Sociology

SF Sunday: machines and freedom from slavery

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From my Quotes File (which you can see serving up random quotes at the bottom of the sidebar):

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

I find the search for the perfect robot society a continuing feature of SF novels,

Saturday Links: “Ethnic” Food, Mother-Blaming, and more on sexy sports uniforms

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Hoydenizen Vegan About Town has a terrific post up: “talking about things to eat (or: how the words people use to describe food make me feel like a freak)“. An excerpt:

I read Jay Rayner’s attempt at a week of veganism, where he suggests that “ethnic is the default position for the vegan.” I bet he uses ‘exotic’ ingredients in his cooking, too. I have an ethnicity; we all have ethnicities: the fact that the food I grew up with is easier to veganise than the stuff he ate as a child doesn’t make me ‘ethnic,’ it makes me Chinese. Using these words trivializes the decision I have made to be vegan, and it others my family and my whole freaking life, because using words like that aren’t just saying that I’m ‘different,’ they’re saying that I’m ‘other.’ And he is not alone in this, many people are guilty of this all the time. That you’re trying something you’ve never before heard of doesn’t make it ‘exotic,’ it makes it new to you.

The HuffPo is off my reading list

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That’s it, I guess. I’ve had the impression the Huffington Post was going downhill for a good long time now, and it’s now confirmed. This, on the front page?

underagegymnast

Is not funny or clever. It’s just downright creepy and exploitative.

Feminism Friday linkage:

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Impossibly Beautiful
from Shakesville by Melissa McEwan (read the whole series, linked at the foot of the post)

Olympic medal-winning women called “gold-diggers”
from Feministing by Ann

aussie gold diggers

Why feminism should be taught in schools
From The Times by Joan Smith

Looking back, I’m amazed at how much we achieved – many feminist ideas, such as the right to maternity leave, have become mainstream – but I’m also horrified by the casual misogyny of 21st-century life. Since my book, Misogynies, was first published in 1989, it has got much worse.

But 21st-century politicians don’t use the vocabulary of their 20th-century forebears, and feminism needs to reinvent itself as much as any other political movement.

Also from The Times:

UK Criminal Compensation Authority Blaming Rape Victims

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Under guidelines meant to minimise compensation payouts for people who “contribute to their own ordeal during a criminal incident”, such as people taking part in the crime, or offering provocation for an attack, certain bureaucrats decided that women being out in the world socialising in a perfectly legal fashion were liable for provoking their own rapes, and cut their compensation payouts accordingly. Public outcry has meant that the decision has been reversed, but how could they have been so wrong headed in the first place?

It could be something to do with the way that the media reports rape, of course. Melissa reports [trigger warnings], and then responds to a typical Daily Mail women-blaming op-ed (the pictorial juxtaposition has to be seen to be believed):

The piece itself is just unrelentingly infuriating, as its male author offers up gems like:

But why are women so worried about their looks?

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I took a lot of flak in a recent discussion elsewhere for suggesting that women who have cosmetic enhancement surgery might be responding to just a little bit more than their own psychological insecurities about attracting a mate – that there might actually be some much larger social issues about why women choose to be surgically enhanced i.e. that it’s not just about getting sex, even if the surgery they are having is aimed at increasing their sexual appeal (by certain widely acknowledged to be fucked up standards).

Here’s just one high-profile example of how women are trained from a very young age to believe that their looks matter more than anything else about them, not just when it comes to finding a sexual partner, but also in terms of recognition and reward in other aspects of life: