WARNING: Randomness follows.

[beandelphiki]

I've FINALLY gotten around to trying out my new skateboard a bit, and I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I've basically found my center of balance on the board, and I'm getting turning down as well.



I find it funny that when I run into jerks on lj, they usually try to dismiss me by focusing on my username as an insult. I've been called "lil' beanie" and "Beankid" as insults.

The implication seems to be that being "small" in some way makes me inferior. I guess these people don't read Orson Scott Card.

Heavy on the irony...



And finally, I'm sick of stupid Women's Studies-spawned lemming ideas.

"Gender is a social construct!"

"Where did you get THAT tripe?"

"Oh, Women's Studies!"


Does anyone besides me see something WRONG with this picture?

I swear to fucking bob, I've been debating with this one person for a week. And I'm sick of the argument. If any more people try to convince me that gender is a social construct, I will ...FLAME them and rip them up into ITTY-BITTY PIECES. Live my life, then tell me it's basically all in my head.

Especially if you go by "womyn."

Comments

being random back

[danielray.livejournal.com]

i am so-so on the skateboard... i think my fear of it makes it harder. although once i get the sense of that center, it does get easier.

and last time, the messenger bag *definitely* made balance harder.

ooh ooh, so will you flame me and then i'll call you Bean-a-tron?

i have no idea why.

and how about the concept that many elements of gender and gender expression are socially constructed, but so are most of the things in life, and it's silly to use "socially constructed" to mean the same thing as "meaningless" or "controllable" or "you should stick with what God or the Goddess gave you because it's all socially constructed but your Body is Natural."

--daniel the womyn

[aerindipity.livejournal.com]

"Gender is a social construct"???

What does that even mean? That you can mold a child into whatever gender you want it to be by treating it a certain way? Bull. Shit.

That's right!!!

[criminalasylum.livejournal.com]

Swear to me more!! I haven't fucked yet, but when I do swearing to "fucking bob" will hold more juice with me. You have so brownie points. I know give you 1,000 years of good luck! Muwaha!

[unintentional.livejournal.com]

I think gender is a social construct, as in the definition of gender alone and not the person's gender. Oh no, that's a personal construct.

Re: being random back

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Or my personal favorite:"But you incarnated into this body to learn lessons about being in that body and if the Goddess wouldn't have wanted you to learn lessons about womanhood, She wouldn't have put you in that body - so for you to do what you're doing to it is blasphemy."
Yes dear and so is the person who is using medicine to cure his cancer which was "the will of God" and so are the parents of the child with the cleft lip.
"But you see, I left him that way because the Goddess wanted my child to learn about being disfigured and how horrible people can be...it's his karmic debt and I'm making sure he pays it.."

People like that make me feel like kicking kittens through rotating fan blades...

[indicoyote.livejournal.com]

Well, keep in mind that these are the same people, oftentimes, who also really wanna say that EVERYTHING is a social construct, down to Physics and 1+1=2.

:oP

Re: being random back

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

and how about the concept that many elements of gender and gender expression are socially constructed, but so are most of the things in life, and it's silly to use "socially constructed" to mean the same thing as "meaningless" or "controllable"

Yep, I would agree about the "many elements" thing... This argument was about gender being something that should basically be eliminated. "Meaningless," and "controllable" described her thoughts on it quite well. That infuriates me, especially coming from a woman who has admitted to studying this stuff in Women/Gender Studies, or something of the like; those classes, as far as my understanding went, are NOT about to tell women they might as well start acting like guys because gender is meaningless. They don't tell women to stop worrying about balancing their "femininity" in the workplace, because they shouldn't have to (gender is meaningless, after all...) No, it's all crock. Say one thing, do another; so much of what I HEAR coming out of those classes seem so self-serving. But then, I haven't taken them.

I told this woman that in order to prove gender is entirely a social construct (as she seemed to want to do), she had to prove that everyone could live just as well as another gender. I hoped that would shut down the debate, but it didn't. So I got out of there before I got too mad to be polite.

By the way...why are you a pumpkin?

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Basically. Exactly.

Re: That's right!!!

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Hehehehehe. I didn't look at it that way. That's just my way of avoiding saying "god."

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

WHAT?!?!? 1+1 doesn't equal 2!!!!! It equals 5!!

You should respect my opinion on this, because it's perfectly valid. All opinions are valid. :P


...I can't stand people like that.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Right. :)

[danielray.livejournal.com]

well, i might argue that everything is a social construct, because everything that we apprehend is filtered through our senses, and everything people as a group percieve to be true is filtered through people's individual senses and the ways we have to communicate wtih each other.

but, again, i don't take "social construct" to mean necessarily malleable or deniable or subject to my whims...

like, "fire is hot" is a social construct, because we a) experience a certain sensation when interacting with a certain thing that we know as fire and b) have the words "fire" "is" and "hot" to describe that whole interaction.

but that doesn't mean that i can then say, 'oh, it's a social construct; i'll just say that fire isn't not!' and put my hand into a fire and not get burned.

or "1+1=2" is a statement that represents certain logical relationships, but i can also validly say that "1+1=10" and "1+1=0" in fairly common mathematical systems. to say that 1+1=5, i'd need to redefine 1, +, =, and/or 5... and then it would point to a different logical system, or it would be using different words to say exactly the same thing...

;)

Re: being random back

[danielray.livejournal.com]

I told this woman that in order to prove gender is entirely a social construct (as she seemed to want to do), she had to prove that everyone could live just as well as another gender. I hoped that would shut down the debate, but it didn't. So I got out of there before I got too mad to be polite.

ha ha!

so what kind of answer did she have to that?

i am General Domination Pumpkin because apparently I am involved in an evil plan to steal all the valuable jewels in the world, destroy everyone while they are sleeping, and make enough money to buy ninja suits. and kisses, but that is a secret part of the plan.

Re: being random back

[danielray.livejournal.com]

the frustrating thing about that argument is: fine, if you want to be a theist and believe that the lot you've encountered in life is given to you for a purpose, fine. all well and good.

but what arrogance to say that you have the skinny on exactly what that life is, what it means, and what you're supposed to do with yourself! like, isn't the same argument just as valid if you say that the goddess put you on earth to learn what it is like to spend some time in a more-or-less female body and then alter that body and live as male, and that *that* is the thing to learn about? who are they to claim to know the meaning of someone else's life?

silly humans.

Re: being random back

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Grrr....she really avoided it actually.

She went off on some other part of my post, and then at the bottom of quite a long argument, she said, "Well, I'm not really sure about gender as a social construct, anyway..." Which has to be the cheapest way I've ever seen of crying uncle.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. :)

[indicoyote.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but if I may bring in more philosophical terms now, all you're really doing now is playing a language game. ;o) When I say 1+1=2, I'm of course assuming things like arabic numerals, base > 2, modulo > 2, etc. But what lots of post-modernists seem to not think about is that there IS some underlying logic, there, then language is just laid over top of it, and no 'language game' in the world is gonna change the underlying truths.

And I realize yo probably understand al this, but I'm feeling all philosophy-y today. ;o)

philosophy philosophy :)

[danielray.livejournal.com]

now i'm gonna go off on a tangent! (because, really, i agree with your point--that you can't deconstruct things into meaninglessness. which is really what we are all saying here.) (but also i think it's not the best idea to construct things into too much meaning.)

When I say 1+1=2, I'm of course assuming things like arabic numerals, base > 2, modulo > 2, etc

but think about the social construction inherent in that. not only are you assigning these elements specific meanings, but you are assuming ("of course") that the people reading your comment will also automatically assign those same meanings to the numbers. i'm not saying that that is not a valid assumption, but i am saying that that is a socially constructed assumption. there's no inherent truth in that assumption; there is rather a lifetime of accumulated experience from interactions with other people that enable you to safely assume that you will be understood. (and really, we all know that everyone's first thought is base 10, no modulus, even if they don't know from bases and moduli.)

erm, i guess my point is, as far as playing a language game goes, that anything that we use language for is a social construct.

and yes, there is an underlying logic to the system you are communicating about, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that underlying logic has an existence independent of people communicating about it... er... ok, i mean this in a less extreme manner than it might sounds... a better way of putting it might be: we have no way of communicating about this underlying logic other than communicating about it (a silly, self-reflective statement), and we have no way of knowing about this underlying logic other than what we can apprehend through our senses and what we can communicate with each other about... i'm not saying it *doesn't* exist outside of that, i am simply saying that i am not qualified to make a statement about its existence outside of the realm of my interactions with and communications with it.

it's like physics. (cuz everything is like physics!) newtonian physics/classical mechanics has its own underlying logic, and for a long time it was the best explanation we could come up with for how the universe worked. and if i'm gonna throw a ball, or launch a rocket into orbit around the earth, newtonian mechanics gives a damn good description of how that will work.

but ultimately it is something we made up--we took all this evidence and put it together to create a logical system that we then could communicate about and use to make predictions. and then we found other ways to interact with matter and energy, and we learned that this made-up system no longer fit what we saw happening, so we had to make up another system, which we can communicate about and use to make predictions and which may eventually be superseded by some other made-up system that better fits what we experience or when we find other ways to interact with things.

logic *is* something that we humans construct. and it's something that we can use, and that gives us useful answers, and can help us navigate safely through the world. but in the end it is important to remember that it is something we have constructed, so that we don't cling to it in situations where it doesn't apply...

erm. have i mentioned that i have no desire for working at work today?

Re: philosophy philosophy :)

[indicoyote.livejournal.com]

erm, i guess my point is, as far as playing a language game goes, that anything that we use language for is a social construct.

Well, yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying, actually. ;o) But I still don't think that just because something is, in a way, constructed (I take some issue with it being a 'social' construct), that's the same thing as it being meaningless and mutable. But, neither do you. :o, So I guess we're done.

Which is good, because I need to do my REAL philosophy paper now. :oP