FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
3mo ago
Gaiman's schtick was hardly just that he is "a male feminist" - he is a bestselling author, gregarious convention-goer, and supposedly a commanding storyteller in person and all around magnetic personality, on top of being a male feminist.
True, although I'd argue that signalling his progressive bona fides was a necessary component to him successfully bedding women given the social circles in which he was considered to be a high-status figure. Bestselling authors in the sci-fi and fantasy genres who don't have the "correct" politics will get cancelled and deplatformed long before an opportunity to bed a groupie presents itself. Just ask Orson Scott Card.
FtttG
3mo ago
FtttG
3mo ago
Norton was too old for the role and it really showed in the flashbacks... but his performance justifies willingly suspending disbelief.
I think he was only twenty-eight at the time of filming, I assumed his character was meant to be about that age before going to prison.
I respect the film for actually allowing Derek the space to articulate his arguments behind his opinions. I recently linked to a dumb rap-metal song released six months into Trump's first term which is essentially three minutes of "punching Nazis is good, actually". The bridge features the line "what makes you think you're the superior race?", which the vocalist clearly intended as an armour-piercing question which would instantly silence any alt-right types listening. It's sobering to be reminded by American History X that there are plenty of far-right people who would not be flummoxed by this question at all, and who would actually be able to present very detailed and persuasive arguments as to why they endorse white supremacy.
That aspect of the film and Edward Norton's exceptional performance aside, I don't really rate this movie. Making a convincing movie about neo-Nazi or far-right extremists seems to be remarkably difficult to do - Romper Stomper with Russell Crowe is even worse; Green Room was very entertaining, but only nominally about this theme (if the skinheads had been Mafia members and the band had stumbled in on a Mob murder, the plot of the movie would have been identical). The only such movie I remember being really convinced by was This is England. The naturalistic, largely improvised performances, verité-esque cinematography and unobtrusive score sold the experience far more effectively than American History X, in my view. Like American History X, it does offer its far-right characters a chance to express why they arrived at their opinions, but this usually comes in the form of impassioned ranting rather than Derek's sober, articulate (hence chilling) expressions of his worldview. I've heard The Believer with Ryan Gosling is very good, I must check it out.
I recently stumbled across this video essay talking about American History X's behind-the-scenes drama, concerning how director Tony Kaye's original cut of the film was rejected, and Edward Norton stepped in to handle the recut when Kaye proved extremely uncooperative (to the point of suing the producers and starting a knife fight with them in the press). Even though the video essay essentially takes Kaye's side and says Hollywood mistreated him, I came away from it with the distinct impression that Kaye is a colossally pretentious narcissist who is extremely difficult to work with. If he'd been willing to compromise and play the game a bit, he might have eventually been granted an auteur license which would ride him to glory at the Oscars. Instead he torpedoed his career right out the gate, and unsurprisingly hasn't helmed a major Hollywood production since.
There's a clip in the video when Edward Furlong is doing a promotional interview for the movie and the journalist asks him about the behind the scenes controversy. He says something to the effect of "Yeah, it's a pity that the producers weren't happy with Tony's cut of the movie. Maybe one day they'll release the director's cut on DVD or something, that'd be cool." As more than one YouTube comment points out, it's pretty embarrassing when a 21-year-old former child star with a drug problem comes off as more reasonable and emotionally mature than a 46-year-old director.
FtttG
3mo ago
@justawoman has been posting here for years, why would she get caught by the new user filter?
FtttG
3mo ago
You don't see e.g. Dworkin's husband getting accused of rape, because radical feminism doesn't provide the environment for weird sex shit.
IIRC Dworkin was married (in the common-law sense) to a gay man. If he was never accused of raping a woman, it was probably for reasons unrelated to his politics or hers.
If you're a male sex pest in denial, feminist messaging must be perversely comforting. You'll hear these angry women ranting about how all men are bastards who just see women as holes to put their dicks into and how men will never respect them, ever - and you'll think to yourself "woah, all men are like that? I thought it was just me, phew!"
I think the "every accusation is a confession" thing gets abused, but whenever I read an article by a male feminist talking about how men need to confront the fact that they tend to be dismissive towards women's lived experiences and fail to properly value their input, all I can think is - speak for yourself, dude.
FtttG
3mo ago
I don't think the OP was asserting that it's true - I think they were saying "this is the hypothesis, do you think there's any truth to it?"
FtttG
3mo ago
As previously mentioned, I was planning to spend the month of February doing a self-imposed NaNoWriMo. I unexpectedly had to move house last week so I ended up postponing the start date until yesterday. I will keep writing, aiming to maintain the pace of NaNoWriMo (1,667 words/day), until March 9th or I finish the first draft, whichever comes first.
Yesterday was surprisingly productive, I knocked out 500 words on my morning commute. Didn't reach my daily quota, but right now I'm 1,644 words up from where I started on Monday.
FtttG
3mo ago
A Google returned this article: https://nationalpensionhelpline.ie/taxation/etf-tax-in-ireland-might-be-changing/
I don't know if this is the same information you were reporting to me. It may be of interest.
FtttG
3mo ago
Can you suggest some of these Irish ETFs? Would I be charged at the upper tax band if I invested in an Irish ETF, as opposed to an American one?
FtttG
3mo ago
I know essentially nothing about investing, but I want to invest in a specific index fund. I understand I need to open an account with a broker to do this, and there are many brokers to choose from. Before selecting a broker, how do I know that I'll be able to invest in that specific index fund via the broker? Secondarily, which broker would you recommend I use?
FtttG
3mo ago
I can tell you from being adjacent to the porn industry for a while
I'd love to hear you expand upon this.
FtttG
3mo ago
I've only told a couple of people about the book so far and am deliberately not going into a huge amount of detail. The basic premise is that it's set in eastern Europe. There's a woman working for a pharma/medtech company, who's developing an invention which has the potential to completely revolutionise diagnosing fertility disorders, but she's concerned that the invention will be stolen from her and used for purposes she doesn't intend.
FtttG
3mo ago
Damn, that last line cut deep. I'm sorry bro, but you made the right decision.
I've been writing this novel in Google docs, periodically backing it up on Dropbox and on a thumb drive.
Why do you write?
I had an idea for a novel I couldn't (can't) get out of my head.
FtttG
3mo ago
I did read the Wikipedia page, but I'm also distinctly aware that, for any contentious topic, Wikipedia is ideologically captured and cannot be relied upon to provide a neutral answer. If there were a lot of psychologists, psychiatrists etc. who privately agreed that dyslexia isn't a real illness, and if there was a large community of people diagnosing themselves with it, I'm not sure if I'd trust Wikipedia to say so.
FtttG
3mo ago
I guess my question is more along the lines of "is dyslexia distinct in any meaningful way from a lack of skills in verbal reasoning?"
FtttG
3mo ago
I've occasionally heard people allude to the idea that "dyslexia" isn't really a discrete medical condition, but rather a sort of cope that parents use to prevent their kid feeling bad about being a bit on the slow side, or lacking in verbal comprehension. For example, Freddie deBoer:
Let’s set aside whether dyslexia is one thing or many things and whether or not it’s simply a term that we came up with to say that some people are poor readers, as a matter of compassion.
Is there anything to this? Is dyslexia a real medical condition, or a contested one? Is it generally sensibly diagnosed by qualified professionals, or is there an epidemic of self-diagnosis muddying the water?
FtttG
3mo ago
I recently announced my plans to do a self-imposed NaNoWriMo in February and document my progress in these threads to keep myself honest. I'm moving house this week and I've decided it's not feasible, so I'm pushing it back until next week. I apologise for not being as disciplined as I'd hoped.
FtttG
3mo ago
In his defense, in his first term Trump was the first President not to get the US embroiled in any new wars since Carter.
FtttG
3mo ago
Ah. Yesterday when you said that you were correct in your assessment that Russiagate was a conspiracy, I took that to mean "Trump really did conspire with the Russians to pervert the course of the 2016 election". I see now that you meant the opposite - that Russiagate was a conspiracy on the part of the Clinton campaign to discredit Trump, which is my stance on it as well. Carry on!
Don't you find it interesting that essentially every prominent feminist activist has campaigned in favour of shorter prison sentences (no sentences at all, in some cases) for women regardless of the crime? I mean, seriously, please point me in the direction of a prominent feminist activist or academic demanding harsher sentences for female murderers.
You can be as prescriptivist as you like, but at the end of the day you have to look at the facts on the ground, how the term is actually being used and how the people who describe themselves as such are behaving. This game of "my extremely specific stipulative definition of feminism is the only true and valid one, if you criticise anything associated with feminism that doesn't fall under that stipulative definition then you're arguing in bad faith" is really just a kind of navel-gazing, and it was old hat in 2014:
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