to other inmates, I don't think he was saying that made her "less female".
--- End quote ---
He was suggesting that her non-conformity could be explained by viewing her relative to a different baseline.
I.E.
"Why are the the astronaut's bones more brittle than usual?" "That's normal for someone who has been in space so long."
"Why is Johnny so violent?" "That's common among kids that have been abused."
"Why is Jenny's hair blonde?" "That's normal for people from Sweden."
Etc.
Akima:
--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 12:35 ---If 1 and 2 are true, it seems fair to question what is causing the outlier.
--- End quote ---
You questioned May's femininity because it didn't fit your model, instead of questioning whether your model of femininity is accurate. Why is this important? Because this way of thinking lies at the heart of sexism.
I am good at maths. From time to time, when I demonstrate this, I get patronising sexist jokes about having a "boy brain" (because "girls suck at maths, amirite?"). The tone of such jokes is often patronisingly positive, as if I should be grateful for being "upgraded" to the status of an honorary man. I am not a boy, so I can't have a boy-brain. I am a woman, so nothing I do can be unfeminine. Some of the things I do might not fit some stereotyped, sexist models of femininity, but that reflects on the models, and the people who adopt them, not on me.
Valdís:
--- Quote from: Akima on 06 Aug 2013, 15:45 ---I am good at maths. From time to time, when I demonstrate this, I get patronising sexist jokes about having a "boy brain" (because "girls suck at maths, amirite?"). The tone of such jokes is often patronisingly positive, as if I should be grateful for being "upgraded" to the status of an honorary man. I am not a boy, so I can't have a boy-brain. I am a woman, so nothing I do can be unfeminine. Some of the things I do might not fit some stereotyped, sexist models of femininity, but that reflects on the models, and the people who adopt them, not on me.
--- End quote ---
"Cis folks - If you think "passing" is the highest compliment, if you think "I would have never known" are words of praise, I have news."
Yeah, it can be pretty sick how non-marginalized people think of others.
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Valdís on 06 Aug 2013, 15:22 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 05 Aug 2013, 19:28 ---I never claimed that the AIs were 'less than' anything.
--- End quote ---
You literally said "where the AIs are concerned" as if something inherently sexist and inappropriate was suddenly fine just because these people aren't human.
--- End quote ---
You seem to be (repeatedly) associating "being different" with "being inferior." I'm not.
Since clarification doesn't prevent you from making this assumption, I don't see how we can have a productive conversation on that point.
You're going to read what you choose to read, regardless of what I write.
I said; "Thus, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to play "one of these things is not like the other" where the AIs are concerned."
Do you think that May's behavior is normative for the AIs we've seen so far?
Also, by what standard are you suddenly the arbiter of what's appropriate? This is fantastically presumptuous.
--- Quote ---Also QC isn't in friggin' Victorian England
--- End quote ---
If you can understand how the example applies to England, you will be better able to understand how it applies to QC.
Fish have no word for water. (They have no word for anything, of course, but that's beside the point.)
--- Quote ---"and the very fact that you would consider her being, in your eyes, "male-like"
--- End quote ---
You're missing the point where other anthro-PCs (and humans, for that matter) have adopted characteristics which were sterotypically gendered, sometimes strongly so.
--- Quote ---It's also worth noting that talking about how "PC" something is.. is generally a huge red flag going up.
--- End quote ---
I'm not a big fan of people who try and assert dominance or win arguments via fashionable language. I'm sure it's a useful ego-defensive strategy, though. But it rarely moves a conversation forward. It basically boils down to 'conversations are only relevant if conducted in my chosen language.'
--- Quote ---Since when do you have an urgent need for a predictive model on whether some woman is "really a guy", then?
--- End quote ---
1. Are you deliberately not understanding out of defensiveness? The comic itself introduced the question in regards to May complaining about not having genitalia, introducing strongly gendered anthro-pcs, etc.
2. The notion of trans-sexuality itself asserts that sex is relevant to either cultural interactions or personal identity. Otherwise, why would someone undergo surgery to become transsexual in spite of the associated stigma?
--- Quote ---You are clearly just making excuses for cisnormative sexism.
--- End quote ---
You are clearly just looking for a way to put me in a category where you can invalidate everything I say rather than considering the content of the statements.
--- Quote ---"because people in your group tend towards X, it is correct to assume you are also X
--- End quote ---
Again, you are not quoting me here. If you want to quote me, get a literal quote. You are doing very badly with paraphrase.
--- Quote --- It is more or less identical to saying that because in the U.S. black people are disproportionately put in prison that you're therefore justified in treating all people of that group as criminals.
--- End quote ---
No, it is not. At all. However it would be possible to note that the tradition of sagging a person's pants comes from a disproportionate number of African Americans being in the prison system, with that tradition bleeding over into the pop culture. It would also be relevant and informative (though perhaps not acceptable to you) to note someone's association or disassociation with certain trends commonly associated with poorer, urban African American culture, including sagging, rap, AAVE, and similar associations with the norms of one culture or another.
--- Quote ---Even if you believe that it's inevitable that women will statistically end up different in such ways, then that still doesn't at all account for the fact that 100% of female characters wouldn't be like May as things stand. This betrays that fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. If you really understood that then there's no reason for her to be out of place at all, even when thinking of women in such a way. But no, even when talking about "statistics" you none-the-less revert back to "None of the women I know".
--- End quote ---
First off, I've taken advanced statistics so your statement comes across as rather desperate.
Second, I've already explicitly acknowledged (some of) the limitations of my sample. It's not random in various ways. I don't claim to be doing a survey with error bars. People do make inferences based on their personal experiences, while hopefully noting the limitations of those experiences. You've certainly done the first regarding your 'red flag' comment, after all. You're welcome to judge yourself by the same standards that you're trying to use to judge me.
wiserd:
--- Quote from: Akima on 06 Aug 2013, 15:45 ---
--- Quote from: wiserd on 06 Aug 2013, 12:35 ---If 1 and 2 are true, it seems fair to question what is causing the outlier.
--- End quote ---
You questioned May's femininity because it didn't fit your model, instead of questioning whether your model of femininity is accurate.
--- End quote ---
Asked and answered. You are repeating an assertion that I've already addressed. Please re-read what I've written. Thanks.
--- Quote ---Why is this important? Because this way of thinking lies at the heart of sexism.
I am good at maths. From time to time, when I demonstrate this, I get patronising sexist jokes about having a "boy brain" (because "girls suck at maths, amirite?"). The tone of such jokes is often patronisingly positive, as if I should be grateful for being "upgraded" to the status of an honorary man. I am not a boy, so I can't have a boy-brain. I am a woman, so nothing I do can be unfeminine. Some of the things I do might not fit some stereotyped, sexist models of femininity, but that reflects on the models, and the people who adopt them, not on me.
--- End quote ---
While I don't go out of my way to insult anyone, I care more about if a model is true or predictive than whether it is sexist or not. I've had friends say that we have to assume that men and women are identical because any difference will be used to justify male privilege. While I sympathize wholeheartedly with this appeal to consequences, it's still ultimately fallacious. It's not going to lead me to embrace anything that I believe that evidence suggests is false.
I am absolutely and perpetually open to arguments that any of my beliefs are non-predictive. Use of words like 'sexism' too frequently are methods by which people discard their capacity to think rationally.
--- Quote ---I am a woman, so nothing I do can be unfeminine.
--- End quote ---
I'm not going to get into the particulars regarding the patronization you've encountered. I'm sure you've suffered and I sympathize with that. You should be able to do whatever you like without harassment. But from a strictly theoretical standpoint I truly don't see why one (or a constellation) of your abilities couldn't possibly be unusual for women but common for men. I don't really care very much how this difference is expressed (and the cause of the discrepancy isn't really the issue), so long as such trends can still be rationally discussed without a particular conclusion being religiously required, a priori.
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