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This is a wider excerpt: "When she was in her teens, her father decided to move the family to the United States, where they suffered a financial reversal she w

by Udik 5y ago

This is a wider excerpt: "When she was in her teens, her father decided to move the family to the United States, where they suffered a financial reversal she was unwilling to talk about. Suddenly not among the moneyed class, she hustled herself through the redbrick boondocks of the University of Vermont. Citibank internship led to a Deutsche Bank job, and after a few years she was an equity derivatives trader at Deutsche, holding her own against the toff sharks of the City of London. She had wild green eyes, with unnatural red spots in her irises when you pulled close, reminiscent of that Afghan girl from the National Geographic cover. Her personality was flinty and rough, and as leathery as her skin. She had spent years between various jobs backpacking around the rougher parts of the world. She was an imposing, broad-shouldered presence, six feet tall in bare feet, and towering over me in heels. Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel. British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work- be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast in someone's back- required doing. Long story short, you wanted to tie your genetic wagon to the backing horse of her bloodline. Which is why I was less nervous than I should have been on a random Saturday in July..." So it's a passage in a (novel? Definitely a literary piece anyway) where, in order to better sing the praise of one particular woman, she is compared to another common type in the same environment. All clearly point of view of a narrator (who might or might not be the author). If these are the parameters, we should throw in the bin almost all literature, from men and women alike.

MyHypatia 5y ago
He did not write a fiction novel. He wrote a book about his time working on ads at Facebook. He has now been hired to work on ads at Apple. Pointing this out is not "throwing away all literature".
- blast 5y ago
  That's not exactly accurate, because his book was obviously modeled on the 'gonzo' journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, and that sort of writer from the 70s. Those writers mixed fiction and fictional devices into their "nonfiction", consciously pushing every edge they could, with the intention of shocking the squares and thrilling the hip. To anyone familiar with that genre, it's clear that such passages are satirical excess, not meant to be taken literally, or at least mostly not, but with enough ambiguity left over to be dangerous. What's interesting in this episode is how the culture has shifted. The exact same style that once delighted the counterculture, which at the time was what progressives all identified with, is now a transgression that gets you banned from progressive circles, which have since become elite circles culturally, with growing political power as well. All of this is a tectonic cultural shift, and it's fascinating! There's a very interesting intermediate case at the midpoint between Hunter S. Thompson and this guy: that is the similarly gonzo The eXile which was produced by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi during their time in Russia in the 90s. The worst passages from that publication—which were far more misogynistic than anything this guy wrote—were dredged up a few years ago, with the intention of denouncing the authors as part of MeToo. In the end, nothing much came of it, partly because one of the women being written about came forward to say that those passages were satirical and that she had always been treated well by the authors. But I think the more important difference between that case and this is that the culture has shifted significantly in the intervening 3 or 4 years. If this incident were happening now, I bet the outcome would be different. The very same gunpowder that made counterculture heroes of Thompson and his ilk, and which the eXile guys got away with by a hair, now blows up in your face, and at much smaller doses too.
  - ABeeSea 5y ago
    I damn sure wouldn’t want Hunter S Thompson to be my manager.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Taibbi had something to say about this situation. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who...
tomnipotent 5y ago
> So it's a passage in a (novel? Definitely a literary piece anyway) It's not fiction. It's an autobiography. These are his personal opinions and feelings.
- rasputnik6502 5y ago
  Since when personal feelings and opinions should be prosecuted? And who is so entitled to give themselves such right?
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    Yes. We're allowed to judge people for the things they do and so, and decide we don't want to work with them. He's allowed his, and we're allowed ours. Many people are not interested with working with people that hold these world views, not when they have influence over the career progression of others.
    - Udik 5y ago
      The question is not whether it's allowed or not, it is. The question is whether it's stupid or not, and I think it is, terribly so.
      - tomnipotent 5y ago
        So women should be forced to work under a known misogynist, their salary and promotions tied to a boss that thinks them inferior and has literally published a book saying so? Yeah, there are no examples of that going poorly.
        rasputnik6502 5y ago
        Nobody forces them to work, and 'known mysogynist' is just a personal attack without merit. What actions did he take against women in general or any woman in particular to be called a misogynist? Remember, if it's only your personal belief, if you dislike the book and the author of it you're free to look for another workplace. But not free to take actions against someone just because you don't like them.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I actually agree that in context, the passage is every-so-slightly better. But it's still an extremely offensive thing to say! If you were a woman in the bay area, and the man responsible for your performance reviews had written that "most women in the bay area" are "useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells", would you expect to get a fair evaluation? There are other situations—Teen Vogue, for instance—where I think the world greatly overreacts, but this doesn't strike me as one of those cases.

by Udik 5y ago

MyHypatia 5y ago

He did not write a fiction novel. He wrote a book about his time working on ads at Facebook. He has now been hired to work on ads at Apple. Pointing this out is not "throwing away all literature".

blast 5y ago
That's not exactly accurate, because his book was obviously modeled on the 'gonzo' journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, and that sort of writer from the 70s. Those writers mixed fiction and fictional devices into their "nonfiction", consciously pushing every edge they could, with the intention of shocking the squares and thrilling the hip. To anyone familiar with that genre, it's clear that such passages are satirical excess, not meant to be taken literally, or at least mostly not, but with enough ambiguity left over to be dangerous. What's interesting in this episode is how the culture has shifted. The exact same style that once delighted the counterculture, which at the time was what progressives all identified with, is now a transgression that gets you banned from progressive circles, which have since become elite circles culturally, with growing political power as well. All of this is a tectonic cultural shift, and it's fascinating! There's a very interesting intermediate case at the midpoint between Hunter S. Thompson and this guy: that is the similarly gonzo The eXile which was produced by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi during their time in Russia in the 90s. The worst passages from that publication—which were far more misogynistic than anything this guy wrote—were dredged up a few years ago, with the intention of denouncing the authors as part of MeToo. In the end, nothing much came of it, partly because one of the women being written about came forward to say that those passages were satirical and that she had always been treated well by the authors. But I think the more important difference between that case and this is that the culture has shifted significantly in the intervening 3 or 4 years. If this incident were happening now, I bet the outcome would be different. The very same gunpowder that made counterculture heroes of Thompson and his ilk, and which the eXile guys got away with by a hair, now blows up in your face, and at much smaller doses too.
- ABeeSea 5y ago
  I damn sure wouldn’t want Hunter S Thompson to be my manager.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Taibbi had something to say about this situation. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who...

tomnipotent 5y ago

> So it's a passage in a (novel? Definitely a literary piece anyway) It's not fiction. It's an autobiography. These are his personal opinions and feelings.

rasputnik6502 5y ago
Since when personal feelings and opinions should be prosecuted? And who is so entitled to give themselves such right?
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  Yes. We're allowed to judge people for the things they do and so, and decide we don't want to work with them. He's allowed his, and we're allowed ours. Many people are not interested with working with people that hold these world views, not when they have influence over the career progression of others.
  - Udik 5y ago
    The question is not whether it's allowed or not, it is. The question is whether it's stupid or not, and I think it is, terribly so.
    - tomnipotent 5y ago
      So women should be forced to work under a known misogynist, their salary and promotions tied to a boss that thinks them inferior and has literally published a book saying so? Yeah, there are no examples of that going poorly.
      - rasputnik6502 5y ago
        Nobody forces them to work, and 'known mysogynist' is just a personal attack without merit. What actions did he take against women in general or any woman in particular to be called a misogynist? Remember, if it's only your personal belief, if you dislike the book and the author of it you're free to look for another workplace. But not free to take actions against someone just because you don't like them.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I actually agree that in context, the passage is every-so-slightly better. But it's still an extremely offensive thing to say! If you were a woman in the bay area, and the man responsible for your performance reviews had written that "most women in the bay area" are "useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells", would you expect to get a fair evaluation? There are other situations—Teen Vogue, for instance—where I think the world greatly overreacts, but this doesn't strike me as one of those cases.