sundries

[rm]

Patty has a cold. :(

Also, Buffy and Angel? Not here yet.

Finished my WIAD story.

Can we talk about Lady Gaga's new video? Because I could. All day. Not only is it a response to a certain era of Madonna, but it also goes to a lot of strange, strange uncomfortable places, the fascist references in its physical language being close to the top of the list. It's incredibly cool, smart stuff. There needs to be a Gaga Studies Journal, that's all I'm saying.

From all of my friendslist to all of yours: liljacks_corner is a community that has been set up for fan creators to make G-rated stuff for an eight-year-old boy named Jack who has just lost his legs; one of the only things that cheers him up right now is Doctor Who. He's only seen the first two seasons of the New series. What's being requested is a story about a little boy, much like the one it's for, going on an adventure with the Doctor and Rose. Details at the community.

Ready to start hollering? Daring to discuss women in science.

The Century Athletic Club.

New York now has an AllStaints Spitalfields.

Does anyone know more about this: is Judy Shepard's book homophobic? Accusations vague, scenario murky. Bwah? Anyone read it?

Didn't know this: Stephanie Flores, the Peruvian woman van der Sloot has reportedly confessed to killing, was a lesbian.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

If either of you has a Netflix account, you can watch all Fox shows available on DVD on streaming. It's how I've been watching.

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

Lady Gaga is a smart woman, and shes extremely artistic. But this last video made me really uncomfortable. I guess good art does that. I went looking up discussion about what the song is about, and on the forum on her official site, their is a thread about what each song on the album means. Each song is supposed to be about a fear she has. "Alejandro" is supposedly about her fear of sex/relationships.

[rm.livejournal.com]

It _really_ uncomfortable. To the point where I feel like an asshole even mentioning the video without time to write three or four pages on it.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

RE: Gaga - IDK, one minute it's uncomfortable and wonderful and the next there breast guns. Which just made me laugh. Where does the pushing at boundaries stop and the parody begin?

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Where does the pushing at boundaries stop and the parody begin?

Why does there have to be a line there? Parody historically does a lot of pushing boundaries.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

New York now has an All Saints Spitalfields.

I saw that on Broadway last Friday, walking up from the office. The aesthetic of the decor looked interesting enough, but the wares looked little different from those being sold in the stores to either side of it, tbh.

Good wishes to Patty!

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Writing something about Lady Gaga's video could take a week. I think the religious references were the most interesting - the sacred heart, the rosary, the Crusader-inspired white gown. *cough* yup, Madonna *cough*

And then there were hot guys with patent leather pumps and she was riding one of them. Yeah.

Oddly, I found it semi-squicky when she wasn't on top. Hmm.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

I LOVED the sacred heart. Thinking about it outside the experience of watching it I do find it odd that I didn't start laughing until the breast guns showed up.

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

I hope Patty's feeling better soon. Summer colds suck.

Thank you for boosting the signal on liljacks_corner.

I haven't read Judy Shepard's book, but a young friend who is a gay male did, and he found it moving. He also had not known who Matthew Shepard was before reading it, which is mostly unrelated to this specific issue but surprised the hell out of me.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I watched it an it was before I'd seen anything else she'd done and I also grew up through the early madonna years. I was like ... oooh, so *all* kinky Catholics grow up to be like this.

I didn't see it so much as about gay men or whatever the discussion is now, but I thought it was about kink -- particularly kink about costume, clothing, and ... ritual, visually at least. I didn't get the story the vid was tryign to show, but I loved the sense that there was a story. Like you the most I got from it was facism and in particular, the romaticizing/idealizing of facism. (I'm almost entirely talking bout the visuals here).

Then I watched as many of her other vids as I could find easily and sexual violence, power dynamics, and costume fetish all seem to be the predominant themes in her visual style. It's like Lady Gaga is her own personal kink_bingo!

now I want to write a story about how Lady Gaga is a futuristic sex robot gone rogue and Torchwood has to track her down

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

You should make a Lady GaGa Bingo Card!

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

That video blew me away for pretty much the same reasons.

Also, regarding GaGa as a sex robot - there IS a s blog out there that pushes the theory that GaGa is a brainwashed Illuminati Slave. (She and Beyonce, actually). That guy "decodes" her symbols as Illuminati cyphers and does some kind of job on her lyrics.

What fascinates me most is the claim that GaGa = intersex. We're back to the deviant sexual body of the Powerful Woman. I want to write a book on her.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

MASONIC CHECKERBOARDS. Wow, thank you.

(Edited for Not Really Awake Yet.)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Dude, Gaga Stigmata is there for you.

[rm.livejournal.com]

AWESOME.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Wow, the articles about Judy Shepherd's book sure are vague on the issue - that's interesting, as you'd think they'd have an example before they branded it as homophobic. Not comfortable with that.

I *had* heard about Stephany Flores. God, Joran van der Sloot is an all-around creep...

[introductory.livejournal.com]

I just came out of a film studies class, so the entire time I was watching the video (which, to be honest, took me a few tries) I kept trying to analyze it from a film studies perspective, like, appropriation of the male gaze and all that. Gaga's videos are always strange, but this was the first one to make me feel especially nervous.

One of my friends watched it and her first reaction was, "It's Evita on drugs." Which, strangely, doesn't not make sense.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yes! With the Evita! And nervous is so the right word. There's an actual, personal, discomfort with this one that I haven't felt with the others.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

See that's the thing about Lady Gaga, her videos are really aesthetically pleasing to people who like to think, and really aesthetically pleasing to people who don't like to think. So much so that it almost makes you think they mean something because they push buttons that activate responses in different people whether it's 'hot girl!' or 'hey look nun symbolism!'. But watching her stuff a lot and with my basic distrust of the music industry, I sort of think that really her videos don't mean much. They're just trying to sell product. I mean what is the new video really saying? I thought up a lot of stuff, but it's not really Lady Gaga saying that, it's Lady Gaga's videos pushing my buttons and manipulating me so I think she's saying that. I'm not saying all art needs to have a moral or have something to say, but I think really what this video (and most of her stuff) is saying is 'look pretty things! Sexy woman doing scary things, America! Now she's in underwear! You should buy this. Hey, look, steampunk, you guys like that right?'

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I take that Alejandro is still seen as edgy or transgressive as evidence of just how regressive our society's attitudes towards sexuality and gender still are.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Well, that is, itself fairly interesting.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Although, to limit my criticism, I did genuinely feel it was a breath of fresh air from heteronormative culture.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Re: Women in science. For folks who complain about "the PC Police", they never waste any time wallowing in self-pity when folks roll their eyes at them. Because correcting misinformation and audible sighing at the idiocy of others is just the same as slashing tires and pipe bombing offices....

They DO know that the first person to win 2 Nobels in the sciences was a woman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie), right?

It will be interesting to see if discussion of the "Alejandro" video takes some of the same turns as discussions about women writing slash fiction...

[wcg.livejournal.com]

So, what did you think of that NYT article about women in science you linked to? It seemed pretty well written and well sourced to me.

My observations about women in the sciences is that just about any woman with the mathematical ability to get into a doctoral program will get the doctorate if her life/family circumstances permit. But what happens to women after they've got the doctorates is ... disturbing. More women who get into tenure track jobs end up not getting tenure for all sorts of reasons, most of them having nothing to do with their actual abilities as scientists. Women who go into non-tenure track jobs stay on "soft money" for decades sometimes. Arguably the biggest single driver behind both of these is that the women are having children in the decade following their doctorates. They put off the whole marriage and family thing to get through grad school, but the biological clock keeps ticking and they're keenly aware of the risks associated with childbearing after age 40. So we end up with a fair sized population of women scientists in their 30s who are working part time in science while also doing mommy track stuff.

Anyhow, my point is that the reason we still end up with the top tier of the professoriate populated almost exclusively by men is *not* due to any especially high intelligence on the part of those men, but rather because the women with doctorates seldom devote themselves to a single-minded pursuit of advancement in academia during their 30s and 40s. In a perfect world the men wouldn't either, as they'd be as engaged and involved with their young families as the women are, but we don't live in that perfect world.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Your point (which is pretty good) is not, regrettably, the point of the article.

Additionally, you don't quite acknowledge that the reason women do not single-mindedly devote themselves to a pursuit (scientific or otherwise) in their 20s, 30s and 40s is because it is a cultural taboo for which they have little to no support to do so, expected as they are to have children to prove their gender, sacrifice their career (as opposed to a male partner sacrificing his) for said children (again to prove success at gender) and then to additionally care for aging parents who rarely want to burden male children with such tasks if they have the option not to.

While I acknowledge that most people of both genders desire children; women are told their whole lives that they do -- negating the possibility for many women of considering otherwise, and certainly negating for many more women the possibility of negotiated partnership around children that allows a woman to maintain career power.

There is nothing that indicates that women are innately less ambitious, intelligent or science oriented than men or in overwhelming majority want to sacrifice those things for having a family. But articles like this fall back on "girls just don't like science enough", "sure, lots of women are good, but only men can be great" and "women don't know how to take risks"

I was trained, from the very first moment of sentient life I can recall to never take a risk, to never make a mistake and put everyone else above me. The reason women aren't scientists have nothing to do with their being women, and everything to do with the ways they have been treated because they are women.

The women and science bullshit is right up there with "men write about ideas; women write about feelings." As if things like nation building don't happen due to jealousy, possession and desire.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

re: women in science. the study says that girls trail boys by about 1 to 3 for their SATs at the top end.

when there is one woman for every 3 or 4 men in every science faculty in this country, then maybe we can re-discuss. we are a LONG way from that.

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

Wow, that guy who wrote the NYTimes article is an asshat.

I was part of that talent search that had the kids take the SAT in 7th grade. Got a 640 on the math, significantly below their 700 cutoff--though I was above that on the verbal. I'm in grad school, in physics, at one of the top programs in the country. And you know what? I'm actually better at math than a lot of the kids in this program, even without being in that top 1 in 10,000 according to the researchers.

I think the scientists are probably right that, even with completely equal social factors, we wouldn't see equal numbers of men and women--but the difference would be in the single-percent levels, not the current physics distribution of four guys for every woman. Also, even if some studies have shown that women fare better at "academic promotions and research grants", the problem with women in science is partially a leaky pipeline: you lose women at every step, from high school to college, college to grad school...so saying that the women who've survived that long do slightly better once they've gotten near the peak of the pyramid is probably just telling you that the selection pressures to get there are higher on women.

Careers in science aren't about raw math ability or slightly better promotion rates. They're about assembling and integrating background knowledge and learning how to ask questions in a way that can get you answers; they're also, for some people, about learning to build machines or use complex equipment. Women start out behind on many of those tasks because, on average, we play with dolls more often than we play with stuff like Legos, so we're not learning the visual-spatial skills for math at an instinctive level in the same way that the average boy is.

And the bias isn't totally the part where we do or don't get job offers or grants or promotions. It's also in the way that I know the first thing I say to a new group of people will not be remembered; it's not a contribution to the science being discussed, it's a way of proving that I deserve to be there at all. It's about the DARE officer who asked us to give a little speech on what we wanted to do with our lives, and who then laughed at me when I said I was going to go to Princeton, become an astrophysicist and work for NASA. It's the way some of my friends have told me that, in high school, they deliberately sabotaged their tests because being the smartest one in the class wasn't something they should be (although I should also say, that was probably a nasty combination of general gender bias and the Midwestern variant of Tall Poppy Syndrome). Or about the way that superminorities, less than around 15% of the population in something, tend to have more trouble regardless of the bias of the people around them. Or the way that girls more than boys pick up math fear from their teachers. From stereotype threat, from the image that science is not a social profession, from lack of role models, from images of scientists in the media... Fix all of that, NY Times writer, and then we can have your discussion about biological differences.

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, should say: 4 to 1 for physics is in awarded Ph.Ds; that ratio is even higher for faculty positions and tenured faculty positions.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

The Lady Gaga video! Totally a mash-up of Tom of Finland, Cabaret, The Night Porter, and Madonna (and some other stuff too). A smart mash-up, not a sloppy one at all. Fascinating. I think you're right, we need a journal.

[eris.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know there was a video for Alejandro out yet till I saw this, thanks! As much as I love Gaga I hadn't been behind the idea of her being "the second coming of Madonna" until this video.

I love each video more than the last one, she doesn't make music videos, she makes art films.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Deleted comment about Bad Romance because you mentioned you have seen it. Totally creepifying. More so than this one was I think.

Or maybe it was the human sexual exploitation angle in Bad Romance that was creepifying me...

[rm.livejournal.com]

There was a lot of discussion about this with xtricks and I think it depends on what your sensitivities are and what things are big hallmarks of "fiction" for you.

"Bad Romance" doesn't particularly bug me, because, I think it feels like a very alien world to me. And where it doesn't -- sexual commerce, Leigh Bowery, etc -- *shrug*

On the other hand "Alejandro" is very challenging for me, because I'm very sensitive about the iconography I'm not supposed to find interesting as a nominally Jewish female-type -- the Catholic and fascist imagery in the piece are what make it intellectually interesting to me, but they are also what cause me to retreat into my recurring fear that my intelligence is a moral failing.

[bizetsy.livejournal.com]

Wow, yes, Gaga is quite smart. I am glad that she has gone mainstream, and hope that she is inspiring others to see overarching powers from another angle. I read a Times article a couple days ago wherein Gaga suggested she has Lupus; that made me relate to her pushing herself so hard. I have pushed myself all my life, knowing something was wrong and knowing that I was ill, even though it took the doctors so long to figure it out. I knew, and I knew I didn't have as much time as everyone else. I'm glad I pushed myself. I think she is really aware of her mortality, too.

My friend Barbie Q was one of the drag queens in the Telephone video (and the one who did the voiceovers). I was so proud! Such a talent.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

The tone of that article about women in the sciences was interesting to contrast to other articles talking about how girls are outpacing boys in certain aspects of academia. While the tone of this article seemed to be, "well, maybe we should just accept it, it's biology, it's hard-wired", the ones about girls doing better than boys always seem so worried.

Reminds me of how when the original IQ test was developed, girls initially did better than boys and the test was adjusted so that that boys scored equally as a result. When boys aren't doing good enough, it seems like we change the rules, and when girls aren't good enough, society seems to want us to accept it as our destiny.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

When boys aren't doing good enough, it seems like we change the rules, and when girls aren't good enough, society seems to want us to accept it as our destiny.

WOW.

This is so true, and so succinctly put. Thank you.

Re: Lady Gaga video

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I just watched it, and it reminded me a *lot* of Madonna. A lot, with all the religious imagery and gay male imagery and so forth. What was interesting about it to me is that even though she was dancing in her underwear, the exploitation of men was so much more prominent, which is a reversal of how you usually see men and women in music videos.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I see the offending Times piece is by John Tierney.

Damned if I (or anyone else outside the paper) has any clue why the Times keeps him on, let alone allows him to write about science. If I'm remembering correctly not only is he not even remotely qualified -- not trained in the sciences, not a reliable amateur of the sciences -- but the degree to which he writes not so much about science as about his own ideological biases is fairly notorious.

If I'm remembering correctly he doesn't just believe Girls Can't Do Math: he's also a climate change denier, and stuff like that. It's not so surprising to see him doing yet another iteration of Larry Summers Was Right.

It's just surprising that the people making these decisions at the Times don't realize that this sort of thing is why The Old Journalism is dying.