I follow a lot of truly terrible people on Twitter — Manosphere bloggers, white supremacists, Fidelbogen — so it took me a moment to realize that this dopey, backwards tweet didn’t come from some obscure reactionary bigot but from none other than antifeminist celebrity academic Christina Hoff Sommers, inventor of “equity feminism” and the author of the bestselling The War Against Boys.
If "bossy" has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn't we stop using male-vilifying terms like "mansplaining" & "rape culture"? @banbossy
— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) March 12, 2014
Oy.
Also, I think she meant to end that with #BanBossy, not @BanBossy.
Interesting that she doesn’t seem to understand hashtags any more than she understands rape culture.
I’ve been having a lot of shared dreams with hubby lately. (Including one where he was dressed up as a superhero! That was fun.) The perks of being a loony!
Also, even if it IS safe, I would not want to be in anything called a Space Needle during an earthquake. It sounds nauseating!
It may withstand the earthquake, but won’t it be a wee bit wobbly while it’s happening?
It’s supposed to be a little wobbly. If the building has no give, that’s when bad things happen.
I know, hellkell, but I still wouldn’t want to be up there.
I don’t even like the idea of being in tall buildings that wobble a bit in high winds. Ground floor will do me nicely.
Shared dreams, cool! I don’t think Mr K dreams, or if he does he doesn’t remember it.
I should ask next time he’s snoozing on my lap of an evening.
Sorry, emily. Not everyone does know that.
I’m far more scared of being on a low level in a building when liquification happens.
I’m waaaay more concerned about a big quake and that tunnel they’re building to replace the viaduct in Seattle. That’s my liquifaction zone nightmare.
RE: Kittehs
Shared dreams, cool! I don’t think Mr K dreams, or if he does he doesn’t remember it.
It’s not something that happens all that often, and isn’t under conscious control, but I’ve had like three or four in the past week, which is like unprecedented here. I won’t complain; it’s a nice break from the nightmarathon I was having last year!
LBT – It certainly would be! (A nice break, that is.)
Say, that visualisation you told me about? Haven’t done it much lately, what with stupid rotten distractions, but it’s certainly helped catch moments when other stuff’s happening. Like last night, I knew Mr K was lying on the couch with his head on my lap, and for a moment I realised I was out-of-body playing with his hair. An out-of-arm experience, you might say.
I was thinking the other day the morning spiritual exercises could be called going for a snog in the park. 😉
Well, jennydevildoll, you haven’t exactly shown familiarity with anyone else here despite having read for quite a while, so why would you expect us to remember you’ve mentioned previously that you have mental issues? For that matter, surely you know this place well enough to know that ableism doesn’t fly here.
“Living on disability” doesn’t automatically imply mental issues.
True, disability has many forms, physical or chronic illness as well.
It’s only been recently that I’ve began to set my email to reply on threads, though I’d comment on a post David made here or there. I’m not super familiar with everyone here. I’d say this blog gets more comments on it’s posts than any other one I read, so I haven’t always looked through them all. I’m starting to.
I’m glad they were handy! We honestly started doing them on a daily basis maybe around the age of eleven (having absolutely no idea that’s what they were) before bed, that dull time you’re lying there waiting to fall asleep. WHO KNEW WHAT WE HAD STARTED.
Back then we called it Brain TV. At the time, we thought it was pretty clever–“Guys, guys… did you know you can tell yourself any story you want, with pretty pictures and cool sound effects… IN YOUR HEAD???? HOLY FUCKBALLS”
And then we were never bored ever again.
LOL and Brain TV wins – no commercials, no fees, no horrible reruns, no Fox.
Oh, and the funny thing? I thought getting an idea of the table would be really difficult, but the thing just came into my head and fixed itself straight away.
Fairly impractical table, I might add. Its proportions are weird.
Yup. Little did I know that multi aside, we were pretty much training our imagination, which came in really handy when we started writing and drawing more. So really, what started as a form of prepubescent self-entertainment actually became my livelihood! (Well, sorta.)
One girl I knew had her table stuck at a bizarre angle that she couldn’t rearrange. Apparently that just happens sometimes.
Sentient tables! RUN WHILE YOU CAN!
I’m always amazed at your imagination and writing and drawing skills. No, amazed is the wrong word, it implies surprise. Stunned by the awesomeness would say it better.
That is the exact opposite of what I just said.
*I* said there are 2 meanings, one of which is the correct dictionary meaning, and the other is slang. And they both get used. *YOU* were the one that claimed there was only one usage, which was positive.
I’d like Brain TV if my writers were better.
@Kim – Well no, what I said was that just because some other people, who I guessed were not in the fields I was referring to, try to use it as a put down that I saw no reason that I or any other performer should not continue to use it as a term of admiration for one who is a charismatic or commanding performer. Yes, some people use it interchangeably with “drama queen” (if you want to talk gendered slurs, why does no one speak of drama kings?) but I don’t. I also don’t use it for people who aren’t singing or doing performance in any way, come to think of it….
Welp, you sure have been wasting your time, since Kim already said that 30 hours ago.
@jennydevildoll I am sorry that you have a condition that people use to dismiss your arguments, your opinions and your experience. I can imagine how frustrating and hurtful that is. I am sorry that you had that experience repeated here and were frustrated and hurt by my choice of words. Please believe that I did not and would never do that intentionally.
Why a number of us are refuting you when you say
is because what you actually said was:
which, I hope you’ll agree, can be taken to imply your disbelief that “diva” is ever a put down. And that is exactly the implication that Kim (and I and a number of other commenters) took from it. and why the immediate response from a commenter was to quote the urban dictionary to show the common slang use.
Where-as I gather that you were actually saying that using “diva” as a put-down is pretty pathetic because it is correctly used as a term of admiration by performers.
I used to have no fear of heights, and I climbed up trees like a monkey. Now heights weird me out. Being in tall buildings that sway in the wind freaks me out even though I realize they’re supposed to. I guess.
Could someone explain to me why tall buildings don’t just blow over when hit by strong winds again?
Equilibrium!
I love equilibrium equations.
@titianblue – Thank you. I can see where my first reaction could imply I was unaware that it was used as a put-down, I tried to clarify that in comments after. But yes, it would be right to say I find using “diva” as a put-down pathetic, especially given that I see it as a performer who is not only talented, but has put in the work and passion to really master what they do. It has a sense of active initiative taken that way. It’s also interesting to note that unlike other put-downs we’ve discussed, like “bossy”, “bitch” or “slut”, it didn’t start out as something generally perceived as negative that people have tried to confront with reclaiming, or making taboo, or other tactics — it was a word that started out being positive, that misogynists have somehow managed to use as a way that comes out as a negative.
BTW, I did read the Mary Beard transcript last night before bed. I liked it, one thing that stuck out to me was her talking of “androgyne” used in the past to describe a woman who was perceived as having qualities thought of as being masculine, such as being an effective public speaker. But now people are starting to acknowledge things like pangender and genderfluid which don’t adhere to defining particular qualities as masculine or feminine. Or in the First Nations cultures of the Americas, the idea of two-spirit individuals.
@auggz:
That same earthquake is the reason there’s a bit of Kentucky that isn’t contiguous with the rest of Kentucky. The Mississip’ threw a big loop south and then north again and suddenly a bunch of Bluegrassers became Show-Mes. Not that Missouri was a state at the time.
@trans_commie: Yay for good therapy! Double yay for reduced fees!
The summer after the World Trade Center attack, I was walking through a parking garage at a hospital and couldn’t help imagining all those tons of concrete, rebar and vehicles coming down on top of me.
Incidentally, there’s an episode of House where a parking garage collapses and one of the survivors is trapped by the leg. Yeah, that was a rough one…
Okay. Kind of puts my parking garage fantasy into perspective.
And oh gods, those tunnels are under water, aren’t they? The closest thing to me like that right now is the road that goes out from mainland North Carolina to the Outer Banks. Sometimes it goes waaaaay up to let ships go under it, and sometimes it lets ships go over it.
@kim:
Sometimes I think my Brain TV writers are channeling the Lost writers. They’re good on spectacle, crap on backstory.