#widgetry

That observation was also offered in contrast to some very different growing patterns:

Normal humans (i.e. Native Americans) spend their weekends hiking, camping, bow-shooting, visiting archaeological sites, gardening, fishing, hunting, reading, skiing, searching for artifacts, knitting, quilting, playing field sports, painting, carving, sculpting or at least, cooking barbecue with friends or family. They do NOT spend endless hours shooting assault rifles at a target, whose center is a cartoon image of the president or practicing setting off bombs. Both of those latter activities are occurring in my neighborhood even as I write. In fact, they are occurring in many communities across the United States.

It goes on, but you probably get the drift. He’s talking about some ideology that starts with glorifying often xenophobic violence, and unfortunately continues up through right-wing terrorism. And some of the things he thinks have led to the current situation with that in the US.

But, as a sidenote? I also do have some truly unpopular opinions about certain things, which I just avoid getting into in a lot of settings. Not limited to here, but definitely including here.

That is also coming from some perspectives that have a lot more to do with the first part of what Richard was talking about than the second. And an awful lot of people in the US especially, are far more familiar with and on much more solid ground talking about the second. Don’t necessarily have the knowledge to make some useful distinctions.

I was trying to be polite there. Then there are the people who just don’t care about some distinctions like that. In any case, it’s not 100% overlap with their own pet ideologies, so literally anyone else is Bad and Wrong by definition.

That was implied before, but I am also going to be very wary of neighbors like the second group he was talking about. With good reason, and plenty of precedent to suggest that caution is wise. I also have near-zero reason to think that anyone in a position of power would act on my side, if these neighbors were to turn actively threatening and dangerous. A number of the dudes in question are themselves cops, etc., and have been actively seeking out positions like that for some time.

That is also nothing new.

That knowledge also informs my own positions on some things. And there are a lot of people whose widget sets just do not allow, much less account, for such factors. Again, not 100% overlap? Nothing you could ever say would be worth hearing. You’re trash.

ETA: And I don't like dealing with that group much better than the assholes with their clever targets. If that weren't clear enough. ;)

I really don’t have much tolerance for trying to tell other people what they need to be thinking and how they need to be looking at the world. Whatever the details may be there.

It gets frustrating sometimes, the number of people who do seem to be working off a set of assumptions that basically everything is made up of “different belief systems, outside of the person; that one chose voluntarily as one whole consistent thing; and then pledged allegiance to it.” (x)

Reminded too of something I read recently from Richard Thornton. (Who, while he seems to have rather a collection of bees in that very Creek bonnet of his, knows what he’s talking about with a lot of stuff.)

Children, both male and female, were raised to be physically strong and quite capable of defending themselves. Both genders possessed and knew how to use weapons. That is why even today, many Southeastern Native women carry knives in their purses. There was no need for policemen in a Choctaw, Alabama, Creek, Chickasaw, Shawnee, Yuchi or Koasati town.

(Knives? Never. I’m actually not that bothered by the “both genders” shorthand, because never has been that rigid or limited.)

I’ve gone on some before about some (continuing) differences in expectations there. IME, women as a group are still probably going to be quicker to fight you. With the lack of apparent irony there, it’s pretty clear that person really has not known a lot of the women I have, to the point that it’s darkly hilarious.

That observation was also offered in contrast to some very different growing patterns:

Normal humans (i.e. Native Americans) spend their weekends hiking, camping, bow-shooting, visiting archaeological sites, gardening, fishing, hunting, reading, skiing, searching for artifacts, knitting, quilting, playing field sports, painting, carving, sculpting or at least, cooking barbecue with friends or family. They do NOT spend endless hours shooting assault rifles at a target, whose center is a cartoon image of the president or practicing setting off bombs. Both of those latter activities are occurring in my neighborhood even as I write. In fact, they are occurring in many communities across the United States.

It goes on, but you probably get the drift. He’s talking about some ideology that starts with glorifying often xenophobic violence, and unfortunately continues up through right-wing terrorism. And some of the things he thinks have led to the current situation with that in the US.

But, as a sidenote? I also do have some truly unpopular opinions about certain things, which I just avoid getting into in a lot of settings. Not limited to here, but definitely including here.

That is also coming from some perspectives that have a lot more to do with the first part of what Richard was talking about than the second. And an awful lot of people in the US especially, are far more familiar with and on much more solid ground talking about the second. Don’t necessarily have the knowledge to make some useful distinctions.

One of the constant attacks from anti-gay-family folk is the idea that all kids need role models of each gender, especially of the same-sex. So all boys need to have a father to teach them how to be a man. All girls need a mother to teach them how to be a woman. This is known.

It’s also one of the points that a lot of straight, cis supporters have trouble countering and they often fall back to miscellaneous excuses of “it takes a village to raise a child” and to point out that a gay male couple will have female friends/aunts/etc or a lesbian couple will have male friends/uncles/etc.

Yeah I’m not running with this excuse. I’m not buying the idea that GBLT couples absolutely must have add-ons to their family to make them as good as straight couples, it’s demeaning. It’s offensive. I’m also not running with the idea that gender (and binary gender at that), alone of all characteristics of a person, is so important that a child simply must have an example of each to cling to – especially not in a world where most GBLT people are raised in cis, straight households that not only don’t share our GBLTness but are often hostile to us. In fact, given that, I kinda want to slap any cis, straight person who prates on about how essential it is to have a role mode to teach children how to be X; if anyone knows what it’s like to be raised by parents not like us, it is us.

But let’s take this whole “I need a father to teach me how to be a man” bullshit because I want to know exactly what it means...

Ultimately, if my dad helped me become the man I am today it was by, at least occasionally, letting me be the person I became and not completely trying to squash my individuality too much even when he was sorely tempted to do so. He didn’t lay down a blue print, an example or a template because he quite simply couldn’t. Not because he fails as a man or a father but because I am not him and sharing the same gender doesn’t change that.

He didn’t teach me maleness, how to be a man or masculinity because the way I present maleness, the way I am a man and the way I practice masculinity is radically different from him. Do we honestly think that my dad has a far greater ability to guide me to adulthood than any woman simply because we’re the same gender? Despite all our other difference? All our fundamental difference?

You cannot have one male role model to teach you how to be a man (or, consequently, one female role model to teach you how to be a woman) because there is no one way to be a man or woman (nor, for that matter, does everyone fit in the binary). To decide that a male role model is absolutely essential is to reduce performance of masculinity to one way of doing things – which is ridiculously limiting and inaccurate.

For me, growing up I would have appreciated more freedom and encouragement to be the person I was, the person I wanted to be than be provided with some template of “maleness” to follow. No-one is capable of providing me with the latter and any parent, regardless of gender, can give their children the former.

You might want to read the whole post, because he put it very well.

This one also keeps getting me, whether it's dragged out in the context of the horribleness of single parents or same assigned sex parents.

This is obviously about widgetry and keeping certain stereotypes going, in a way that is hostile to real people.

EXCERPT (see link for whole thing):

The reason I can come up with so many things to say on so many issues, is not because I have a beautiful bunch of mental widgets lined up in my head with all the proper ideas on sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and every other ism out there, lined up neatly and gracefully, preferably in line with a particular overarching academic ideology where you memorize which bits of privilege are which and plug and play and mix and match. I’ve certainly read more than my fair share of “theory” coming from that angle (on more than my fair share of topics), but it’s just not where my head goes when I’m looking at a situation. I just take the situation and try to figure out what’s true within that situation, and write about that.

That method seems a lot easier to me. I don’t have to hold a bunch of things in my head that are not happening in front of me. I don’t have to memorize tons of arcane ideas about how the world works off in word-abstraction-land. I just have to take a look at what’s going on, maybe cross-reference it to various forms of “what has gone on,” or “what is going on elsewhere,” and that tells me most of what I need to know. My head doesn’t have to hold the whole world because the whole world already exists just fine on its own without my head around to make sense of it. It seems, though, that for some people it’s either easier or preferred (it’s hard to tell which) to memorize all the proper mental widgets, and to violently force the world (or at least make a serious attempt) to bend to the shape of the widgets.

This doesn’t mean that people who apply mental widgets this way always get things wrong, or that I and others like me always get things right, or that I always disagree with people who use mental widgets (whether both of us are right or both wrong). We’re all fallible human beings, and sometimes mental widgets can provide a shortcut to the right answer. But overall the mental-widget approach to ethics and politics strikes me as far more violent, hateful, impractical, disconnected, and damaging, even if it’s also aesthetically pretty from a certain standpoint and fits very well into academia.

* can't handle that not everyone who says the same thing means the same thing by it (or think that if I don't like something, my reasons are the same as everyone who dislikes it)

* are going to interpret what I say as part of an overarching worldview or system of ideas, rather than a specific statement about a specific kind of situation

* are going to single out one specific thing I said, connect it to a bunch of ideas I didn't say, and respond to those ideas as if they are what I meant by that one thing I said

* are going to insert my views into some sort of system where there's people who believe in system of beliefs A, people who believe in system of beliefs B, and nobody else in the world even exists.

Because you're wasting your time and you're wasting my time and no actual communication is going to take place. 

I understand that sometimes making mistakes about these things is inevitable, and that I make these mistakes too. Just try not to make a habit of it. 

See also: