I can't really think of any 'flaw' that it's helpful to have pushed in your face, especially in the very moment you're trying to address it.

Like say you *finally* respond to that e-mail from your close friend that you've been meaning to get to, because really, you want to be in better touch with your friends.

Your email system: "You're a bad friend!"

Say you have anger issues, and you're about to sit down with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2008

Grumblebee, I don't think you get it.

I'm wary of even trying to explain further and I'm not sure I'll be able to make any difference.

But to use your example.

Did you fall down the stairs if you were pushed? Either you were pushed or you fell. Yeah, you *could* say you fell by mode of being pushed, but when did you fall, exactly? If your 'falling', ie, the moment when your feet lost stable contact with the steps,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 2:44 PM on May 9, 2008

And say someone came along and said, it looked like a fall. Sure, there was a hand against your back, but that's moot. Your experience, the lost contact with the ground, the flying through the air, the banging along the steps, that was all a fall. Why should that hand determine your experience more than everything that happened after? And calling it being pushed refers to your subjective experience of the hand against your back and its pressure, etc, but the fall itself is an objective phenomena,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 2:51 PM on May 9, 2008

I love Nussbaum's writings on pretty much everything she's ever written about, so thanks for this!

My favorite part isn't the book reviews so much as her summaries and analysis concerning Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet, and the different ways of loving that can be portrayed and learned.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:39 AM on May 6, 2008

KokuRyu,
Race matters a lot in Canada; for aboriginals for example. Yes, we have somewhat different issues and challenges than the states, but the complacent superior attitude I see from many Canadians is part of the problem.

Eg, I have been advised to make my CV 'less Jewish.' I have a friend who said she loves Montreal and would live there for herself but never with kids, to spare them what she experienced growing up visibly brown and Muslim.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 1:13 AM on April 25, 2008

The other half of happy childhood stories is to actually support parents when something bad happens to kids when they are out and about on their own, trusting the parents' judgement, believing it was bad luck, and not going on about what they should have done differently.

Also some of the stories here sound like neglect to me. Of course we're usually invested in either how we turned out all right or how it's all our parents' fault that we didn't, so self reporting isn't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 3:29 AM on April 14, 2008

-harlequin-
It's interesting because your comment sounds a lot like the concerns that women have when interacting with men. Are they trustworthy? How will they interpret our actions? Will they hold them against us? What about our 'reputations'? Is it safe to be alone with him? and so on.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 6:15 PM on April 22, 2008

TomMelee,
I respect so much of what you said till you got to the last line. Many of the 'people' you're talking about are probably women who have experienced simple touches that after all aren't so simple as they seemed. (men too, probably). You can probably wait with self righteous lecturing of parents until we've managed to reduce the rate of sexual harassment and assault on children (if I remember correctly, most sexual abuse takes place before a person is eighteen, and a person... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 2:06 AM on April 23, 2008

Brockles,
I would guess that ALL mothers have experienced being inappropriately touched or groped during their childhood or adolescence. Because pretty much all women have. And a LOT of girls do experience abuse (as opposed to 'simple' touching, groping, or harassment) from adult men in their lives. There have been generations of abuse, what's changed in the last generation is that girls and women now talk about it, are aware of it, and hopefully feel more empowered to do something... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:19 AM on April 23, 2008

TomMelee, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you meant alone - the opposite, it seemed clear to me that you were describing something open and public. I also agree with you about the importance of touch (as you wrote, touching *your* kids).

Brockles, I find it pretty hard to believe that you're so sure it's not true. Groping, (starting, if you're lucky, only when your body starts to look 'mature') is so common it's barely considered remarkable, which is why surveys have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:46 AM on April 23, 2008

As a message, I guess the exclusion states that there is a difference between being raised while perceived as female and being raised while perceived as male, and there is a value to people in the first group having space that excludes people in the second, even if there are many shared experiences.

It's not so obvious to me that that's not true. And since we don't really have an example of a non-sexist society or a 'matriarchy', then all 'people raised while perceived... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:04 AM on April 14, 2008

Kadin,
It goes in both directions. If I'm begin paid less and given less opportunities to advance at work than my male partner, when it comes time to deciding which job gets sidelined/has lower priority, of course that will have an impact!
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 6:12 AM on April 14, 2008

Pastabagel, blacklite:

As far as I know, from hearing from friends and family, many holocaust survivors strongly associate Wagner with their concentration camp experiences - it's even triggering for them; Hitler loved his music and had it played in the camps. It's considered very insensitive to play Wagner where there may be survivors - part of why Jewish weddings don't use the wedding march song that's so famous. There are a lot of Holocaust survivors in Israel.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 12:19 PM on January 14, 2008

gesamtkunstwerk:

Thanks for the info about the wedding march, I'll have to figure out why I thought that.

I'm pretty sure I didn't suggest ridding the world of work produced by anti-semites! I'm pretty sure no one else has either.

And you know what, I'm pretty confident that even survivors who find his music triggering could still 'judge' it on its artistic merits. That doesn't mean they have to like listening to it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:20 PM on January 14, 2008

I don't really like the idea that wealthier people buying lattes are less deserving of gifts than poor people. The whole point of a gift is it's not about deserving it. Poor people are more deserving of charity and social aid and political activism/solidarity, but there's nothing about being poor that makes you more worthy of gifts.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:11 AM on December 18, 2007

I had the same reaction as Agregoli, so I'm glad that Desjardins clarified. Truthfully, I'm sure it's hard to find resources for art about women that wouldn't be problematic in one sense or another, and it's good to see the critical perspectives offered here in the thread.

Canine Epigram, I understand that you had a different reading of the post, I'm just not sure why you think it's so obvious that yours is more correct, especially since every body illustrated... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 2:57 PM on December 1, 2007

I'm just so relieved that the pursuit of self-rule for an oppressed indigenous people in their historical homeland was called out as the pursuit of domination and subjugation that it secretly is in all those secret Zionist meetings where the true nature of Zionism is revealed, despite the centuries' worth of diverse and divergent writing, scholarship, history, and present to be considered when confronting Zionism...

... particularly in a thread about the intersection of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 10:50 AM on December 1, 2007

if the Maxim rumour had been true, and Jade really had posed in a bikini to advertise the game, the comic wouldn't have been misogynistic. Sure, it would have been demeaning a woman sexually, but it would make sense as a satire because the woman would be demeaning herself sexually (note: I'm not saying that a woman posing in a magazine in skimpy beach attire is automatically sexually demeaning. But doing so in order to sell a product that has absolutely zero relation to said bikini... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:20 PM on November 22, 2007

I wasn't familiar with her or her work. Thank you for posting this. I'm kind of glad she was angry!! I'm angry for her.

.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:56 AM on November 4, 2007

Emjaybee,
I kind of agree with you - but I think the difference is between an eating disorder and disordered eating. That's a distinction I've seen made, and it makes sense to me.

For the vast majority of women, achieving a fashionable figure does require disordered eating/lifestyle. And that is a great recipe for developing an eating disorder. But I don't think that the two are exactly the same.

Actually I *guess* that the woman... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:29 AM on November 4, 2007

Quonsar, you are so right! I didn't even see it! The woman is defined by how she appears to others, the man by his own sexual identity and desires. What a beautiful world...
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 7:09 AM on November 4, 2007

Isn't it nice that there's now a simple word to distinguish the 'good Jews', who entertain you, agree with your opinions, and don't ask for anything much, and the 'bad Jews', who have dual loyalties (where have I heard that before?), disagree with your political views, and agitate for secure self rule?

Obviously, the entire history of the middle east over the last hundred and fifty years comes down to bad Jews oppressing other people through their masterful wielding of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:12 AM on September 24, 2007

It's silly to take your husband's father's name and call it a family thing. First of all, you're breaking up your birth family. Second of all, it's only temporary anyway, till your daughters get married, follow your example, and have different names than you. At which point of course you will be less close to them because you won't have a familial name. Right...
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 1:23 PM on September 22, 2007

I love how so many people are pretending that hostile work environments for women are considered a serious problem and that women who complain about teasing are taken seriously instead of being mocked and losing their credibility and probably careers.

I wish... I'm not even confident that half the people spouting this stuff here *would* take a woman's complaints seriously except to bolster men's complaints.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 10:07 AM on August 9, 2007

Redgrendel2001, interesting, that you're more upset with feminism than with patriarchy, which created the imbalanced situation.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 8:47 PM on March 16, 2007

MrBobaFett,

We don't have a pure market economy. Thank goodness. Property is a right regulated by the state, it provides a structure that ensures that you can retain your property and that it has value (fighting inflation, fighting crime, keeping land records).

The state also regulates how you can use it, in the public interest. For example, no matter how much market value you would assign to having a slave, or to having a 8 year old laborer,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 1:50 PM on March 17, 2007

I think it's funny when men think they're tearing down feminism for not fighting on behalf of men.

There's a lot of legitimate battles and if the men complaining fought *some* of them instead of berating women for not fighting *all* them, we'd get to better a lot more quickly.

(Also it is a myth that men are raped more than women. Women in jail get raped too, mostly by male workers, and in appalling numbers.
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 9:28 PM on March 16, 2007

Wow, I am kind of horrified by the cat video. That poor cat!!
posted to MetaFilter by Salamandrous at 8:39 PM on February 27, 2007