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I wish we could appreciate women's talents without feeling forced to prefix the whole thing with a blob about restoring them to their righteous place on the pan

I wish we could appreciate women's talents without feeling forced to prefix the whole thing with a blob about restoring them to their righteous place on the pantheon of whatever.

Fellshard 5y ago
Moralized language makes it significantly more difficult to criticize, as doing so makes you immoral by implication, so any actual argument can be slapped down and ignored.
- fao_ 5y ago
  Would you mind explaining what argument you are referring to? You seem to have some context that I (and presumably other people) don't.
nerdponx 5y ago
Unless you can go back in time and put them in the pantheon back then, I don't see much of an alternative.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Violence begets violence, and likewise, discrimination begets reverse discrimination. Someone must step up and end the cycle.
  - fao_ 5y ago
    Can you explain how a media collage of archival video of women pioneering early work in synthesizers is discriminating towards men? I'm not sure I see how that is the case.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      I am not the GP poster, and so I was not commenting on this specific case, but only on the more general principle. But if we apply the general principle to this case, it can be argued that placing women on a pedestal like this is both demeaning and othering them.
      - throwaway1090 5y ago
        It's not close to putting on a pedestal. They are just being given their fair share, no more, no less. Actually it's not even fair, as most of them are dead.
      - fao_ 5y ago
        I'm... really (honestly!) not sure how this demeans women? Like to put it clearer: I absolutely in no way can see even a path to understanding how it is demeaning to talk about things people did in the past, that were deliberately ignored or buried, because of their gender. I'm also not really sure what you mean by "general principle", either, to be honest? Thanks in advance!
        havernator 5y ago
        > I absolutely in no way can see even a path to understanding how it is demeaning to talk about things people did in the past, that were deliberately ignored or buried, because of their gender. Not the parent, but a common take on pieces like this is that they’re trying too hard, and end up trying to promote people who’d clearly not have made any kind of “pantheon” even if they’d been men, yet frame it as if they would have. The tone of this piece is a lot like one of those, even if the film isn’t doing that (haven’t seen it). As for how that might be demeaning, imagine if things were reversed and you read a piece about the forgotten Great Men Inventors that opened with put-downs of Roberta Oppenheimer and Thelma Edison and the Wright Sisters and demanded that we consider among their ranks the unjustly forgotten men inventors, who are just as good and important... like Edwin Moore, who patented the push-pin. Would that be inspiring to men, do you think? Or would it come off as lame pandering and an indictment of the premise (“there are tons of men who accomplished great things in the past but were ignored because they were men”) that they couldn’t find any better examples? Nb that a scarcity of such examples even given perfect record keeping is exactly what one would expect in a society in which one sex had had far fewer opportunities to do work we consider notable, no matter their actual potential.
  - deeblering4 5y ago
    Are you proposing that we all just pretend women were never oppressed and move on with our lives? That would essentially be gaslighting half of earths population. The cycle will end by itself in time through a series of under-corrections, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And I’m sorry to say that comments like yours that undermine attribution of women are not part of the solution.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      > Are you proposing that we all just pretend No. > The cycle will end by itself in time through a series of under-corrections, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Perhaps, but that’s not what the reality is at the moment. At the moment, there are what amounts to large corrective movements, which some argue to be over-corrective, and others who argue that anyone who is against any large amount of correction must be arguing against any correction at all. > comments like yours that undermine attribution of women Clearly you are part of the last of the aforementions groups.
      - deeblering4 5y ago
        I can see what you mean but its not so black white to me. My stance is in the middle, somewhere in between large corrections and nothing at all. I see progress as a series of under corrections, like a pendulum swinging back and forth, eventually settling into a neutral middle state.
incanus77 5y ago
> I wish we could appreciate women's talents Yeah, so do women of the last few centuries! (and more)
deeblering4 5y ago
Women have been oppressed for centuries, and in the grand scheme we are only just beginning to emerge from that (in america). Today it is absolutely necessary to “prefix the thing” and there is still a long road ahead of damage to undo. After equality has been the norm for several generations (it is still not the norm today), maybe then we’ll be ready to talk about removing the prefix.
allturtles 5y ago
I particularly don't get the "dead" part about complaining about "dead white men." We all end up dead, one way or another. It will happen to the sisters with transistors, too.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  I think part of the situation is that almost no one gets widespread recognition until after they are dead to begin with, if that. Not even those with a massive PR campaign, plus many experimentalists do not want to divert that kind of effort away from technical progress. So this is expressing a lagging indicator of a lingering statistic. Well, electronics itself is only about a hundred years old and it started out completely male dominated and decades of development continued from that point. Mainly development of technology not diversity, and that was truly challenging. And even though male dominated from the start, it was still out of reach to almost all men too, more so for those few oportunities mostly to undertake experimental efforts. So statistically at the beginning, electronics was virtually inaccessbile for almost all men & women to a somewhat equal degree. It was just not one of the things you could certainly do no matter how much you really wanted to, you had to basically get lucky in addition to your ambition.
- wpietri 5y ago
  I think his point is pretty clear in that paragraph: "Music is haunted by the specters of Beethoven and Mozart, even Elvis and John Lennon, with the canon being built around these names that we are told deserve not just celebrating but worshipping. These old, dead white men." The problem is the dead overshadowing the living.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    Isn't that the very point of a canon? It takes time for a society to ratify the quality of a cultural artifact, to sift through the chaff and decide on what and who the 'greats' are. Invariably, at any given point in time, most of them are dead. It's possible that in the long run, people will consider Clara Rockmore, Delia Derbyshire, etc. to rank with Beethoven, Mozart, etc. It doesn't seem likely, though. I don't think Elvis will rank either, or even does now - does anyone consider Elvis a great musician?
gumby 5y ago
I wish that too, and eventually we will get there. But there is a lot of progress and catching up before we get there. Nowadays when I watch films or read books from the 50s, 60s, and 70s the depth of casual sexism is quite shocking. So that shows some progress. But still there’s a tremendous amount of inequality to be overcome.
- walshemj 5y ago
  The Star Treck pilot is an example.
  - gumby 5y ago
    What an excellent example because Star Trek was itself so very progressive for its time. Yet despite that may plot lines still centered around very rigid sexist assumptions.
    - Gunax 5y ago
      Sorry to go on a tangent, but I am surprised how many TNG episodes have 'alien species that is thinly veiled stand-in for some human race'. And this is a show that would have been woke for it's time. [1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Up_The_Long_Ladder_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Up_The_Long_Ladder_(epi... [2] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Code_of_Honor_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Code_of_Honor_(episode)
      - gumby 5y ago
        Well science fiction is merely a way to examine current society. The SF angle is an attempt to get a little "outside" perspective. It's pretty hard to make truly alien aliens, as the more alien they are, the harder they are to understand, identify with etc, making the stories themselves less interesting. The aliens in The Gods Themselves are pretty alien but still have, from time to time, a human-like mode of thinking which Asimov used to explain their behavior. The Bug Wars is the only book I've read that has no humans at all, though the aliens' mentalities are somewhat human, again to make them comprehensible. Famously "different" aliens (e.g. Moties, the bugs of Ender's Game & sequels) are actually pretty human in motivation. And the inscrutable aliens (e.g. Starship Troopers) are clearly inscrutable stand-ins for contemporary political enemies. The various literature on intelligent machines has the same problem.
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kleer001 5y ago
Like how we appreciate people with blue eyes talents or tall people or left handed people without mentioning it? Thing is those people aren't born in different bell curves with different expectations, considerations, cultural histories, and preferences. Additionally this isn't just about talents, this is about being talented in a seemingly traditionally male arena, engineering. Women in engineering will always be of note since most women do not choose to be there.

I wish we could appreciate women's talents without feeling forced to prefix the whole thing with a blob about restoring them to their righteous place on the pantheon of whatever.

Fellshard 5y ago

Moralized language makes it significantly more difficult to criticize, as doing so makes you immoral by implication, so any actual argument can be slapped down and ignored.

fao_ 5y ago
Would you mind explaining what argument you are referring to? You seem to have some context that I (and presumably other people) don't.

nerdponx 5y ago

Unless you can go back in time and put them in the pantheon back then, I don't see much of an alternative.

teddyh 5y ago
Violence begets violence, and likewise, discrimination begets reverse discrimination. Someone must step up and end the cycle.
- fao_ 5y ago
  Can you explain how a media collage of archival video of women pioneering early work in synthesizers is discriminating towards men? I'm not sure I see how that is the case.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    I am not the GP poster, and so I was not commenting on this specific case, but only on the more general principle. But if we apply the general principle to this case, it can be argued that placing women on a pedestal like this is both demeaning and othering them.
    - throwaway1090 5y ago
      It's not close to putting on a pedestal. They are just being given their fair share, no more, no less. Actually it's not even fair, as most of them are dead.
    - fao_ 5y ago
      I'm... really (honestly!) not sure how this demeans women? Like to put it clearer: I absolutely in no way can see even a path to understanding how it is demeaning to talk about things people did in the past, that were deliberately ignored or buried, because of their gender. I'm also not really sure what you mean by "general principle", either, to be honest? Thanks in advance!
      - havernator 5y ago
        > I absolutely in no way can see even a path to understanding how it is demeaning to talk about things people did in the past, that were deliberately ignored or buried, because of their gender. Not the parent, but a common take on pieces like this is that they’re trying too hard, and end up trying to promote people who’d clearly not have made any kind of “pantheon” even if they’d been men, yet frame it as if they would have. The tone of this piece is a lot like one of those, even if the film isn’t doing that (haven’t seen it). As for how that might be demeaning, imagine if things were reversed and you read a piece about the forgotten Great Men Inventors that opened with put-downs of Roberta Oppenheimer and Thelma Edison and the Wright Sisters and demanded that we consider among their ranks the unjustly forgotten men inventors, who are just as good and important... like Edwin Moore, who patented the push-pin. Would that be inspiring to men, do you think? Or would it come off as lame pandering and an indictment of the premise (“there are tons of men who accomplished great things in the past but were ignored because they were men”) that they couldn’t find any better examples? Nb that a scarcity of such examples even given perfect record keeping is exactly what one would expect in a society in which one sex had had far fewer opportunities to do work we consider notable, no matter their actual potential.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  Are you proposing that we all just pretend women were never oppressed and move on with our lives? That would essentially be gaslighting half of earths population. The cycle will end by itself in time through a series of under-corrections, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And I’m sorry to say that comments like yours that undermine attribution of women are not part of the solution.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    > Are you proposing that we all just pretend No. > The cycle will end by itself in time through a series of under-corrections, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Perhaps, but that’s not what the reality is at the moment. At the moment, there are what amounts to large corrective movements, which some argue to be over-corrective, and others who argue that anyone who is against any large amount of correction must be arguing against any correction at all. > comments like yours that undermine attribution of women Clearly you are part of the last of the aforementions groups.
    - deeblering4 5y ago
      I can see what you mean but its not so black white to me. My stance is in the middle, somewhere in between large corrections and nothing at all. I see progress as a series of under corrections, like a pendulum swinging back and forth, eventually settling into a neutral middle state.

incanus77 5y ago

> I wish we could appreciate women's talents Yeah, so do women of the last few centuries! (and more)

deeblering4 5y ago

Women have been oppressed for centuries, and in the grand scheme we are only just beginning to emerge from that (in america). Today it is absolutely necessary to “prefix the thing” and there is still a long road ahead of damage to undo. After equality has been the norm for several generations (it is still not the norm today), maybe then we’ll be ready to talk about removing the prefix.

allturtles 5y ago

I particularly don't get the "dead" part about complaining about "dead white men." We all end up dead, one way or another. It will happen to the sisters with transistors, too.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
I think part of the situation is that almost no one gets widespread recognition until after they are dead to begin with, if that. Not even those with a massive PR campaign, plus many experimentalists do not want to divert that kind of effort away from technical progress. So this is expressing a lagging indicator of a lingering statistic. Well, electronics itself is only about a hundred years old and it started out completely male dominated and decades of development continued from that point. Mainly development of technology not diversity, and that was truly challenging. And even though male dominated from the start, it was still out of reach to almost all men too, more so for those few oportunities mostly to undertake experimental efforts. So statistically at the beginning, electronics was virtually inaccessbile for almost all men & women to a somewhat equal degree. It was just not one of the things you could certainly do no matter how much you really wanted to, you had to basically get lucky in addition to your ambition.
wpietri 5y ago
I think his point is pretty clear in that paragraph: "Music is haunted by the specters of Beethoven and Mozart, even Elvis and John Lennon, with the canon being built around these names that we are told deserve not just celebrating but worshipping. These old, dead white men." The problem is the dead overshadowing the living.
- allturtles 5y ago
  Isn't that the very point of a canon? It takes time for a society to ratify the quality of a cultural artifact, to sift through the chaff and decide on what and who the 'greats' are. Invariably, at any given point in time, most of them are dead. It's possible that in the long run, people will consider Clara Rockmore, Delia Derbyshire, etc. to rank with Beethoven, Mozart, etc. It doesn't seem likely, though. I don't think Elvis will rank either, or even does now - does anyone consider Elvis a great musician?

gumby 5y ago

I wish that too, and eventually we will get there. But there is a lot of progress and catching up before we get there. Nowadays when I watch films or read books from the 50s, 60s, and 70s the depth of casual sexism is quite shocking. So that shows some progress. But still there’s a tremendous amount of inequality to be overcome.

walshemj 5y ago
The Star Treck pilot is an example.
- gumby 5y ago
  What an excellent example because Star Trek was itself so very progressive for its time. Yet despite that may plot lines still centered around very rigid sexist assumptions.
  - Gunax 5y ago
    Sorry to go on a tangent, but I am surprised how many TNG episodes have 'alien species that is thinly veiled stand-in for some human race'. And this is a show that would have been woke for it's time. [1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Up_The_Long_Ladder_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Up_The_Long_Ladder_(epi... [2] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Code_of_Honor_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Code_of_Honor_(episode)
    - gumby 5y ago
      Well science fiction is merely a way to examine current society. The SF angle is an attempt to get a little "outside" perspective. It's pretty hard to make truly alien aliens, as the more alien they are, the harder they are to understand, identify with etc, making the stories themselves less interesting. The aliens in The Gods Themselves are pretty alien but still have, from time to time, a human-like mode of thinking which Asimov used to explain their behavior. The Bug Wars is the only book I've read that has no humans at all, though the aliens' mentalities are somewhat human, again to make them comprehensible. Famously "different" aliens (e.g. Moties, the bugs of Ender's Game & sequels) are actually pretty human in motivation. And the inscrutable aliens (e.g. Starship Troopers) are clearly inscrutable stand-ins for contemporary political enemies. The various literature on intelligent machines has the same problem.

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kleer001 5y ago

Like how we appreciate people with blue eyes talents or tall people or left handed people without mentioning it? Thing is those people aren't born in different bell curves with different expectations, considerations, cultural histories, and preferences. Additionally this isn't just about talents, this is about being talented in a seemingly traditionally male arena, engineering. Women in engineering will always be of note since most women do not choose to be there.