Tag: Gender

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Culture Media Politics

Day 1722 and The Remake of The People versus Larry Flynt Sucks

I have not watched Jimmy Kimmel in his current incarnation as broadcast late night variety show host. But I did watch some episodes of the Man Show so I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the man’s career.

This guy is into beer, boobs and being turned down by ABC

That one unremarkable but sort of likable dude can jump from hosting segments about girls on trampolines to a national broadcast host with political opinions is somewhat impressive and also bleak.

If I had to give mono-causal explainer as why millennial women seem split into two distinct political camps when it comes to modern American politics, absolutely over it or absolutely irate, I think the continued existence of Jimmy Kimmel’s career would be as fine an explanation as any other.

This guy gets promoted over and over for just being the worst and what do we get? We get scolded no matter what we do. Of course some women are screaming banshees and the rest are like mmm shrug. Who has freedom and who has responsibility has always been a polite fiction.

Being subjected to years of increasingly sexualized entertainment featuring bouncing boobies, mentally unstable underage pop stars and the men who were paid to ogle them professionally probably had some downstream influence on our current political climate and the shitty state of entertainment.

The backlash to the backlash to the backlash as it were has happened and we just don’t care anymore. I’ll fight for your right to be perverted but I won’t lie to you and say it hasn’t negatively affected me in anyway.

I’ve always been acutely aware of where popular culture derived a women’s value. Jimmy Kimmel had a career and Britney Spears had a breakdown. And now you want me to fight to keep this twerp on the air because of our proud democracy and its culture of promoting speech and expression? Fuck off.

I genuinely believe girls on trampolines has inherent entertainment and artistic value. Almost everyone has an appreciation for the female form.

I’m unclear if warmed over political takes on broadcast television delivered by a middling broadcaster at midnight is more or less valuable an art form or as political expression. Maybe the FCC needs an overhaul for this new era or maybe we get pirates wires.

I’m neither a satirist nor comedian. I watched the Man Show because I had a boyfriend in a fraternity but I am not watching Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue now and neither are you.

And that’s all that matters to the business of entertainment. Slapping speech and politics on it is a reach that now middle aged millennials can’t manage. Maybe if we spent more time on trampolines.

Elite competition skirmishes over who controls the airwaves of broadcast television are barely interesting except to the absolutely irate. And these days we are all too busy to remain irate unless we’ve got luxury signaling to do. Which I don’t need to do because no one is coming for my blog.

I don’t see how anyone can turn a microwaved soggy ready meal remake of the people versus Larry Flynt out of Jimmy Kimmel.

Who wants to fight for that? Hustler had some inherent entertainment value and Larry Flynt had “readers.” It was speech and it wasn’t on public airwaves with a boss in Washington DC. Maybe you didn’t like what he did but were you prepared to fight for it? Lots of people were. Who wants to fight for Kimmel?

Oliver Stone has always been kind of a shitlib

Jimmy Kimmel was never anything more than the guy who read cue cards between the dopamine hits of girls on trampolines. Stuffing your politics into his pie hole doesn’t really change that.

Bob Iger knows it. I know it. The guy had dwindling ratings, an expensive contract and not nearly enough common sense to keep his mouth shut if one of his staffers was out of touch. If I were in charge of Disney that would be my excuse and I’d dump that Jimmy for literally anything else. I bet a swearing parrot would test better. Hell I know it would.

That’s why it’s so damned exhausting to care about the free speech that literally nobody asked to be said. Does anyone who genuinely cares about free speech feel like they can rally the cause to a bobble head spouting opinions that aren’t even his own? Doubtful. I’d sooner fight for Illinois Nazis. Shame about the ACLU innit?

Americans would rally for boobs though. If someone wanted to get the FCC to allow the return of the Man Show and place it on ABC after dark maybe then we’d have a worthy sequel to Larry Flynt.

But nobody is going to bat for Jimmy Kimmel unless it’s backed up with boobies. And there isn’t a perky tit in sight. No one is going to make a political meal out of this. I doubt even the Swanson’s heir could heat this frozen turd.

Categories
Internet Culture Politics

Day 1121 and Screeching Ghouls

A Financial Times journalist published a lengthy thread on Twitter to promote his excellent reporting on significant global phenomena that seems to deserve all our attention. Young men are becoming more conservative than young women who are themselves becoming swiftly more liberal.

In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye

John Burn Murdoch “A Gender Divide Widens
John Burn Murdoch

In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up.

John Burn Murdoch “A Gender Divide Widens

There are a million ways to look at this problem, its causes & potential solutions, and the Twitter thread gets into all of them.

But I want to focus on the “screeching ghoul” aspect of the entire mess. The internet is now the public space of society. And men and women are on totally different feeds.

Young people between 18-30 find themselves in gender segregated algorithmically distinct content networks.

Men are cussing with their friends playing first person shooter games, ranting on Reddit, and generally going their own way.

Women are on Instagram and TikTok and are interacting with other women where dating and culture topics dominate.

They are all driven by algorithm towards refinement of their positions, biases and slogans. It self reinforces a viewpoint. Right up till it is all screeching ghouls. My mutual Mike pointed out what happens. No one wants to have a relationship with a screeching ghoul.

As more of us have onboarded to virtual worlds we found ourselves with more of our own people and ideologies. And instead of engaging one one one with another human who capable of empathy we find ourselves starring at algorithmically lost and damned. No wonder we can’t come together.

Categories
Community Startups

Day 847 and Erasure

I hosted an interactive town hall for Consensus this afternoon. The topic was the path forward for building communities online, offline and IRL with cryptocurrency, decentralized autonomous organizations and maybe even network states.

I’ve been working on this town hall for several months. I worked with Marc Hochstein to refine the thesis question, build the flow and topics, bring together speakers from unique ecosystems and projects, and horse trade the various bit of social capital required to get interesting content out the door. I worked hard on it. I felt I was one of the owners of the panel.

Builders of new types of communities – online, IRL, and hybrids – roll up their sleeves and discuss how they’ve addressed challenges from 60,000-foot strategy to immediate on-the-ground tactics in a zero-trust world with high trust expectations. Topics include: governance and accountability; organic scaling through consensus (who and what decides on whether it is achieved); the architecture of sustaining and driving loyalty; navigating regulatory hurdles; uncertainty around novel governance structures; and managing information and workflows around who and what is trusted.

I was proud of my first question as I felt qualified to ask having once been the founder and leader of an organization. Conway’s Law is a familiar adage in software design. Simply put, what we build is a reflection of who we are and how we communicate with each other. So I opened the town hall with this as the thirty thousand foot view.

If what we build is a reflection of the organizations that build it, then crypto is a reflection of this room. Assuming you believe our goal is economic and monetary solutions for everyone willing to align with our reformation, are we living up to this ambition?

We had a lot of ground to cover. Issues of institutional distrust, transparency, governance, and decentralization’s promises for inclusion. But reactivity means we go to base emotions. An older woman asked the panel (not me though) why there weren’t more women on the panel. Needlessly to say I took that personally. Ain’t I a panelist?

I just brought the hammer down on this poor woman who wanted to call my panel a “manel” because lady it’s fucking erasure I worked for months to bring this group together, I’m on the stage as an expert, and you think don’t I count?

She said I was the moderator. Which like yeah it’s my fucking show because I have the expertise to bring the leaders together as I’m a peer. I shut it down as we had deeper questions on what inclusion means than Boomer feminism or Girlbossing woke-ism can manage.

The beauty of Bitcoin and Ethereum and the ecosystem of L2s like Stacks is any of us can validate what’s going on. There is no “man” or patriarchy or systemic oppression keeping you out of learning and using the tools. Maybe they reflect their builders who haven’t always been inclusive but now all of us together can earn and build like anyone else. We can make our tools reflect us by insisting on being seen.

I regularly have my background and expertise and existence questioned by everyone. And I just keep showing up. So I’d like to say sticking a girl on a panel does nothing for inclusion. But being a woman who organized a serious (ly) weird town hall on community should also mean my experience counts as much as anyone else’s.

I want everyone to count. You count. I count. Your gender or sexual orientation doesn’t discount you unless you discount yourself first. I regularly make sure I’m seen and I want you seen too.

The way to count is by speaking up and making sure that men aren’t the only ones who contribute. Don’t want to make your gender or sex a thing?

Go ignore gender & sex and & identity entirely and be an anon with a Milady pfp. I came to crypto to be a sovereign of my own body and choices. It’s your choice. None of us are victims.

I was amused as dozens of women came up to me after with enthusiasm about how we do inclusion in crypto because we don’t need to be restricted by Girlbossing or Boomer feminism. We include ourselves as the system is inclusive by design.

Decentralized systems include us all. And that’s a future they can’t exclude us from. Do you want to categorize every identity into perfect little corporate identities and slogans? I don’t. We can build a future where we are free to be you and me. Ok Boomer?

Categories
Culture

Day 697 and Chivalry for Women

I was having a conversation with one of my girlfriends today about power. We are both exploring the new ways in which we’ve become more aware of our inherent power. Not that we were not powerful when we were younger but rather we have a new consciousness about it’s responsibilities. And it’s relationship to our gender is complicated.

One of the most dehumanizing aspects of Girlboss culture was how it forced female founders into rigid standards of acceptable behavior and emotions. We were surprisingly heavily policed even though we were allowed to use femininity to allure and entice. Girlbosses were empowered. Except occasionally we were only empowered with sex appeal.

Girlbosses looked good on magazine covers and in lifestyle content. It was honestly suffocating even as it was a massive tactical advantage. Imagine being given a cheat code or a level up. Of course you are going to play it but sometimes it takes the joy out of the game.

I am less adverse to the wiles of the feminine as I get older. Now I am able to wield the benefits of mutual viewpoints and seeking common ground. Women are trained to persuade from a young age. We are trained to be accommodating and without hostility or anger. It makes it easier for us to seek out where we might come together.

But those powers of persuasion can also feel manipulative and narcissistic. Men who have felt failed by their mothers can feel particularly hostile towards feminine power. Negative family orientations towards women from siblings to parents can sit in completely irrational and reactionary places for men. I say this because men occupy a similar place for me. Mommy and Daddy Issues can often materialize in stabilizing coping mechanisms. But ultimately it’s not a healthy exchange of power if it’s not consensual.

I dislike having power that I only wield because of my gender. I would prefer to have a less charged environment to pursue my fortunes. But I am also not adverse to playing my hand. You’ve got to play it as it lays. Different women have resolved these power discrepancies in wildly disparate ways. But we are not absolved of the ways in which we hurt men just because we have been hurt by them.

One of the great oversights of the feminist movements may be our lack of a developed gentlemanly style code for women. A theory of chivalry for not playing fair in the gender wars. We certainly expected it of men. If you wield power you must do it responsibly. Peter Parker principle applies to anyone with gifts that can be used for good or evil.

Categories
Culture

Day 622 and Uneven Bars

I’m not very temperamentally even. I run hot and excited and passionate and I’ve got a mean streak a mile wide. I can only assume the reason I’m so popular with some men is they love a bitch. Everyone does.

It’s not the most appreciated trait in popular culture but it does seem to be the dominate preference of a lot of very intelligent people. At least these days plenty of people both conservative and progressive appreciate the necessity of a ball buster. It’s a status object too. We don’t trust men with weak wives. It makes them look weak.

But I’m not sure anyone thinks it’s a particular good thing for the majority of women to act forcefully. If you hold your ground it can bring out howls of ostentatious victimhood. Which if you point out, they quickly gender the tactic a dark feminine trait of less less powerful that they learned from you.

It’s a really stupid party trick that somehow works well past the age of reason. After about 21 you should have really learned men tell you are weak because they know you are powerful over them. But honestly I still get caught flat footed by it. It’s a fickle power to be wielded without assurance or trust. But it is still a power and it’s insulting women women don’t claim it.

Women deciding to dismiss the uneven hold of their power makes balancing power for everyone a bit of a mess. The default switches from human manufacturing got reset.

Gender essentialism is pretty deep. It’s very jarring for the literal minded mainstream of society in particular. And unfortunately for everyone the world is run by the mainstream and they are prone to revanchist sentiment. Just look at everyone simpering for monarchy. Even if you are above that sort of thing no you are not. And so the uneven bars of progress continue. If you aren’t a realist about it you might get screwed.