#blamefeminism

So, we have a magazine article with a list of things to be concerned about with regard to "feminism".

I put that word in quotes because I defy anyone to tell me unambiguously what the word even means.

It gives five examples from well known media of "bad" things that feminism has done for the world.  Only some of the things are hardly bad such as the proper placing of blame for the Anthony Weiner affair, and other items on the list which are bad, can hardly be blamed on feminism such as "impotence"!

But after semi-popular hate site A Voice for Men suggested using the hashtag #blamefeminism to point out things they have against the women's movement you have to wonder about their reading comprehension.

Well, no.  If you read their site for a few days you will soon find out that most of the members there and at least a few of the staff are borderline illiterate.   They have no reading comprehension at all, taken as a whole.  Which is not the same as saying that everyone that posts there is illiterate, there are clearly some non-dim bulbs in the mix.

Regardless, I think the hashtag has merit no matter how people take it in that it will pull conversations together from a variety of places.

Has feminism had negative consequences?   Probably so.  Almost any movement that is loosely defined in the first place and finds itself attached to millions of people will have negative consequences of one sort or another.  Any set of ideas can be taken to an extreme.  Does that mean that people who are united in trying to improve the lives of women, not just in affluent USA but to women around the world.  How many bad apples or bad outcomes in a worldwide movement do you have to find before you can pronounce the movement toxic?

I think when it comes to feminism, that number will be a lot higher than any survey of the hashtag is likely to turn up.

Not sure the same can be said for MRM site A Voice for Men though.

Tribalism and Twitter

This is not a scholarly work as I have no training in Sociology or any other discipline that might pertain to the word “tribalism”.  In fact I only learned the word a few years ago and have gradually decided that it explains a lot of things I notice in the world around me.  I gave some definitions in the pre-post, so I won’t repeat them here.

 What I see going on in the “Twitterverse” today seems to revolve around two axes.  One axis is relations between the genders (and variations therein).  The other rotates about matters of religion.  There seems to be very little discussion of race, economics, or ethics and morality except where they intersect with these first two items.

 Now, maybe it’s just the group I’m hanging out with, but I don’t think so.  Anywhere that there is a discussion more involved than “what’s on TV tonight” these two factors of (let’s just label them) “sex” and “religion” don’t seem to be far away.

 Here are some observations:

 There don’t seem to be a lot of “subject matter experts”.   Maybe it is because with Twitter you can at most link to a longer blog post or Youtube video, but it really is hard to have a discussion that is limited to only soundbites.  Forcing brevity has its advantages, but one of the advantages is not being able to delve too deeply into any subject.  In 140 characters the opinions expressed by the true experts look a lot like those of the amateurs.  In fact, maybe that alone is why Twitter is so popular.  They call it “micro-blogging” at the company I believe.  Maybe a more descriptive name would be “blogging for the lazy”.

 Name calling fits nicely into the 140 character limit.  Detailed exposition does not.  I’d bet that most school-yard taunts would fit easily into a Twitter message.  And while on schoolyards, the maturity level of many Twitter users seems to have been arrested around 7th grade.  Mature enough to interact with the world and all it’s complexities, but not nearly mature enough to master them.  Or even come close.  As an Internet introvert myself I am not just casting stones.  Before Twitter there were other instant messaging systems, and before that there were virtual reality systems and of those that still exist, the inhabitants have largely not advance one iota.  Or maybe I should say that the ones that advance to maturity just leave, rather than sticking around and infecting the newcomers with that “disease”.

 So, should we be surprised that group A claims that group B is persecuting them while at the same time group B makes the same claim in reverse?  It’s the Hatfields vs the McCoys or the Christians and the Muslims all in a (thankfully) relatively harmless microcosm.  An oft repeated error in twitter resembles the notion that "if all terrorists are Muslims, then all Muslims must be terrorists."  Just as the concept in false when applied to Muslims and Terrorists, it is also false, universally when used on Twitter with respect to MRMs, feminists, atheists, and believers.  But few Twitter users seem to take notice of the fallacy.

 Is it possible to fix Twitter (or any similar system) so that adult-level discussions can take place over a span of time?  I’m tempted to think not.   In fact I’m tempted to think if something as simple as an “abuse” button were added to the system (and all the edge conditions could be worked out) that those left would simply figure out that they should be having their discussions in some long form such as blogging (written) or Google Hang-outs (spoken).

 If the people at Twitter (the company) see it in this way, don’t look for any quick fixes to the “abuse” problem.

It’s their bread and butter.

OK, Down to Business

Intro to some future topics in no particular order:

• Software Suckage.  I find it amazing that Twitter doesn't work any better than it does for how little it does.   Or am I missing something?  It basically has to handle a whole lot of small interactions at once.  And it's been doing this with varying success for years.  Meanwhile both Facebook and Google have put together interfaces that are far more complicated and (I would guess) have to handle as much if not more traffic (at least in bytes).  What Twitter has going for it is (relative) simplicity and yet the interface which has hardly changed is still buggy, laggy and just generally unreliable.  They acquired Tweetdeck and froze it as far as I can tell.  I've noticed a lot of "At least it's not Google", but Google works (more often) and can support far more data.  Hey, as long as all of your data, no matter how it originates, is going to the NSA, what difference does it make?  *Holds upturned palms to both sides*. 

• Sock Accounts AKA Sock Puppet.  I had to look this up.  According to the Urban Dictionary:  "An account made on an internet message board, by a person who already has an account, for the purpose of posting more-or-less anonymously."  OK, this be one of those. But then, nothing I've ever done on the Internet exposed my name (at least intentionally).  I have what I think are good reasons for keeping the two accounts separate, but I'm not posing to the same places with both accounts or using them to fake out "followers", "likes" or other things that social media likes to count.  In fact I have multiple (mostly e-mail) accounts for business purposes as well as different aspects of my personal life.  Should I feel guilty?

• Tribalism.  Also a definition first from Wikipedia is handy: "Tribalism is the state of being organized in, or advocating for, a tribe or tribes. In terms of conformity, tribalism may also refer to a way of thinking or behaving in which people are more loyal to their tribe than to their friends, their country, or any other social group.

The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals.Tribalism implies the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group. It is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form. The distinction between these two definitions for tribalism is an important one because, while tribal society no longer strictly exists in the western world, tribalism, by this second definition, is arguably undiminished. People have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism due to its evolutionary advantages."  

But check this out from the Ayn Rand Lexicon:  "A symptom of the tribal mentality’s self-arrested, perceptual level of development may be observed in the tribalists’ position on language.Language is a conceptual tool—a code of visual-auditory symbols that denote concepts. To a person who understands the function of language, it makes no difference what sounds are chosen to name things, provided these sounds refer to clearly defined aspects of reality. But to a tribalist, language is a mystic heritage, a string of sounds handed down from his ancestors and memorized, not understood. To him, the importance lies in the perceptual concrete, the sound of a word, not its meaning. He would kill and die for the privilege of printing on every postage stamp the word “postage” for the English-speaking and the word “postes” for the French-speaking citizens of his bilingual Canada. Since most of the ethnic languages are not full languages, but merely dialects or local corruptions of a country’s language, the distinctions which the tribalists fight for are not even as big as that.  But, of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting: they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders." 

[emphasis added by me].  It is "Tribalism" that I think disturbs me about the abbreviated (by necessity of the interface) "debates" that I am seeing online now.  Who would want all of this hostility to enter into your everyday life?  Social media is a thing one can either escape to, or escape from.  Is it not possible for humans to engage in civil intercourse?   Are we hardwired for tribalism?

These items are all based on "current events" in my life.  So I figure I had better speak now, or forget all about them as the interrupts of modern life continue to occur.  Let's see, which one first, eeny, meeny, miney mo...