HereAndGone
2mo ago
I recently watched the newest Marvel movie, Thunderbolts.
You have my condolences.
I only saw photos of the cast and I was going "Who the hell are these people, I recognise nobody except Sebastian Stan who must be playing Bucky/Winter Soldier" and while they seem to have a Captain America in the movie, I think that is a wasted chance to have Bucky and Fake Cap arguing it out over "who is Captain America, what does he mean to the public?" - I'm presuming this is more along the line of "wacky gang of misfits get together and pull through for the greater cause", is it?
Seeing as how puberty is when we start the process of growing up, I wouldn't be at all surprised. If you try freezing your bodily development at the stage of eleven years of age, why expect this won't happen to the brain as well? And even reversing and going off puberty blockers would, I imagine, have effects too: at the least, you've held back natural development for a period of time that now you are trying to catch up on, and at worst it's the same way that smoking does have an effect on your lungs even after you stopped smoking (if you adopt all healthy habits after quitting smoking, this has a much better outcome long-term).
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I think I've made my peace with adults deciding to take hormones and wear the wrong clothing and try embarrassingly to talk like the opposite sex
'Free, white, and twenty-one' as the saying used to be (though now that's racist for including 'white'). If you're a legal adult and not harming anyone else, okay, fuck your own life up. When it comes to minor children, we need to be a hell of a lot more careful.
I happen to think the world is considerably better for having trans people in it,
I've been through this before with the self-affirming, ego-stroking, this is a reaction to being rejected but don't you dare point that out that we're feeling hurt and trying to soothe ourselves that "well of course being queer is so much better than being silly old boring cis het! we queers are so special and creative and brave and exciting! without us there would be no science and art or nice things! white bread!"
Gee who would have thought that raising a generation on this would result in every kid trying to indicate that "in fact I am a bisexual non-binary femme and not a cis straight girl, even though I've only dated guys and am married to one", because being cis het is not only boring and dull but also bad and wicked and systemically oppressive?
And we're getting it now with the trans thing. And I think it serves the genuine trans people poorly, because the fringe cases, the extremists, the batshit insane, and the 'hop on the trend bandwagon' types are getting all the publicity and making ordinary people think "well if this is what trans means, I want nothing to do with it".
Maybe you think "hurrah, a ten year old trans model!" (who is now thirteen) is an improvement for the world, I look at that and go "a manipulative crazy bitch conditioned her kid into this because she's the extreme form of a Stage Mother and is using the kid for attention and praise reflected back on her". Munchausen's By Proxy involves adults causing genuine harm to the child in order to make the adult feel better. I think that's what is going on here, and instead of heaping praise on the Brave and Stunning mothers like Dee McMaher and Jeannette Jennings we should be taking the kids away and giving them a chance to breathe and figure out if they're really trans, or gay, or just needing help navigating difficult circumstances.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I'm against it, because I think it's mental illness the same way that having schizophrenia is mental illness. Does this mean that we should be mean to schizophrenics? No. Should we refuse them treatment? No. But also should we as a society adopt the ruling that "if Jane says that the spy cameras in the pipes are watching her, we all agree this is so and we hang up blankets over the walls"? No. We tell Jane there are no spy cameras in the pipes, we don't pretend "of course there are spy cameras in the pipes and this is normal and natural".
I think Rowling started out more supportive because she is more socially liberal (e.g. why the hell come out with "and Dumbledore is gay" for one?) but the backlash to "hey maybe don't put biological male bodies into rape crisis shelters" that she just wanted to set up death camps to murder all trans people pushed her to the limit.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I think it did happen during industrialisation for white collar work, though. Previously, you had a clerk writing documents all day. Maybe he could do ten letters a day (figure pulled out of the air, not backed up by data). The Victorian postal system was incredible; in London you would have multiple daily deliveries of post (so it was possible to write a letter in the morning, post it, and have a reply by the evening).
This wasn't happening in a vacuum, things like the expansion of the railways meant faster travel and now it was possible to send and receive goods over longer distances.
Then the typewriter gets invented. Now your productivity in the office has skyrocketed (relatively). Now you can do ten letters in the morning! Naturally, no employer is going to pay workers to sit around for the rest of the day, or go home after half a day's work. Now that your output is more than ten letters per day, your employer wants you to do twenty letters per day, because now the business can grow to support that.
And typewriters were the thing that made startups (to use a comparison) possible. Now women could work. Now you could buy your own typewriter and set up as a secretarial service for small local businesses that maybe didn't or couldn't afford to employ a clerk, but did need documents written (or typed) up. The new job of "typist" was created:
The typewriter appeared in the latter half of the 19th century, a period of massive industrial and societal change. The Industrial Revolution had paved the way for the increasing dominance of big business, bringing fundamental changes to ways of working. As bureaucracy increased, so did the requirement for documentation and processing. With the emergence of the typewriter and the need to create documents quickly, a new role developed: that of the typist.
...One woman who took advantage of the opportunities offered by typewriters was Ethelinda Hadwen. Born in Lancashire in 1863, she was the daughter of a cotton mill owner, studying in Paris during her teens. After returning to the UK in 1886, she opened a typewriting office in Edinburgh with her business partner Elizabeth Fleming. The office provided typing services to local firms and was the first of its kind in Scotland. The average typewriter office employed four or five people, usually women, and offered typing and translating for businesses, banks, lawyers, authors, architects, and professors. These were businesses where women weren't only workers, but unusually for the time, also employers.
Now costs came down and productivity soared. And gradually the role of "secretary" no longer meant "a job for a man, possibly a university graduate, who will deal with more than just correspondence" and became "a job for a woman who can type and take dictation but is a vocational training job".
By 1891, the time of publication of this Sherlock Holmes story, typewriters as the new office tech were commonplace enough that they could be used in crime:
“It is a curious thing,” remarked Holmes, “that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting. Unless they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring over of the ‘e,’ and a slight defect in the tail of the ‘r.’ There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious.”
“We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no doubt it is a little worn,” our visitor answered, glancing keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes.
“And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank,” Holmes continued. “I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the ‘e’s’ slurred and the ‘r’s’ tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well.”
Until typewriters, and secretaries, and typing pools, became the new normal and that reached the saturation point of "we are at thirty letters a day" which became the new standard of productivity. And then came word processors, and... rinse and repeat.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Maintaining a high female employment rate in white collar labor is the end all be all of western governments
Why?
If your reply is "because WIMMEN RULE THE WORLD and they force the government to go along and prop them up with bullshit jobs to be 'equal' to men" then I say you are mistaken.
It's economics. In order to grow the economy, business and government wanted a larger pool of workers. Here are all these stay-at-home women, get them into the workforce (and if that has the happy side-effect of depressing wages and reducing our labour costs well that's nice too). Social expectations shifted, helped along by feminism, that women who didn't go out to work were "wasting" their education and were somehow being parasitic on society. Economic expectations around two-income families meant that things like mortgages were calculated on the basis "both of you are earning, right?" Tax revenue is also based on "everyone who can work is working" and that includes working-age women. A lot of service industry jobs (and I'm including things like nursing and teaching here) are now female-dominated.
Economic necessity also means that women need jobs (no more staying at home being supported by parents if single).
Youi can try having "the man is the breadwinner, the women is the homemaker and child raiser" system back, but unless the guy is making very good money, it won't be economically feasible, and for low-income households, given government supports, the woman is probably better off being unmarried and raising the kid, with a live-in boyfriend or a boyfriend who lives elsewhere and just visits. Is that ideal? No. Is that what we've got now? Yes. Okay, take all the women out of the workforce, raise men's wages accordingly. And every cost-cutting management rule goes "so now we need cheap immigrant labour or automation instead".
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Prior to 2020, it was very hard to get a company to agree to let you WFH even one day a week, because they knew you'd probably spend the time much less productively. Again, "somehow" the real work that was out there still seems to get done.
When working from home, I find I'm more productive because I know I can block out my time the way I like, so there's no panic rush to try and get it all done in hour A to hour B. If I'm not busy (because there are times when there just isn't that much 'real' work to be done), I can go off and do housework or do personal things online, then the next batch of real work comes in via email or whatever and I work on that. There isn't the rush over "I have to get this done by X o'clock, because I have to be out of here by clocking off time, because I have to be home on time to make sure I don't miss the delivery" or whatever, so I can be more thorough.
In the office, if the 'real work' isn't enough to fill up the day, then I do waste time online or pretending to be busy or procrastinating so putting off work because I want to fill up those empty hours. The difference is that at home, I'll go and put on a load of laundry. At work, I'll have some tabs open and a spreadsheet and pretend to be 'working'.
Once again, everyone is forgetting Gen X 😁
Latchkey kids. The backlash to the (perception) of emotional and psychological neglect, not physical abuse. Parents who provided for their children's material needs but were literally or emotionally absent, distant, unengaged so the children were left to raise themselves.
This then led to calls for Something Must Be Done, which is where the legal repercussions for "unsupervised children" came in:
The legality of the latchkey children's "alone time" varies with country, state and local area laws. In the United States, state and local laws typically do not specify any particular age under 18 when a child can be legally left without supervision. Some states do have specific age restrictions, but most of the US states have no minimum age for leaving children unsupervised.
Parents can be held accountable by child welfare, child protective services organizations, or law enforcement if children come to harm while left without supervision if, in the opinion of the agency, the children's age or other considerations made such a choice inappropriate. Legal issues also continue to be important concerns for those who work in libraries. They worry about the potential liability should an unattended child be hurt, molested or abducted while at the facility. This issue becomes critical, particularly at closing time when "parents who are late picking up their children also create safety, and, possibly, legal problems."
Look at the parents in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (a movie which I loathed the first time I saw it and continue to loath because I think Ferris is an absolute brat whom I would love to beat senseless). The kids there are in their late teens, almost adults, so there is not the same ramifications as allowing a set of twelve year olds to roam around the city without adult supervision. It also allows for his mother to leave him home alone when she believes him to be ill, because he's old enough to look after himself (his mother doesn't need to go out to work so it's not due to the family's socio-economic situation that she is absent). But look at the parents in their lives: the ones most closely associated are the authority figures such as the school principal, not their parents. Ferris' parents are benignly neglectful, easily fooled by their son (whom they don't know well enough to realise he's chronically truant from school). Cameron's parents, or at least the only one we hear of (his mother is conspicuous by absence of any reference) are malignly neglectful, his father being a figure of fear but also absent from his son's life. Sloane's parents seem to be so invisible, that Ferris simply dressing up in a bad disguise is enough to pass as her father when he's getting her out of school.
The movie ends with an alliance between the hitherto hostile siblings and Ferris' parents remaining in their state of happy ignorance. The entire plot relies on the assumption "your parents won't know because they're not around enough to be involved in your life and know what is going on with you". Ferris is cocky and unlikeable (to me anyway) and gets away with it because the one adult aware of his behaviour is rendered powerless to do anything about it. But a deeper reading would indicate Ferris is like this because of lack of parental involvement; the only one aware of what is going on and trying to hold him accountable is his older sister. His parents are kind fools, even though (presumably) they are successful adults in the world of work and society. They are unaware of what their son is really doing and in a way don't care enough to find out, maybe he pulls off stunts like this because at least if he's caught and they hold him accountable, they're active in his life. Ferris is still a child, or at least immature; his Big Plan to reset the car's odometer and keep Cameron's dad ignorant fails horribly. It's the first actual consequence to their actions that happens, and even though it's the catalyst for Cameron to confront his father, we never see the fall-out of that. So we're left with "Ferris had a great time and successfully got away with it all", and no follow-up on "but what happened to Cameron and Sloane?"
And since the movie is set in the week before they graduate high school, they'll all be going off to begin their adult lives, to be out of the family home, to formally separate from their parents, and there will never be that opportunity for them to be seen as who they are.
Oh, well: that was too deep for a fun movie very much of its time.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law", she writes, as if that were inherently beyond the pale.
Well, uh, yeah? Guy who is functionally a guy but gets off on having people call him "ma'am" and getting into women's spaces so he can parade around with his dick on show is beyond the pale. That includes "yes I've now been convicted of violent rape but I suddenly discovered my inner femininity so please put me in the women's jail not the men's jail" specimens.
There may well be "I call myself legally a woman but I'm functionally still a man" types who don't cause any harm or intend to do so, but they seem to be rare specimens. The "my legal identity is a woman but I'm a straight guy who has penis in vagina sex with women" on the other hand, do cause waves even if they maintain that their intentions were pure.
Let’s back up a second. Should we be using male or female pronouns with you? How do you identify?
I’m very neutral, like non-binary, although I don’t like that word. I’m legally female. But I have facial hair. I have a penis. I have no breasts. I don’t have a feminine voice. I don’t wear makeup or dress up like a female. So imagine you’re a grocery store [clerk] and you’re bagging my groceries and you say, “Excuse me, sir . . . ” I mean, am I supposed to be offended? That’d be ridiculous. How would this person know? But technically, for legal terms, I am she/her. I put "female" on my driver’s license. But I’ve had to struggle my whole life fitting into traditional society.
...Have you considered just changing clothes in a stall or wearing a bathing suit?
It’s not for me to adapt to society at this point. Even if it’s the polite thing to do or you want me to or there’s a controversy or whatever, if nobody else is using a shower curtain or nobody else is using a swimsuit, it’s illegal to try and make me do it. Technically, and from all perspectives, I am female, and everybody agrees with that. We’re all on equal grounds under the law.
Disapprove of my attitudes, that's your right, but if I'm in a women's changing room I don't want this guy walking around with his dingle-dangle out even if he has legal papers that he's a Real Woman.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
It does not need to be taken as a serious objection.
But the well-meaning (to be as charitable as I can) jump on it as indicating dysphoria which means "this child is trans" and then we get the "if not allowed to transition, they will commit suicide"
Puberty and Gender Incongruence
• There can be huge psychological stress: self-harm/suicidal ideation due to incongruence between the developing body and internal feelings and body image; e.g. periods/breasts developing or facial hair/deepening voice etc...
• Additional stressors of bullying and possible family rejection
• Young people often disclose around this age, as their bodies are developing and feeling ‘different’ to the way they feel inside. This can lead to co-occurring mental health difficulties, with suicidal ideation and self-harm (Mayock et al. 2009; McNeill et al., 2013). Eating disorders with over/under eating and also young people not wanting to use the bathroom.
and schools doing things like hiding from parents that their child is socially transitioning on the rationale that "parents not supporting their trans child is abuse", though that seems to be changing at least as far as official policy is concerned due to protests and backlash:
Communicating With Families
It is still important for schools to maintain positive communication and working relationships with family members. A consortium of LGBTQ advocacy groups and educational associations produced a guide for Colorado educators that includes the following advice about working with families:“When contacting parents or guardians of a transgender or gender nonconforming student, school personnel should use the student’s legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student’s gender assigned at birth unless the student, parents, and or guardian has indicated otherwise... In some cases, notifying parents of the student carries risk, such as being kicked out of the home or experiencing rejection from their family. Prior to notification of the family, school staff should work closely with the student and consider the health, well-being, and safety of the student.”
Detailed guidance from the Massachusetts Department of Education also offers helpful considerations in communicating with families, particularly when a student is the target of bullying and harassment:
“School officials should use their discretion in discussing the incident and avoid sharing information that might endanger the mental or physical health and safety of the student. Where the student has not disclosed his or her sexual orientation or gender identity, expression, to his or her parents and the student believes he or she may be at risk if it is disclosed, to the extent possible, discussion should focus on facts regarding the student's involvement as a target or aggressor and on safety planning, not on information that reveals the actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation of the student. As in all bullying incidents, school officials should offer resources and support to the student and family.”
HereAndGone
2mo ago
If you're curious, the Chinese have significantly deregulated.
Ah yes, the same China that had the melamine added to baby formula scandal in 2008 and 2012 contamination with mercury.
Granted, being able to execute people who do this probably will make deregulation less risky, but I am not filled with optimism that somebody won't try taking short cuts there, at least on the level of "repackage cheap product as premium and charge the higher prices".
HereAndGone
2mo ago
"We will simply order our students to join a credible anti-CCP movement so that they will be able to do industrial espionage, and then when they return we will keep wondering which of them were actually flipped by being exposed to hostile ideologies on our orders" does not sound like a winning strategy.
Neither is "we will just ask any potential students to give up their Chinese citizenship and then ten years later when they go back to the Old Country and stay there for good after drip-feeding the information they gathered while here, we'll be completely surprised they did not, in fact, mean it".
I think the CCP is more confident it can deal with "If Li Yu comes back contaminated with running-dog ideology, we can re-educate him to be a model citizen". They had no problem getting Jack Ma to fall in line.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
It's swings and roundabouts. Bodies such as the FDA were set up because before that, in the unfettered and unregulated world of the free market, businesses were happily poisoning their customers. Then people got accustomed to "medicine is safe and indeed is a wonder drug" so any adverse effects were clearly somebody's fault and had to be paid for in punitive damages, which led to concerns by government bodies that "if we pass a medicine that later turns 1% of the population blue, we are gonna get slaughtered" and so caution became the watchword.
And now we're stuck between drug companies trying to get a return on their very long, very expensive, product development process where the bad examples are things like Aduhelm, and the calls by people who are (to be blunt) dying and desperate for Hail Mary cures so they want the FDA to rush through and license "this might extend your life by three weeks and it'll cost $5 million" drugs, where of course the cri-de-coeur is "every week of delay means another 1,000 people die!" (not considering that those people might die anyway because the cure is only speculative even if they go on the drugs or the treatment protocol).
HereAndGone
2mo ago
It's hard to know, since clearly suffering from precocious puberty means a problem with the entire system so the effects of that on the brain are going to be hard to tease out from "and then we put them on blockers".
How well sheep studies relate to humans is also hard to know, who was the last sheep to attend Harvard?
HereAndGone
2mo ago
You are very entertaining to interact with, but I'm afraid that the more you reply to people, the less I credit you with serious intent. You reply to everyone with the equivalent of "no, you're smelly and ugly" and that makes it hard to think you are thinking about this subject.
Women all shallow bitches care only for hot looks, yeah, heard it before.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I think it's not so much that the Romans had fucked-up sexual morality (though they did) as it was that "if you're powerful enough, you can get away with anything". See the allegations about Tiberius on Capri:
44 1 He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction. 2 Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Also, Nero played both roles: he was the husband of Sporus, but the wife of Pythagoras, at least according to Tacitus:
37 1 He himself, to create the impression that no place gave him equal pleasure with Rome, began to serve banquets in the public places and to treat the entire city as his palace. In point of extravagance and notoriety, the most celebrated of the feasts was that arranged by Tigellinus; which I shall describe as a type, instead of narrating time and again the monotonous tale of prodigality. He constructed, then, a raft on the Pool of Agrippa, and superimposed a banquet, to be set in motion by other craft acting as tugs. The vessels were gay with gold and ivory, and the oarsmen were catamites marshalled according to their ages and their libidinous attainments. He had collected birds and wild beasts from the ends of the earth, and marine animals from the ocean itself. On the quays of the lake stood brothels, filled with women of high rank; and, opposite, naked harlots met the view. First came obscene gestures and dances; then, as darkness advanced, the whole of the neighbouring grove, together with the dwelling-houses around, began to echo with song and to glitter with lights. Nero himself, defiled by every natural and unnatural lust had left no abomination in reserve with which to crown his vicious existence; except that, a few days later, he became, with the full rites of legitimate marriage, the wife of one of that herd of degenerates, who bore the name of Pythagoras. The veil was drawn over the imperial head, witnesses were despatched to the scene; the dowry, the couch of wedded love, the nuptial torches, were there: everything, in fine, which night enshrouds even if a woman is the bride, was left open to the view.
Suetonius repeats the same story, but gives a different name - Doryphorus:
28 1 Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife. 2 This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.
29 1 He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was his unshaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most of them concealed their vices and cleverly drew a veil over them; and that therefore he pardoned all other faults in those who confessed to him their lewdness.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Cicero really liked to lay into his opponents about their sexual morality (or lack of it), for example the Philippic against Mark Antony:
44 XVIII. Shall we then examine your conduct from the time when you were a boy? I think so. Let us begin at the beginning. Do you recollect that, while you were still clad in the prætexta, you became a bankrupt? That was the fault of your father, you will say. I admit that. In truth, such a defence is full of filial affection. But it is peculiarly suited to your own audacity, that you sat among the fourteen rows of the knights, though by the Roscian law there was a place appointed for bankrupts, even if any one had become such by the fault of fortune and not by his own. You assumed the manly gown, which you soon made a womanly one: at first a public prostitute, with a regular price for your wickedness, and that not a low one. But very soon Curio stepped in, who carried you off from your public trade, and, as if he had bestowed a matron’s robe upon you, settled you in a steady and durable wedlock. 45 No boy bought for the gratification of passion was ever so wholly in the power of his master as you were in Curio’s. How often has his father turned you out of his house? How often has he placed guards to prevent you from entering? while you, with night for your accomplice, lust for your encourager, and wages for your compeller, were let down through the roof. That house could no longer endure your wickedness. Do you not know that I am speaking of matters with which I am thoroughly acquainted? Remember that time when Curio, the father, lay weeping in his bed; his son throwing himself at my feet with tears recommended to me you; he entreated me to defend you against his own father, if he demanded six millions of sesterces of you; for that he had been bail for you to that amount. And he himself, burning with love, declared positively that because he was unable to bear the misery of being separated from you, he should go into banishment. 46 And at that time what misery of that most flourishing family did I allay, or rather did I remove! I persuaded the father to pay the son’s debts; to release the young man, endowed as he was with great promise of courage and ability, by the sacrifice of part of his family estate; and to use his privileges and authority as a father to prohibit him not only from all intimacy with, but from every opportunity of meeting you. When you recollected that all this was done by me, would you have dared to provoke me by abuse if you had not been trusting to those swords which we behold?
HereAndGone
2mo ago
The rumors about Julius Caesar were definitely a smear (given that the rumor was that he was a bottom, and a bottom for a foreign king no less).
Hard to know. Probably exaggerated, but on the other hand his own soldiers at his triumphs sang bawdy songs about him being the Queen of Bithynia:
Nicomedes IV was restored to his throne in Bithynia in 84 BC. The years that followed were relatively peaceful, though Bithynia came more and more under the control of Rome. In 80 BC, young Gaius Julius Caesar was an ambassador to Nicomedes IV's court. Caesar was sent to raise a fleet using Bithynia's resources, but he remained so long with the King that a rumor of a sexual relationship between the two men surfaced, leading to the disparaging title for Caesar, "the Queen of Bithynia", an appellation which Caesar's political enemies made use of later in his life. During Caesar's Gallic Triumph a popular verse began: "Gallias Caesar subegit, Caesarem Nicomedes," (Caesar laid the Gauls low, Nicomedes laid Caesar low), suggesting that Caesar was the submissive receiving partner in the relationship.
In Roman rhetoric, with modesty (pudicitia) at the forefront, allegations of passive homosexual activity, along with other sexual misconduct, were commonly used against young men, or the youthful period of a man's life. Another example was the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus, where one of the prosecutors, Sempronius Atratinus, called him a "pretty-boy Jason" (pulchellus Iason).
Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus used the epithet in the edicts he issued during his joint consulship with Caesar.[1] A man named Octavius, at a public assembly, addressed Pompey as "king" and Caesar as "queen" in their presence.[3] At a debate in the Senate, when Caesar recalled some benefits Rome had received from Nicomedes, Cicero interrupted him with "it is well known what he gave you and what you gave him in return". Consul Gaius Scribonius Curio called Caesar "every man's wife and every woman's husband". Caesar's own soldiers upon victorious return from the Gallic Wars sang in parade that "Caesar got on top of the Gauls, Nicomedes got on top of Caesar".
And the accounts about him and about Mark Antony are, at least, highly entertaining to read. Suetonius mentions the rumours but is at least restrained about it:
45 1 He is said to have been tall of stature with a fair complexion, shapely limbs, a somewhat full face, and keen black eyes; sound of health, except that towards the end he was subject to sudden fainting fits and to nightmare as well. He was twice attacked by the falling sickness42 during his campaigns. 2 He was somewhat overnice in the care of his person, being not only carefully trimmed and shaved, but even having superfluous hair plucked out, as some have charged; while his baldness was a disfigurement which troubled him greatly, since he found that it was often the subject of the gibes of his detractors. Because of it he used to comb forward his scanty locks from the crown of his head, and of all the honours voted him by the senate and people there was none which he received or made use of more gladly than the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath at all times. 3 They say, too, that he was remarkable in his dress; that he wore a senator's tunic with fringed sleeves reaching to the wrist, and always had a girdle over it, though rather a loose one; and this, they say, was the occasion of Sulla's mot, when he often warned the nobles to keep an eye on the ill-girt boy.
49 1 There was no stain on his reputation for chastity except his intimacy with King Nicomedes, but that was a deep and lasting reproach, which laid him open to insults from every quarter. I say nothing of the notorious lines of Licinius Calvus:
"Whate'er Bithynia had, and Caesar's paramour."
I pass over, too, the invectives of Dolabella and the elder Curio, in which Dolabella calls him "the queen's rival, the inner partner of the royal couch," and Curio, "the brothel of Nicomedes and the stew of Bithynia." 2 I take no account of the edicts of Bibulus, in which he posted his colleague as "the queen of Bithynia," saying that "of yore he was enamoured of a king, but now of a king's estate." At this same time, so Marcus Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose disordered mind made him somewhat free with his tongue, after saluting Pompey as "king" in a crowded assembly, greeted Caesar as "queen." But Gaius Memmius makes the direct charge that he acted as cup-bearer to Nicomedes with the rest of his wantons at a large dinner-party, and that among the guests were some merchants from Rome, whose names Memmius gives. 3 Cicero, indeed, is not content with having written in sundry letters that Caesar was led by the king's attendants to the royal apartments, that he lay on a golden couch arrayed in purple, and that the virginity of this son of Venus was lost in Bithynia; but when Caesar was once addressing the senate in defence of Nysa, daughter of Nicomedes, and was enumerating his obligations to the king, Cicero cried: "No more of that, pray, for it is well known what he gave you, and what you gave him in turn." 4 Finally, in his Gallic triumph his soldiers, among the bantering songs which are usually sung by those who followed the chariot, shouted these lines, which became a by-word:
"All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him;
Lo! now Caesar rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls,
Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror."
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I mean, even in the Good Old Days, there were lifelong bachelors and spinsters who never got married, or the chance to marry, due to different reasons: lack of financial support (men who couldn't earn enough to support a wife and family, women whose families couldn't provide dowries - and for example, in the wake of the Great Famine in Ireland having that kind of financial inducement for marriage, be it the eldest son inheriting the land or the eldest daughter having a dowry going with her made a huge difference in marriage prospects, and could lead to younger siblings having no such prospects), not enough potential spouses (too many women, or too many men, depending), oddities of character (being ugly, being weird, being otherwise not considered suitable), women being stuck at home in the caretaker role for elderly parents and missing out on the chance to marry until too old, etc.
There are modern reasons why people don't marry, or can't marry even if they want to, but it's always been true that at least some element of the population was never going to marry either.
HereAndGone
2mo ago
Yeah, it veers between "well I kinda feel sorry for the guy" to "he deserves it". The end seems to be strongly implying he's gonna do a Canadian University mass killing via suicide bombing?
HereAndGone
2mo ago
I dislike the phrase "social contagion", which assumes that being trans is a negative and it's bad for it to spread.
I think the phrase came into being due to the recent increase in female-to-male identification, where up till then it had been majority male-to-female transition:
Earlier this year, a team of NHS researchers was asked to investigate why there has been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.
The figures alone do seem remarkable.
According to a study commissioned by NHS England, 10 years ago there were just under 250 referrals, most of them boys, to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London.
Last year, there were more than 5,000, which was twice the number in the previous year. And the largest group, about two-thirds, now consisted of “birth-registered females first presenting in adolescence with gender-related distress”, the report said.
And increasingly younger women, and teenage girls being vulnerable to precisely this sort of social contagion (see conversion disorders and examples of mass hysteria spreading amongst teen girl populations in enclosed or tightly knit social circles). The Loudun possessions is perhaps the most well-known example of such an outbreak, in a convent in the 17th century.
An article about a movie from 2015 about a fictional incident quotes the film-maker as inspired thusly:
The idea for the film, documentary maker Morley explains, "came to me over a decade ago, when a friend and I ended up in bursts of hysterical laughter on the phone.
"I ended up making a short film, called The Madness of the Dance, about mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, as it's now known.
"It's documented in medieval times and there was an outbreak in Salem, New England, which helped lead to the famous witch trials of the 17th Century.
"They are usually confined to same-sex institutions such as convents, schools or army barracks - and it is overwhelmingly a female phenomenon.
"Most recently they seem to break out in schools, and there have been cases all over the world - from Mexico to Sri Lanka to the West Bank.
"That idea of female collectivity, of what can happen amongst a close-knit group of girls or women, is fascinating to me.
"I found that while there are set patterns that are used to identify a mass psychogenic outbreak, medics can't yet entirely understand the physical symptoms. It's steeped in mystery.
"There's a theory that they are to do with unconsciously admiring another person with symptoms and this is how the disorder spreads, or that it's triggered by a stressful event.
"That gave me the whole idea for The Falling."
HereAndGone
2mo ago
But Rowling is not a good champion for that narrow, sensible point when she is clearly against social transition, and all forms of adult transition, as well.
Is she? Maybe she is now, after the campaigns against her by such as Gretchen Felker-Martin but it started out with what to me was the mild and reasonable position of "hey, maybe people with penises should not be in the same spaces as people who have been hurt by people with penises" and then it all exploded.
So if you're going to be called a fascist genocidal TERF and you have more money than God, why not lean into it and go "okay, I really don't agree with this stuff"?
Which sounds exactly like the romance novel formula (at least as it was back when I was reading them as a teenager). So that's probably why they work: guys are likely not going to be watching romance movies/shows, women are, this is the successful formula for women's romance novels.
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