I am trying to imagine what it would be like to live through a period when sexual politics was not a hot topic in all circles.
I’m thinking of a time not so long ago when people still talked about “hookups,” and about a typical undergraduate’s experience of “how dating works,” and it’s so dizzying to me that it seems so unremarkable that those things are now viewed as so repugnant, so (as if in inverse) old-fashioned, so separate from the ethos of the present.
Words which I didn’t always know how to use or appreciate fifty years ago, twenty, even 10 years ago are now part of my general vocabulary. Social norms about sexual behavior are now being discussed in mainstream publications of all persuasions, such as the Atlantic and the New York Times.
They aren’t treated as novel political breakthroughs! The importance placed on “hookups” and “dating,” the columns splashed with sensationalist “sexodus” stories, the politicization of popular TV shows about dating like How I Met Your Mother and Castle, should be surprising only in retrospect.
It seems surreal that when an institution much older than I am — which arguably predates the 20th century in most European countries — should be so inimical to the new and the old, and yet so unremarkable to me as a member of a post-pipeline future.
One thing that stands out to me about the reaction of millennials to sexual politics discourse is its disjunction between (1) the social norms of our elders, and (2) how quintessentially modern sexual behavior seems to people today.
I’ve described my own sense of age and familiarity numerous times on this blog already, but it bears repeating — and I’m using “us” and “we” in different ways, because by now I am mostly one person writing about a sense of something experienced by many people with the same basic experiences. People to whom I say I’m in my twenties or thirties have very different ideas of my own identity from those of the people I describes. The way I talk on this blog seems very strange to people who have been informed by the media that, oh, Daniel Tammet is a lovable funnyman who wrote some hilarious posts on Tumblr about sex and dating who everyone just kinda ignored.
I’ve learned that Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaimain are married at least 3 times now and each time it just breaks my brain. What the fuck? Let me return to blessed ignorance.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to contact Amanda Palmer for several years now and I can’t get through to her through her website.
She seems totally inaccessible.
I honestly kind of wonder what Tori Amos makes of their pairing
Oh, Tori Amos is really into Jon Bon Jovi
That’s interesting because she’s from Ontario and Jon is from Michigan
She’s like “this guy is really cute” and “this guy is a total douche” and “this guy is incredibly pathetic and repulsive and offensive”
She’s like “wow he’s infamous I have to hang out with him” but man, weren’t we all like 10 once???
Only she probably isn’t attracted to him, wanna come by our place? Really awkward, I can tell you’ll kick my ass.
–2 for incorrect facts, but +1 for an attempted relating of Bon Jovi’s “working man’s rock” to Y Kant Tori Read’s synthpop and +1 for
lgbt actually stands for liy gaty bell taco. from bfb.
because LGBT is an acronym that stands for “laughing while crying because of gender stuff”
Laughing while cryinG Because of gender sTuff.
I think this is a good point and I think it should be an inclusive term, in the sense that there are lots of people who are LGBT who are not laughing at crying, and lots of people who are not laughing because of gender stuff.
(If this is not clear, I’m not really saying it should be used, I’m saying I think it should be an inclusive term that people should be allowed to use in the same way people are allowed to say O- or X‚ or whatever)
do the trolley problem redux: you’re the Governor of Paradise Falls and a runaway trolley is heading straight for the common room of your castle. There are only two things you can do.
Me: I’d like to do the smart, prudent thing and order the workers to build a fence around the common room.
Trolley: That’s the smart, prudent thing to do?
Me: No. The smart, prudent thing to do is to fucking get on the fucking trolley.
the signs as “things I’m surprised are in the actual text of the Book of Revelation”
Aries: the text mentions “two shepherds clothed in purple” which I expected to see as “gymnasium” but it’s actually “gymnasium of the pure,” because purity, of course
Taurus: “their infants, and nursing children, and young children, were placed on golden bales” - I though this was just to make the pun on “golden bios” more obvious but apparently not, so that’s a good one
Gemini: when “orbs” are mentioned, they’re described as “burning fireflies” which I expected but which is awkward to make unless these are just lowly fireflies which are being transformed into orbs by some wondrously complicated process
Cancer: the text mentions “all the lower living creatures of the dark water” which I thought was just way more animal identification tokens than were actually in the book, I’m shocked it referred to all fish there
Leo: “they had eyes like the embryos in a woman’s womb,” wow, I thinking this was a reference to fish embryos that develop inside their mother’s uterus but apparently not
Virgo: the dog-headed angel faces left and right are called “the one placed in the center of the veil” which is kind of weird but could be to show that those are the only two vision faces (although the other one isn’t named)
Libra: the book mentions that anyone who wants to “look through him” will “find himself taken out of the realm of the living and be brought to the eternal flames of fire,” which is very explicit but seems like an oversight
Scorpio: oh my god nothing gets me into lolcow catholics like this image, I guess the idea of the four-legged low flying angel walking over some small scarab-like ground covering is amusing to people who like that sort of thing
Sagittarius: “a man clothed with the sun” oh my god the text literally reads “a man clothed with the sun in his strong man’s robe”? the obvious explanation is “he is clothed with the Sun in his greatness” but that’s too subtle, there has to be a more outrageous version of the joke, lower and mean-spirited
Capricorn: somehow this is the literal prediction: “for her entire life, she has been wearing layer upon layer of clothing made of gold and precious stones, representing layers of glory upon layers of glory, until she will be covered with and shining with precious gemstones like the top of a temple in the temple of God.” how does that happen? after you die the layer-mold dissolves leaving gold and then what
Aquarius: when he saw her with open mouth, he drew back, frightened, and leaving her, covered himself with a breastplate"!!! okay what even is the fate of the guy who wrote this poem
Pisces: apparently this lines up with the story of the flood but the only thing I can think of is: they build the tower one on top of the other to hold up the water. then the water goes up and the upper story comes down
Enigmatic dick bestows knowledge from the planet Uranus to the entity represented by the magical penis of Hermes, who in turn impart the ability to make you write whatever you want
