sundries

[rm]

I just want to say that relieving myself of the pressure of having to do sundries every day with the mix of articles and descriptions that makes everyone happy has been really good for me. That said, I'll still do some sometimes (see!) and I'm thinking of doing a "trash day" of links once a week on Letters from Titan. Win/win?

Also on LfT: longer post about the Patty travel thing. Meanwhile, am starting to fill in About and some of the other pages. Also, wow, I can see how people get to the blog. It is.... fascinating at times. Especially the Google searches.

fortysevenbteg nails something I plan to do research on the media coverage side of if the trend continues: large-scale animal kills are probably the shark attack of 2011.

gwyd blogged this great article on claiming butch identity. Tangentally I want to add: there's no one way to be a man, a lesbian, or even butch (as perhaps evidenced by the feedback when I auditioned to play Billy Tipton a few years ago).

D&J meeting on Monday. Novel meeting on Wednesday. People who will be playing along for DW/SJA/TW watching for my chapter research in NYC, expect a scheduling email this weekend. Other people I owe email/planning to: I'm getting there. I have a nasty work backlog that won't be fully cleared until Sunday night.

The return of Fraunces Tavern. Ten years ago, and this would have been our regular bar. But that was another life (one that seems to like trading quips with me on Twitter lately).

The Bearded Dandy of Brooklyn. Make sure you catch the slide show.

Since I recently mentioned Hadley Nagel here and on LfT, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to the WSJ's coverage of the International Debutante Ball.

Drama over a scholarly paper on ESP.

Restoring imaginative play.

Tomorrow: Barn Dance.

Getting it done: just renewed my NCIS and Broad Universe memberships. Yay me.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The article about play seems to assume that no imaginative play happens online.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That was totally my response too.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Or, indeed, on a computer; I remember feeling a little 'jossed' when the first Tomb Raider movie came out, since I'd been thinking about the adventures I wasn't seeing in playing "Tomb Raider II".

[spiderine.livejournal.com]

"Tangentally I want to add: there's no one way to be a man, a woman, a lesbian, or even butch"

Fixed that for you. ;D

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

LOL for use of a Hothead Paisan icon. <3

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

That claiming butch identity article is fantastic.

It also makes me feel a lot better about my occasional need to just...not be a girl.

[rm.livejournal.com]

This is awesome too, I keep meaning to write a thing about the prefix Mx: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/01/03/Justin_Bond__New_Name_and_Gender/

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Oo. I came across that link through the @sexgenderbody feed on Twitter: I'd be interested to read what you'd have to say on the subject. (There was also another article that ranked 'gender-neutral' pronouns by usability and neutralness elsewhere that I'll have to try and dig out from my Firefox history; thank heavens for the Awesome Bar.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have an acute, acute aversion the whole Mr./Miss/Mrs./Ms. thing because I hate the idea that a term of respect is gendered / about marital status / can still seem political. I avoid designating one when I can, but I usually can't. I prefer people just use M. or, barring that, Ms. for me. I think Mx. is pure genius and very funny. I may have to pick that up myself.

As to the gender neutral pronouns people keep trying to add to English, I am a shooting-myself-in-the-foot purist, and I hate them all. I only use them when someone asks me to use them in reference to themselves.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

As to the gender neutral pronouns people keep trying to add to English, I am a shooting-myself-in-the-foot purist, and I hate them all. I only use them when someone asks me to use them in reference to themselves.

So much this.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I only use them when someone asks me to use them in reference to themselves.

This is actually precisely the reason I dislike them as a default; because some people do primarily identify this way. Awesome for them, but I don't, so when someone refers to me as hir/sie it feels like they're trying to assign me an identity that isn't mine. Whereas all they implies to me is the person in question doesn't happen to know my gender and isn't assuming, which is fine.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I've gotten to accept singular they, because even though there's all this debate about whether it's grammatically correct or not (not being a linguist or a grammarian, I don't feel qualified to weigh in on that with an opinion), it has the advantage of using a word that's already in our language. I figure all languages evolve over time, and I see great need for a gender-neutral pronoun that isn't "it."

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

Yes. This.

I have grown to love the singular they.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I must admit I really like Bond's rationale for 'v' as well. I could get behind that.

[pshaw-raven.livejournal.com]

I sent the play article to my girlfriend, who studied education and psychology and all that good stuff in college. We were in a store a few days ago pondering what it meant to see books and things advertising themselves as encouraging imaginative play. At the time, we just assumed that if you took the TV remote away that would help a great deal but we obviously over-simplified things. Personally, I recall childhood as one huge block of unstructured creative play, once school and homework were done. I can't imagine what it would be like for a little kid to be so scheduled up that they don't have time to ... be a kid.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

So, I just subscribed to and read the existing entries on LfT. Wow. And Wow again.

I like it. And if I'm very, very, very courageous, I just might find it in myself to follow your advice. (And yes, I know many would think I already have. But you understand.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And which advice? I tell people do a lot of stuff, which you know is why people like me (and often, really, really don't like me).

[wcg.livejournal.com]

"Be Grand."

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's harder than people think. I have to remind myself about 100 times a day.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is.

Your article about the deb also signifies here. She seems to be excelling wherever she can, and as you note, some want to hammer her down for it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup. Did you catch the comment threads as well? I thought it was a fascinating example of Not Getting the Point.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

No, haven't read the comments.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You might find them interesting. I only responded to one of them.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the article about Ouigi Theodore - I love to see men who care about fashion beyond the mainstream.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

fortysevenbteg is correct about animal die-offs being more common than the media are making them out to be. I just read an article about that in an online science magazine, but unfortunately I can't locate it right now.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

Here, this will do:

http://www.newser.com/article/d9kj7jeg1/fact-check-after-birds-fall-and-fish-die-people-seek-apocalyptic-links-that-arent-there.html

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the butch identity link. Nice to see.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

There is so much wrong with that imaginative play article, though. Play is defined as child-directed. OK. So parents must direct? But be hands-off? Um? Look, another crazy-making bit of parenting advice, hooray! I'm pretty sure that when my kids tell me the story that they're making up about me, that counts as imaginative play, but not hands-off :) Just off the top of my head...

Also, as noted by other commenters, the media problem. Media isn't seen as fuel for imaginative play when the screen is off, yet I see it clearly in my kids' play, which is not at all a parroting of what they see, but builds on it in new and inventive ways. Just like, um, the books they read.

[rm.livejournal.com]

My very strong reaction to the piece was particularly that in a world of over-involved and stifling parents playing on-line is often the only place children can play imaginatively with any privacy. I'm struck by this constantly as I work with my writing partner and other collaborators. It's absolutely the imaginative childhood that would have disturbed my parents.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Very true.

My perspectives on these issues are shaped significantly by three things:

1. I was a highly imaginative child myself, with relatively hands-off parents. (I could keep a diary, or in my case piles of notes, and not worry about snooping. I could use the typewriter to write things. I didn't have to show them to anyone unless I wanted to. etc.)

2. I used to work in pre-school, and I have had child-led play drilled into my head. That bit in the article about not telling kids how to play with a toy or game, for example, which was great advice but very familiar to me.

3. I have twins. I think that a lot of the weird overbearing parenting style that's popular today works best with solo kids and breaks down really quickly with two who are the same age. I think being so developmentally close is important in this case, too, so it's different with siblings.

(bonus: my kids are still really young. "Online" means requesting "picture of butterfly! Picture of Daddy! Picture of airplane!" from Flickr. But just wait until I get that smart phone...)

I mention all of this just b/c it means I have funny blind spots. Like, my first reaction to your comment was "well, except for paper diaries and things -- oh *wait*, other parents snoop!" Oops.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Stuff I did on my own did not interest or at least worry my parents. But my collaborative play and early writing was extremely alarming to them (this was then later justified by some pretty intense, out there, Heavenly Creatures-esque drama from my best friend in high school) and so the world of other people always required secrecy. Sometimes I think I am an only child because they feared conspiracy from small creatures.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

While my father in particular plied me with all the role-playing accoutrements I wanted in part because it meant that I'd finally found friends. Also comics, because of the swapping.

(And then I ended up doing mostly solo stuff. My friends were a) boringly straightforward in their play and b) boys who kept trying to gender-police, so I ditched them.)

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I get the chills anytime Heavenly Creatures comes up, because that story pretty much encapsulates a lot of the crazy about my first relationship.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, I've told you what went down in my situation, ne?

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember and I can't - we should totally exchange creepy stories in a not public forum!

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

Speaking of no one way to be butch, I remember when I had a queer roommate for a while who told me Phranc was butch. "Phranc? Really?" At that time, I only knew of her because of her EP "Goofyfoot," so I'd formed my opinion based on the cover:



But that is not the entire story, of course.

I've been butch my whole life, and I think butch is a better way of putting it than "tomboy" -- I'm not a boy, I'm not male, I'm just gender non-conforming. I work mostly among men, spent the first 17 years of my working life with only one female peer engineer. My hobbies are thought of as typically male: cameras, woodworking, fountain pens (though less so than the prior two), science fiction (less in reality than perception, though).

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Have you read The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman? If not, I'll send you my copy when I finish reading it this week. Bergman also wrote Butch is a Noun, and the gender stuff in here is pretty effing amazing.