On Bitches and Sexists

Today, while reading about this story, I stumbled upon a blog called Shakesville which had an excellent analysis of the story. One phrase they used is “owning the context” which means that someone can commit racist speech even when they do not intend it. In the story above, I think that the man with the t-shirts is “playing dumb” and understands perfectly that comparing an African-American to a monkey will be offensive to African-Americans. However, even if he did not know of the historical use of that phrase to insult black people, that does not make the t-shirt any less offensive to those that do. When this happens, when one finds oneself ignorant of the context, the only acceptable action is apology. What a concise summary of the subtle racism that still exists in our society!

Suitably impressed, I began to scan the front page of the blog for more great content. How shocked I was to find that one of the writers had taken Wil Wheaton, one of my favorite bloggers, to task for something he had written the day before. It was even something that I had agreed with and laughed at. Now, if I had read this article before the one about the Obama t-shirt, I would have quickly concluded that this was a group of unreasonable feminists and left. But I had read that other article and the parallels were immediately obvious. Disparaging remarks about women also have a context and the context here is that portraying a woman as “crazy” means that she can or should be ignored.

I revisited Wil’s blog to review the comments and found some that were very thought-provoking. Someone named “Backpacking Dad” really hit the nail on the head:

The metaphor evokes a trope in sexual politics, that of the irrational girl who cannot accept that a relationship is over. Labeling, categorizing, pigeon-holing someone in this way “he’s a geek, she’s a slut, he’s a pig, she’s cow” is at once appealing to a fragment of truth, and also making the target controllable.

This is the historic context of how our society has marginalized women. Another commenter named Sarah made it more concrete:

Look, I don’t think you hate women– I think you mean well and want to be an ally. But that means you need to listen. If you don’t think something is sexist, but people who have to deal with sexism every day are telling you that it is, maybe you should take another look.

And that made me look at my own views on sexism. Too often I’m dismissive of women just because they are women. And sometimes, if I think they are deserving of it, I’ll refer to a woman as a “bitch”. But, when considered in the full historical context, that word is no different than the racial epithet that rhymes with “digger”. Both are considered derogatory and both can be labels worn proudly by some who have been the target of these insults. Whether or not the target is deserving of these words, the context that they evoke should preclude us from using them.

Today I have decided that I will never again call a woman a bitch.

Continue reading “On Bitches and Sexists”

Tools for Twitterers

The popularity of Twitter has led to the creation of some great services that work with the “social networking” website. Because Twitter has a public API and makes the “tweets” (Twitter-speak for a message posted on Twitter) available to anyone, it’s easy for web developers to tap into this resource. Here are a few that I’ve found useful:

  • Twitterholic ranks twitter users according to the number of followers each user has. I follow several people on that list include Barack Obama, John Gruber, Wil Wheaton and Warren Ellis. You can also use Twitterholic to view your own history of people following you. Here’s mine.
  • TwitterLocal lets you find Twitter users in your geographical area. You can view the list of local users on the Twitterlocal website or you can subscribe to an RSS feed. They also track the top 30 locations for Twitter users in the world. Portland is currently ranked 15th only 6 spots below “Right here.”
  • TweetClouds processes all the tweets for a given user and then creates a tag cloud for that user. If you’ve tweeted for as long as I have, it takes awhile for TweetClouds to process all your tweets, but they provide you with a static link that you can pass around to people afterwards that allows for delay-free viewing of your tweeting psyche. Here’s one I generated as I wrote this. I am evidently obsessed with “time” and “watching”.
  • Quotably provides context for Twitter conversations by showing them as threaded discussions. If you glance at the Quotably page for my tweets, you’ll see people who reply to me as well as anybody to whom I might have replied. I use this when I see people I follow replying to people whom I don’t follow.
  • Twitter itself provides a range of “badges” that let you display your tweets on your web page, Facebook account, Myspace account and others. If you look on the left of this page, you’ll see that mine displays my three most recent tweets.
That’s just a few of the tools that are available. Googling “twitter tools” reveals that there are many, many more out there. This article has a pretty good list.

Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 466
Weight lost: 50 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 9
Hours billed this week: 24
Meetings today: 3
Current reading: The Prince by Machiavelli, Feminism Is For Everybody by Bell Hooks
Recent listening: Coverville, DrugMusic
Recent viewing: Without A Trace, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who, And You Don’t Stop, Everest, Countdown, Sportscenter, The Colbert Report
Recent playing: Sketchfighter
Recently accomplished: Sorted and stored computer stuff in garage
Imperative To Do: Finish garage, finish old blog entries, call mechanic, build new computer for Thomas, rake, clean garage, fix laundry room door, RMA old Tivo drive, Best of 2006, memory rebate
Cool Link: Wil Wheaton reviews Guitar Hero II

Guitar Hero

Last Sunday we stopped in at Best Buy after dinner. The boys wanted to look at the games and I wanted to find out the lowdown on their Wii inventory. They had no Wii’s, but they did have a PlayStation II demo that was running Guitar Hero II. I had heard about this game from Wil Wheaton’s blog, but had not seen it in person. We watched a kid play it for about 15 minutes before giving up to browse the rest of the store. We returned 20 minutes later and he was still playing. I think he took the hint because he finally set his guitar down and let us play. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun this game is. All four of us tried it and we all loved it.

When I got home, I IM’d a collegue about it and he said he had a PS2 with GH1 and GH2 with two guitars! So he brought them in to work yesterday and we’ve lost a significant amount of productivity in the last two days. This might be the best game ever for a rock music fan.

There are four different levels of difficulty which you can apply to each song. GH2 lets you play cooperatively with another player. For example, on “Free Bird” one player plays lead guitar and the other plays rhythm guitar. On other songs, like “War Pigs”, one player has lead and the other plays bass. It’s really a blast.

GH2 costs $80 with a guitar controller. A second controller costs $50. We don’t have a PS2, so that would cost another $120. Over $200, so we won’t be getting one any time soon.

I tell you, though, it’s way more fun than learning to play a real guitar. At least if you’re a talentless, tone-deaf hack like me.

Check out the song lists for each game:

Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 414
Weight lost: 49 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 10
Hours billed this week: 24.5
Current reading: The Prince by Machiavelli, Running With Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs
Recent listening: Coverville, DrugMusic, Humpy’s Soul Show, NPR Story of the Day, Science Friday, Iowa by Slipnot, XO by Elliott Smith, Either/Or by Elliott Smith, Joe Satriani, It’s The Jump Off
Recent viewing: Doctor Who, Iowa at Arizona State, Eagles at Colts, A Walk In The Clouds, Keep The River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale, Man vs. Wild, Medium
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: Tested memory for Thomas’ new computer
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, build new computer for Thomas, rake, clean garage, fix laundry room door, RMA old Tivo drive, Best of 2006, memory rebate
Cool Link: The Last Outpost: Wil Wheaton summarizes an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s total geek hilarity.