I've really enjoyed it. I don't understand the criticism leveled against it by critics, calling it "preachy" and "elitist", but have nothing to say on the actual issues it raises.
This season has been the best so far IMO and is everything I like about Aaron Sorkin minus the cliches.
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I loved the first season but have only seen a couple of episodes since. I'll probably binge watch the whole thing once it's done.
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I love this show. The 3rd season isn't doing much for me, but I like the characters, and I want to see what happens, so I keep watching.
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: I've really enjoyed it. I don't understand the criticism leveled against it by critics, calling it "preachy" and "elitist", but have nothing to say on the actual issues it raises.
Well, it is quite preachy, and somewhat elitist. That's kind of what I like about it. It justifies and defends an elitist approach to the media, quite openly and effectively so.
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These criticisms are in pretty much every review I've read. Why does everyone think Jim is being "holier-than-thou" when he is criticizing clickbait journalism? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that he's right and nails it on every point. The writer didn't even try to refute any of his points. If that's holier-than-thou then so is everyone that has a bone to pick with anything that's popular.
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Well, see, now it has become very safe to dismiss anything that men say, through male characters, which is critical of modern society, by dismissing it as "mansplaining," and the "patriarchy."
I don't say "popular," mind you, but "safe." Social media has provided us with a perfect data-based approach to which issues can fuel a constant, background outrage, and this is one of them now.
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When I was in high school my mother would come home from work and after complaining how hot it was in the house, immediately turn the AC down to a temperature that was way too cold. After the house would get too cold, she would raise the temperature too high, causing a cycle of uncomfortable temperatures. It took awhile before she accepted my solution that raising or lowering the temperature past necessary would not make it get to a comfortable temperature faster, only shorten the time it lasted for.
I think this is somewhat of a fair analogy for how we approach the issue of sexism. Women being treated unfairly was/is a problem. But when the pushback is too extreme and writing off anything men say as "mansplaining" regardless of if it's valid or not, is just going to cause men to get defensive and ignore the legitimate problem of sexism against women, causing the issue to fluctuate from one extreme to the other.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: When I was in high school my mother would come home from work and after complaining how hot it was in the house, immediately turn the AC down to a temperature that was way too cold. After the house would get too cold, she would raise the temperature too high, causing a cycle of uncomfortable temperatures. It took awhile before she accepted my solution that raising or lowering the temperature past necessary would not make it get to a comfortable temperature faster, only shorten the time it lasted for.
I think this is somewhat of a fair analogy for how we approach the issue of sexism. Women being treated unfairly was/is a problem. But when the pushback is too extreme and writing off anything men say as "mansplaining" regardless of if it's valid or not, is just going to cause men to get defensive and ignore the legitimate problem of sexism against women, causing the issue to fluctuate from one extreme to the other.
I literally thought the first half of your post was going to be an example of crazy female thinking. I have this same issue with my wife. I have to "mansplain," that the boiler boils water at a single temperature, so the hot water it produces (which heats the radiators) cannot become hot faster if the temperature is turned up higher.
Thank god we don't have air conditioning.
But yes, this is my general feeling. This tendency to invent arcane terminology, the profiteering and content mongering that goes on with social media these days, is all very depressing. And when you try, from the outside, to explain to people that they are being fed a bill of goods because somebody discovered that middle class white women are a demographic in search of an outrage button (to put that as cynically as possible), that's "mansplaining."
On the one hand, it's a strawman that can't be unravelled. If you actually know more, being called condescending is just a finger trap. But on the other hand, it's in itself a condescension- like assuming, for example, that because I put the above argument succinctly, and asserted my opinion with confidence, as society expects me to do, I must be so narrow minded as to believe that what I have said is the final word on the topic, rather than my own problematic, incompletely informed opinion.
To me, "mansplaining" is a distinction without a difference. Either you condescend to someone or you don't. Either you're a misogynist or your not. Talking to a woman in a way that she doesn't like is not, in itself, either of those two things, but it is a way to characterize men as being constitutionally incapable of respect for the opposite sex.
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I think you do the term a disservice by not recognizing that "mansplaining" specifically refers to a certain type of condescension applied specifically to women, generally with the implication that it is either a) not actually necessary to explain; or b) is attempting to communicate opinion as if it were fact.
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I admit, the idea that one is a misogynist or not seems peculiar to me for a nuanced discussion of any similar topic. Race, religion, gender relations, politics, the idea that the metric that ought to be used is 'the very worst thing, or not' is off to me.
While we're talking about crass marketing attempts to pander to a demographic's outrage, let me point out that, "I'm not a racist/sexist/anti-Semite/etc." is not just commonplace but classic. It's surely used as much as pernicious women being all angry with their hurt feelings and such.
Eh. I also think there's an unintended irony that the counter example to 'mansplaining' was a derivation of 'why are women so cold all the time?' and how silly it is.
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Tom: I think he understands the intended definition. I think what he's getting at, and what I've experienced, is that the term is frequently used as a means of protecting the user thereof from any sort of logical rebuttal. Whether or not someone's argument against you is "mansplaining" doesn't actually change whether or not it's valid. So accusing someone of mansplaining becomes a form of tone policing, and is an excellent diversionary attack because you don't actually have to address the argument at all so long as the person making it is a man.
There's a wider application of this you see in politics frequently, and even on this forum. Politicians frequently accuse their opponents of being arrogant, snobs, condescending or intolerant because it's a means of dismissing their argument without having to actually address it. And since it's difficult, if not outright impossible, to prove that you aren't being condescending, or "mansplaining", or "gaslighting", or blinded by your white privilege, you can expect to leave logic at the door when these terms are invoked.
Which isn't to say that any of these terms aren't actually valid when used in context. Like if you were to explain to me that my recent successful job hunt was partially influenced by white privilege - i.e, the skills, status, and cultural advantage I have as a white man not only better prepared me for the application and interview process, but also made me more hireable, appear more trustworthy, and made my employers assume certain things about me to my benefit - I would probably agree with you, to an extent. Especially if you had numbers or anecdotes to back you up.
If, otoh, you were to tell me I wasn't allowed to be involved in a discussion about racial issues because I'm white, or your response to a point I made in said discussion was "you need to check your privilege" rather than explaining *why* I was wrong/misinformed, then that would send up a pretty massive red flag.
All this is to say that it makes even being a feminist man in feminist discussions difficult in some circles, and the end result is that more and more men, even those who would consider themselves feminist or at least sympathetic to the feminist movement, are withdrawing from being involved in these discussions because of it. Myself included.
A recent example I shared here before. We have a friend who's a burgeoning feminist, and unfortunately she's fallen victim to some of the outrage pandering that's so common in social media and clickbait headlines these days. Recently she made a Facebook post referencing a magazine article that asked 10 random men "what fashion habits annoy you most about your S/O?" She went ballistic on this with a rant "where do these guys get off thinking they can tell women what to do?" followed by her replying to a couple of the guys quoted and saying "f you, so and so, you don't deserve her!" and other such lovely things. It was pretty vitriolic.
I replied by pointing out that the reason the guys said those things for the article is because they were asked to by the magazine, and that the magazine probably picked the top 10 most interesting/incendiary responses they got. I pointed out that it was an article written by a woman, for a woman's magazine, and said a better question to ask would be "why do magazines like this stay in business?" I thought the underlying issue was that we live in a society where women are taught to act and dress in a way that panders to men, and the best way to put an end to magazines like that is to stop acting like a man's opinion of the way you dress matters, and not to buy magazines that tells you that it does.
I also added that I didn't care much about women's fashion, and had no interest in telling any woman how to dress, and that's also an indication of the underlying problem: women are taught to care a great deal about a man's opinion of an issue that men actually don't spend much time thinking about.
Her reply was an all out assault. She accused me of being part of "rape culture", of being close minded and sexist, of mansplaining and thinking I was so much smarter than women, and many other things. It was a long response, and covered just about everything except what I actually said. So I left the conversation, and it took another feminist woman to reiterate my point before she would discuss the issue logically.
I've seen this sort of interaction repeated with several friends of mine on social media alone, and it seems to be a symptom of the "outrage media" being pandered to middle class white women that Orincoro mentioned. It's forcing men out of discussions about gender relations, and the end result is more and more men feel alienated by feminism. If they're like me, they have enough experience to know that the majority of women and feminists *don't* buy into the more hysterical rhetoric, and it doesn't really change the way we perceive or interact with women. For others, it fosters a sense of resentment, or even drives them towards MRA nonsense. It's difficult to sympathize or agree with a movement when you're not allowed to even talk about it in a positive manner without being attacked for doing so.
Again, these is hardly unique to feminism, it's just a subset of a larger problem when it comes to tone policing.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I think you do the term a disservice by not recognizing that "mansplaining" specifically refers to a certain type of condescension applied specifically to women, generally with the implication that it is either a) not actually necessary to explain; or b) is attempting to communicate opinion as if it were fact.
Had I consistently encountered that specific interpretation in the wild, I might be inclined to agree. But this very article, though it proclaims that mansplaining is what the episode in question does, offers zero support for the notion that the lesson, while preachy and perhaps arguable, wasn't necessary- nor, for that matter, that it was stated as fact rather than opinion. So on both counts, I think the use in question fails to live up to your standards.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I admit, the idea that one is a misogynist or not seems peculiar to me for a nuanced discussion of any similar topic. Race, religion, gender relations, politics, the idea that the metric that ought to be used is 'the very worst thing, or not' is off to me.
I agree. I think that terms like these attempt to establish these false absolutes without stating them, because stating them would require that they be substantiated or at least reasonable within the context of any given discussion.
quote: Eh. I also think there's an unintended irony that the counter example to 'mansplaining' was a derivation of 'why are women so cold all the time?' and how silly it is.
Intended irony, at least for my part. Give me some credit. I think everyone has peccadilloes, and I think the heat thing is one that's more common to women. Men have their fair share.
quote: I've seen this sort of interaction repeated with several friends of mine on social media alone, and it seems to be a symptom of the "outrage media" being pandered to middle class white women that Orincoro mentioned. It's forcing men out of discussions about gender relations, and the end result is more and more men feel alienated by feminism. If they're like me, they have enough experience to know that the majority of women and feminists *don't* buy into the more hysterical rhetoric, and it doesn't really change the way we perceive or interact with women. For others, it fosters a sense of resentment, or even drives them towards MRA nonsense. It's difficult to sympathize or agree with a movement when you're not allowed to even talk about it in a positive manner without being attacked for doing so.
The element of this that I find most difficult is really that social media has lowered the level of discourse, even has discourse has evolved to address issues I really see as being more relevant than those of feminism 20 years ago (but I'm 30, so take that with a grain of age salt).
The public access to data, and particularly the toos for interpretation of that data, has evolved only haphazardly, and we are still relatively poor at parsing and effectively applying what we know, both about social media metrics (advertising and content distribution), and the data supplied in the content itself.
For example, the canard that women make "72 cents on the dollar" compared to men has subsided in the public imagination somewhat, because a more subtle narrative has emerged regarding what that data actually means in a real, working society and economy, to wit: women on average seek lower paying jobs, have shorter careers, work fewer hours on average, and spend more time in education, while they are somewhat more likely to change careers, and less likely to be a family breadwinner.
That narrative arose out of the public's evolving awareness of what data means, and how it can be used. At the same time, we have also discovered more pernicious uses for data. For example, the recent data-driven talk about how women are under-represented in film, which is based on the number of speaking parts in major Hollywood productions. However right the hypothesis may sound, the narrative steadfastly rebuffs complicating arguments, such as the number of war and sports films produced for mass consumption. And at the same time, this narrative takes hold without retaining its baseline motivation, which should be to encourage *consumers* to seek entertainment featuring women, but becomes, in the media and on social media, the castigation of an entertainment industry that doesn't just set trends, but also assiduously follows them.
Social media, all the while, serves as a convenient platform for externalizing social ills, and placing them at the feet of unseen "forces that be-" a tendency that as often as not makes the whole group susceptible to even more insidious neural marketing, by conspiracy theorists (anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers on the left, and birthers and One World Government types on the right), and cynical content peddlers of all variety. And we spend our time there policing each other's thoughts, and harassing public figures who stray into unbeaten territory. And that's all just fodder for us to sit and stare at our computer screens.
Remember when people discussed this stuff on UBB forums, supported by single benign advertisers who didn't interfere with the discussion? Yeah, everybody who posted in them now posts on Facebook. So there's that.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: by conspiracy theorists (anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers on the left, and birthers and One World Government types on the right
I've heard anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers characterized as being of the left before, but in the wild, these are positions held by libertarians.
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No, anti-vax is notoriously heavy with heavy lefties. The average anti-vaxxer is a crusty communitarian-minded hippie more inclined to the green party than to anything libertarian.
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In my experience I've seen anti-vaxxers pop up on the far left, the far right, and libertarians. It makes interesting bedfellows on my Facebook wall.
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You'd think the far-right small government people would be the ones who don't want those guvment CDC noobs telling us how to keep our kids safe.
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at some point the spectrum might just become a circle. I remember reading an article somewhere about how the anti-GMO movement forged alliances between far-left hippy types and the martia-law-is-nigh preppers. They're both on board with the idea of government conspiracies to kill the population with food.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: by conspiracy theorists (anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers on the left, and birthers and One World Government types on the right
I've heard anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers characterized as being of the left before, but in the wild, these are positions held by libertarians.
Not in my experience.
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Actually, every single anti-vaxxer and 9/11 truther I've met has been libertarian. There's a special area where the far right and left converge, and my libertarian/anarchist friends (ironically, many of them former military) will admit they're pretty much just hippies with guns.
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I guess I am going by anecdotal data, but I've got a lot of it. I'm also a bit skeptical of the idea that hippie dippie communitarians are inherently leftist.
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they pretty much totally are. being skeptical of that fact is like truly wondering if the green party is inherently leftist or not.
Your average communitarian hippie is like a mellowed out trotskyite mostly sated with vague environmental promises and medical marijuana.
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Seriously, there is a pretty sizable libertarian/anarchist movement that does the whole smoke weed and use bitcoins and go out in the woods and live in communes type stuff. I know this because I personally know some people who are into it. It's all very weird. And they're all into the 9/11 conspiracy theory, anti-vax, anti government stuff.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: I guess I am going by anecdotal data, but I've got a lot of it.
uh... yeah. Well then that's totally different. If you only had *some*, or even just *a little*, then I would doubt that what your saying applies on a national level. But you have *a lot*. So that makes it different because that's the way anecdotal evidence works. Statistics is subjective, after all.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: ::wonders what a right-wing hippy would be like::
To me, it's obvious that the left is tied to class, race, and gender concerns. What the heck does living off the land have to do with any of that? Same with the legalization of weed; just because someone advocates for that does not make them leftist (though the prison issue is leftist).
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Seriously, there is a pretty sizable libertarian/anarchist movement that does the whole smoke weed and use bitcoins and go out in the woods and live in communes type stuff. I know this because I personally know some people who are into it. It's all very weird. And they're all into the 9/11 conspiracy theory, anti-vax, anti government stuff.
I feel like we call leftists like that hippies. But right wingers like that we call militia.
One has communes, the other has compounds.
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quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: The smugness of that guy was unbearable.
It's a deliberate attempt to get arrested, Adam is a fairly humble guy outside of protests. But that's more or less his schtick - he tries to be as loud, arrogant and obnoxious as possible and tries to make police uncomfortable as a means of goading them into arresting him, while at the same time not being in any way physically or verbally aggressive. It usually works out fairly well for him - he's been arrested dozens of times and has gathered quite a following, but has only done serious jail time once. (After an incident in DC last year) It is kind of funny to watch the videos where he tries his hardest to get arrested, only to be ignored/laughed at by the police.
quote:I feel like we call leftists like that hippies. But right wingers like that we call militia.
One has communes, the other has compounds.
But aside from labels and verbiage, what's the real difference between the two? I guess one group is more inclined to wear camouflage and the other tie-dye, but if you look at their core beliefs - anti-authority, deeply distrustful of government and big corporations in general, anti war, anti vaccine, pro "alternative medicine", pro personal freedom (and lots of drugs) - they're the same. They may have come to the place they are on different roads, but they have the same destination.
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quote:I feel like we call leftists like that hippies. But right wingers like that we call militia.
One has communes, the other has compounds.
But aside from labels and verbiage, what's the real difference between the two? I guess one group is more inclined to wear camouflage and the other tie-dye, but if you look at their core beliefs - anti-authority, deeply distrustful of government and big corporations in general, anti war, anti vaccine, pro "alternative medicine", pro personal freedom (and lots of drugs) - they're the same. They may have come to the place they are on different roads, but they have the same destination.
If you narrow a hippie down to core beliefs then a lot of people would fall into that category. People who are anti big corporations, anti big government, think war is pointless, and like to smoke weed aren't necessarily hippies, that's pretty much the majority of the millenials. It is the fringe aspects that make them a hippy: tie-dye-wearing barefoot longhaired drum circlers etc.
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quote:People who are anti big corporations, anti big government, think war is pointless, and like to smoke weed aren't necessarily hippies...
What makes them hippies is not the tie-dye. It's giving a damn. A huge number of Millennials are basically just hippies who have replaced a sense of purpose and a desire for actual, physical activism with liking things on Facebook.
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My sense of purpose is to survive the economy that was left to me, one diced up part time job and student loan deferral and medical bill to the next. It does not leave a lot of time or energy to find my inner spiritual jamboree.
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quote:I feel like we call leftists like that hippies. But right wingers like that we call militia.
One has communes, the other has compounds.
But aside from labels and verbiage, what's the real difference between the two? I guess one group is more inclined to wear camouflage and the other tie-dye, but if you look at their core beliefs - anti-authority, deeply distrustful of government and big corporations in general, anti war, anti vaccine, pro "alternative medicine", pro personal freedom (and lots of drugs) - they're the same. They may have come to the place they are on different roads, but they have the same destination.
If you narrow a hippie down to core beliefs then a lot of people would fall into that category. People who are anti big corporations, anti big government, think war is pointless, and like to smoke weed aren't necessarily hippies, that's pretty much the majority of the millenials. It is the fringe aspects that make them a hippy: tie-dye-wearing barefoot longhaired drum circlers etc.
Well no, as we already discussed in the quoted text, these people also live together in distinct communities, are frequently arrested for civil disobedience, and generally act and think outside of the cultural norm. They're a far cry from the average millenial. ("Share this if you care about the environment and want to raise AWARENESS!"... 'Awareness' being code for "doing nothing that requires any effort or personal discomfort, but still being able to feel accomplished and smug")
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Also, in my relatively short life I have worn tie dye, had long hair, been barefoot, and even (during a memorable Earth Day party) played in a drum circle inside an old rusted out school bus. And I'm by no means a hippie.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: No, I was being charitable. It explains everything about you that is worth explaining.
You sure you weren't trying to be clever and said something dumb instead?
Stop projecting.
If you want me to spell it out: your view of political affiliation as being tribal rather than philosophical: "democrats are for minorities and the poor," vs. "democrats are for state intervention in the economy," explains everything that I need to know about you.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: No, I was being charitable. It explains everything about you that is worth explaining.
You sure you weren't trying to be clever and said something dumb instead?
Stop projecting.
If you want me to spell it out: your view of political affiliation as being tribal rather than philosophical: "democrats are for minorities and the poor," vs. "democrats are for state intervention in the economy," explains everything that I need to know about you.
I really have no idea what your point is. All I'm saying is that living off the land or in a commune or being a hippie doesn't make one a leftist. What do any of those things have to do with minorities, the poor, or state intervention in the economy, or gender issues?
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What is the point of this conversation other than that some people don't know or can't acknowledge that the anti-vax movement is loaded with far left types? It is. The right wing anti-vax people are more numerous and more demented overall (what a surprise? america's notoriously anti-science idiot right wing features heavier in a scientifically bogus activist movement? so unexpected) but the chakra woo au natural whole foods hippies and hollywood celebrities are not far behind.
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A cursory reading would suggest the opposite, Parkour: i.e, it seems several posters have trouble believing that there are far right anti-vax types. (Gaal had trouble even imagining it apparently) I don't think anyone has denied that a bunch of that community is leftist.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: it seems several posters have trouble believing that there are far right anti-vax types. (Gaal had trouble even imagining it apparently)
Check again. I was referring to far right hippies, not anti-vaxxers. I know personally a conservative anti-vaxxer.
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