a bit about open source sexuality
Really, I'm not even in a bad mood, so much, I just adore this drenched-to-the-skin glare:
see more crazy cat pics
*Ahem*. Anyway. Moving on.
sphynxcatvp tipped me to the ongoing controversy, regarding the Open Source Boob Project. The project in a nutshell seems to be: wouldn't it be a much better world, a much kinder world, if men (and women) were allowed the freedom to say--I think you're really attractive, can I touch your boobs?
And okay, in theory, at least? With people I know, and love, or at least like, and trust...I'm good with that. theferret and others may have a point. But to take it beyond that group of trusted souls...to take it into the realm of anyone out there who may wander by, that I don't know, don't trust, don't care for...To take it to the point where I have to wear a button that implies "Yes I'm okay with any random stranger touching my boobs" or "No, get the hell away from me you mutant"--that's more than the point where I start backing away.
Reading through various answers to this (including thebratqueen's rant, a pointed set of analysis and commentary from tablesaw to theferret, kate_nepveu's simple and terrifying observation, mswyrr's direct allegory, springheel_jack's defining patriarchy and privilege in context, seajules' comment on someone else's post, brown_betty's response, and the list can and does go on), this is what I've managed to take away from it:
Interesting idea. Bad execution.
To go a little more in-depth, though...I think this is where most men (note: I say MOST) just don't get it. And there may be no way they can, by and large, because by and large they just don't have the experiences that women do. And I'm not just talking walking down to the mini-mart and getting catcalls from the basketball court, or something. I'm talking daily friggin' life, here. I'm talking, the way most womens' clothes are cut, the way most womens' shoes are made. The advertising pointed at us that reinforces the message that we are loathsome drippy smelly creatures who must be washed, perfumed, shaved, bathed, primped, powdered and made up to an extreme before we dare show our faces out of doors. The casual assumptions made just on the basis of appearance alone--if I "dress sexy", then I'm inviting sexual attention, f'rinstance; if I dress casually, then I'm a dyke who hates men.
It's even more noticeable in my chosen virtual world, by the way. Take for instance the one fellow who used to hang out with myself and my set of friends and loves, loudly proclaiming he was gay. Constantly proclaiming he was gay. Yet--as a gay man, apparently, with stated zero interest in women...he felt perfectly fine to touch my body.
Yes, okay, it's an online world. His actual body, my actual body, are miles if not continents away from each other. But it's that level of assumption, again--that men, whether or not they are attracted to women, have the apparent 'right' to touch women, simply because they're men.
This does not only happen online. And this is what most men do not get. And this is why theferret got so much flack and screaming from various women--and not a few men--over this.
This isn't some rallying feminist call to action. This isn't a bunch of "angry dykes" getting irked at heterosexual males. This goes deeper. This is cultural.
Things like this rise up and I suddenly get why women in the Middle East go along with hijabs.
Now, don't mistake me--I'm not setting out to vilify theferret, here. As he's explained more than once, this was a mixed group of individuals, and having come across the mindset before, as I said at the start of this--interesting idea. Would it be a better world if we didn't have fear, as women, if we didn't get that bone-deep unease in us, or that one step further, anger, at being reduced to a set of body parts, and not another person standing there, heart and mind and body all, wanting to be addressed? Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it would.
But it's not the world we have now. And actions like this should show, if nothing else, how vast and very deep the separation is between the world theferret and his friends want to have, and the world we actually have.
Let's make it personal for a bit. Not everyone here knows me, but of those that do, you'll know I'm speaking truth here.
I am not conventionally attractive. I am so far from conventionally attractive as to stop some people dead in their tracks, staring at me, as if I'm the new mutant on the ranch. I am heavy-set, to be vague ("morbidly obese" is what certain doctors have called it), I am not as active as I was able to be in the past, due to osteoarthritis in my knees, so I now add a cane in to my daily travels. And there's the beard.
A century ago, or hells, even fifty years ago, I might have sought employment in a carnival. I'm not kidding on that. I am daunting for some to look at. And that's without adding in my flair for clothes, which is decidedly unique, and jarring on their own.
If I 'dress up', if I wear the skirt and the hose and the pretty tops, I confuse a lot of people. If I 'dress down', sometimes I'm taken for a guy (not kidding on that, btw, it's happened, and recently, and far more than once). I know my curves are there, I know my breasts are there, but I blur the lines for a large section of humanity. Just by being me.
Yet, from the age of thirteen on (and no, not kidding, THIRTEEN), I've received at least one or two marriage proposals--usually from total strangers, earnest but total strangers--every few months. Year in, year out. Doesn't matter my weight, my dress, my physical appearance.
Doesn't matter if it's straight men or gay men, either--about half of the proposals I get? Are from gay men.
No, I don't get it either. But think about that for a minute--fat bearded chick, hobbling about on a cane, mostly wears Birkenstocks and flannel shirts, still getting hassled and proposed to by casual strangers...imagine the conventionally pretty ones, what they go through?
Or to boil it down even farther, though this point's been made before, too--
Pardon, I think you're beautiful, may I hug you?
would have gone over MUCH, MUCH BETTER than Pardon, I think you're beautiful, may I touch your boobs?
Or, as roadnotes said (in a quote I nicked for the profile): "I am not a public access body."
Hee--another case of implicit threat in fur:
see more crazy cat pics
Yep. That is the look of the human who's going to wake up with claw marks.
Programming in action:
more cat pictures
Whee! Now where's that reality compiler program again? I think our code's gone buggy.
In other news, Neil Gaiman says a lovely little bit on advice from writers, and Doug Jones being inhumanly tall.
I love this picture. In virtually every presentation of it:
see more crazy cat pics
Bwahahahaha....
Think this is one praying mantis? That won't be praying for much longer:
more cat pictures
Aheh.
Still poking about for fashions and such. In the meantime, just to tie this up and keep it more or less focused: a short but daunting post on women and cultural bias.
Off now for more hobbling about, one leg went out on me today, resulting in not a lot of anything getting done. Bah for that. I'm working on getting it un-cramped and back to holding me up. Y'know, leglike and all.
Also: finally saw Grindhouse. Thought the first story was just odd from the get-go, but "Death Proof"? I actually sort of liked. In a very wrong way.
see more crazy cat pics
*Ahem*. Anyway. Moving on.
sphynxcatvp tipped me to the ongoing controversy, regarding the Open Source Boob Project. The project in a nutshell seems to be: wouldn't it be a much better world, a much kinder world, if men (and women) were allowed the freedom to say--I think you're really attractive, can I touch your boobs?
And okay, in theory, at least? With people I know, and love, or at least like, and trust...I'm good with that. theferret and others may have a point. But to take it beyond that group of trusted souls...to take it into the realm of anyone out there who may wander by, that I don't know, don't trust, don't care for...To take it to the point where I have to wear a button that implies "Yes I'm okay with any random stranger touching my boobs" or "No, get the hell away from me you mutant"--that's more than the point where I start backing away.
Reading through various answers to this (including thebratqueen's rant, a pointed set of analysis and commentary from tablesaw to theferret, kate_nepveu's simple and terrifying observation, mswyrr's direct allegory, springheel_jack's defining patriarchy and privilege in context, seajules' comment on someone else's post, brown_betty's response, and the list can and does go on), this is what I've managed to take away from it:
Interesting idea. Bad execution.
To go a little more in-depth, though...I think this is where most men (note: I say MOST) just don't get it. And there may be no way they can, by and large, because by and large they just don't have the experiences that women do. And I'm not just talking walking down to the mini-mart and getting catcalls from the basketball court, or something. I'm talking daily friggin' life, here. I'm talking, the way most womens' clothes are cut, the way most womens' shoes are made. The advertising pointed at us that reinforces the message that we are loathsome drippy smelly creatures who must be washed, perfumed, shaved, bathed, primped, powdered and made up to an extreme before we dare show our faces out of doors. The casual assumptions made just on the basis of appearance alone--if I "dress sexy", then I'm inviting sexual attention, f'rinstance; if I dress casually, then I'm a dyke who hates men.
It's even more noticeable in my chosen virtual world, by the way. Take for instance the one fellow who used to hang out with myself and my set of friends and loves, loudly proclaiming he was gay. Constantly proclaiming he was gay. Yet--as a gay man, apparently, with stated zero interest in women...he felt perfectly fine to touch my body.
Yes, okay, it's an online world. His actual body, my actual body, are miles if not continents away from each other. But it's that level of assumption, again--that men, whether or not they are attracted to women, have the apparent 'right' to touch women, simply because they're men.
This does not only happen online. And this is what most men do not get. And this is why theferret got so much flack and screaming from various women--and not a few men--over this.
This isn't some rallying feminist call to action. This isn't a bunch of "angry dykes" getting irked at heterosexual males. This goes deeper. This is cultural.
Things like this rise up and I suddenly get why women in the Middle East go along with hijabs.
Now, don't mistake me--I'm not setting out to vilify theferret, here. As he's explained more than once, this was a mixed group of individuals, and having come across the mindset before, as I said at the start of this--interesting idea. Would it be a better world if we didn't have fear, as women, if we didn't get that bone-deep unease in us, or that one step further, anger, at being reduced to a set of body parts, and not another person standing there, heart and mind and body all, wanting to be addressed? Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it would.
But it's not the world we have now. And actions like this should show, if nothing else, how vast and very deep the separation is between the world theferret and his friends want to have, and the world we actually have.
Let's make it personal for a bit. Not everyone here knows me, but of those that do, you'll know I'm speaking truth here.
I am not conventionally attractive. I am so far from conventionally attractive as to stop some people dead in their tracks, staring at me, as if I'm the new mutant on the ranch. I am heavy-set, to be vague ("morbidly obese" is what certain doctors have called it), I am not as active as I was able to be in the past, due to osteoarthritis in my knees, so I now add a cane in to my daily travels. And there's the beard.
A century ago, or hells, even fifty years ago, I might have sought employment in a carnival. I'm not kidding on that. I am daunting for some to look at. And that's without adding in my flair for clothes, which is decidedly unique, and jarring on their own.
If I 'dress up', if I wear the skirt and the hose and the pretty tops, I confuse a lot of people. If I 'dress down', sometimes I'm taken for a guy (not kidding on that, btw, it's happened, and recently, and far more than once). I know my curves are there, I know my breasts are there, but I blur the lines for a large section of humanity. Just by being me.
Yet, from the age of thirteen on (and no, not kidding, THIRTEEN), I've received at least one or two marriage proposals--usually from total strangers, earnest but total strangers--every few months. Year in, year out. Doesn't matter my weight, my dress, my physical appearance.
Doesn't matter if it's straight men or gay men, either--about half of the proposals I get? Are from gay men.
No, I don't get it either. But think about that for a minute--fat bearded chick, hobbling about on a cane, mostly wears Birkenstocks and flannel shirts, still getting hassled and proposed to by casual strangers...imagine the conventionally pretty ones, what they go through?
Or to boil it down even farther, though this point's been made before, too--
Pardon, I think you're beautiful, may I hug you?
would have gone over MUCH, MUCH BETTER than Pardon, I think you're beautiful, may I touch your boobs?
Or, as roadnotes said (in a quote I nicked for the profile): "I am not a public access body."
Hee--another case of implicit threat in fur:
see more crazy cat pics
Yep. That is the look of the human who's going to wake up with claw marks.
Programming in action:
more cat pictures
Whee! Now where's that reality compiler program again? I think our code's gone buggy.
In other news, Neil Gaiman says a lovely little bit on advice from writers, and Doug Jones being inhumanly tall.
I love this picture. In virtually every presentation of it:
see more crazy cat pics
Bwahahahaha....
Think this is one praying mantis? That won't be praying for much longer:
more cat pictures
Aheh.
Still poking about for fashions and such. In the meantime, just to tie this up and keep it more or less focused: a short but daunting post on women and cultural bias.
Off now for more hobbling about, one leg went out on me today, resulting in not a lot of anything getting done. Bah for that. I'm working on getting it un-cramped and back to holding me up. Y'know, leglike and all.
Also: finally saw Grindhouse. Thought the first story was just odd from the get-go, but "Death Proof"? I actually sort of liked. In a very wrong way.