Posts by Tom Beard
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Up Front: Towards a Sex-Positive Utopia, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
make the default assumption they know their own fucking minds
Actually, I don't make the default assumption that anyone knows their own fucking minds.
I don't follow the precepts of any of the great psychological dead-ends of the 20th Century (Freudianism, behaviourism, Marxism). I'm also unconvinced by either the "just so" arguments of evolutionary psychology or their opposite, the tabula rasa approach of the standard social sciences model that treats our actions as merely the expression of an infinitely malleable culture. But one thing that they all agree on is that "knowing your own mind" is somewhere between a simplification and an impossibility.
Our minds and actions are not pure, sovereign expressions of free will. They are layered, contradictory, mutable and often opaque to conscious introspection. No-one's a "gynoid sock-puppet of the patriarchal media-industrial complex", but on the other hand no-one's desires and actions are immune to received wisdom, unspoken assumptions, peer pressure, advertising, body-shaming and the countless other forms of cultural influence and persuasion to which we are subject.
That makes for complicated discussions in all aspects of life, not least in sexuality, and has some especially tricky connotations for the notion of consent. We should all respect people's choices as a first principle, but shouldn't disregard those forces that might make some choices less free than others.
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Up Front: Towards a Sex-Positive Utopia, in reply to Megan Wegan,
But why are brazilians bad? who says so?
There's a common argument that says something like "Pre-pubescent girls have no pubic hair, so removing it from an adult woman makes her look like a child. Ergo, the result is, at best, to treat women like children, and at worst, a form of paedophilia."
So I guess that any woman who prefers men without beards (i.e. most women until the current hipster beard fetish) is really attracted to pre-pubescent boys, then? And so we're back to the boy bands.
But more seriously, it can become problematic if it becomes the default setting, and young men whose only experience of women's bodies is through contemporary porn recoil in Ruskinesque horror at the sight of a fluffy quim. That sort of social pressure can then make women's choices less than truly informed.
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Up Front: Towards a Sex-Positive Utopia, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m struggling to come up with a male singer marketed to teenager *girls* as aggressively masculine.
While I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, weren't most boy bands of the last 20 years carefully constructed to include at least one "bad boy" alongside the pretty ones? Not so much a square-jawed Clutch Cargo stereotype of robust mature masculinity, but at least a less unthreatening quasi-rebel in the James Dean/early Brando mold?
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Hard News: The Very Worst, in reply to David Ritchie,
trendy, lefty suburban Nagio
I've never been to Nagio, though it sounds quite quaint. Ngaio, on the other hand, is pretty much middle-of-the-road politically (at least according to voting booth figures) and far from any definition of "trendy".
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One thing that interests me is whether consultants have the same transparency and impartiality requirements as public servants. For instance, internal correspondence, documentation and research would be subject to an OIA when carried out in-house: is there the same level of scrutiny for consultants, or is only the final report available?
I'm not necessarily accusing such consultants of bias, but I wouldn't be surprised if evidence-based policy might seem somewhat incovenient to certain ministers. It would be in their interests to hire advisors known for, shall we say, applying a neo-liberal lens to the world. Is there any way of knowing what research external consultants might have looked at and discarded, or never looked at all, if it wouldn't have led to a conclusion that the minister wanted?
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to JackElder,
having my mind completely blown by Underworld's incredible mmm skyscraper i love you:
Oh yes, so much yes! Being a typography nerd at the time, I also bought the book of the same name name. It's incredible how they often seem to get the same effects in both music and type: repetitive, distorted, overlapping words, drifting in and out of comprehensibility, shifting from meaning to rhythm to texture and back again. A perfect postmodern evocation of media-saturated urban alienation and elation.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
It's all got a bit blurry.
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Just because it's getting late, and I need something mellow, some genuinely beautiful (though bewitchingly complex) Philip Glass:
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
But if I was stocking my own personal torture chamber, it would have to be Philip Glass. Einstein on the Beach, the repeat button locked with super glue and you've broken every law of God, Man and nature.
I have the 4-CD set, and have listened to it precisely once, about twenty years ago. And I still can't get that "It could be Franky, it could be very fresh and clean ... we could get some wind for the sailboat" lyric out of my head.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I feel the need to make it clear that the greatest version of 'Don't Leave Me This Way' will always be the original:
Oh sure, it's got soul. And it's fantastic, and it's the original. But saying it's the best version is like saying that Gloria Jones' original "Tainted Love" is the best. Gloria had the heart and the authenticity ... but without the icy syncopated synth blips, scungy bass, strangled vocals and whiplike percussion it lacks the gloriously alienated sleaze of the Soft Cell version. It's just not ... tainted enough.
But speaking of Soft Cell sleaze, this thread would not be complete without this:
Warning: this is not even remotely SFW (some of my colleagues are still in therapy after seeing it), and it may be triggering, especially for vegetarians and nanosophobes.