Interesting Links for 19-7-2011

[andrewducker]

• Want to know which newspapers have been trading unlawfully in stolen personal data? See page 11 of this...
  (tags: privacy hacking surveillance notw information_commission dailymail)
• Alan Rusbridger, the man who is bringing down the Murdoch empire
  (tags: RupertMurdoch guardian news reporting)
• How not to compliment a woman in public.
  (tags: women safety sexuality)
• Borders finally falls over and dies.
  (tags: books business borders)
• The Dr Who Tube Map. This is so cool! I am having a nerdgasm _right now_.
  (tags: doctorwho tube maps visualization)
• Statistical distribution plushies
  (tags: stats cute)
• The looks of political candidates are key factor influencing low-information voters
  (tags: beauty politics)
• 'Smart' sunglasses put a LCD square between you and the sun.
  (tags: lcd technology glasses sun)
• Time-lapse video reveals never-before-seen bioelectric pattern that helps emryonic tadpoles form. Very cool!
  (tags: video frogs biology)
• News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower found dead. IT IS NOT SUSPICIOUS. AT ALL. NO.
  (tags: hacking corruption)
• 30 Reasons Not To Leave Your Husband
  (tags: relationships women)
• 6 Famous Comics/Cartoon Characters You Didn't Know Were Rip-Offs. Well, I knew one. You may know more. Showoff.
  (tags: comics history)
• Reasons why people stay in relationships when they really, really shouldn't.
  (tags: abuse relationships)
• Amazon starts renting textbooks. Second-hand market? What second-hand market?
  (tags: amazon books academia)
• Non-Africans are part Neanderthal
  (tags: science genetics neanderthal evolution africa)
• I'm not sexist but... (a collection of clearly contradictory statements)
  (tags: sexism funny)

Comments

[supergee]

Statty & Co. are not as cute as plush microbes.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Reasons why people stay in relationships when they really, really shouldn't.

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Because they've read gender essentialist social shaming shit like the above-linked 30 Reasons Not To Leave Your Husband and figure it's a problem with them that they have to fix alone, because after all, You’ll hurt your husband. You married him for love. It always hurts to hurt someone you love and Your family will judge you. They may not say it to your face, but you know they will and Other women will start talking about you behind your back – and you’ll lose friends and If you have children, they will suffer and Divorce is permanent. Your dissatisfaction with your marriage may be fleeting and Dealing with the logistics of a divorce will eat up a lot of your time and distract you from work, which can seriously harm your career.

NAILED IT!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Um actually, that's a site for women who fetishize cheating on their husbands and it's advice to not, you know, actually take the fetish too far.

That's not social shaming it's saying "compartmentalize your fetish so you don't end up hurting other people and/or embarrassing yourself."

I'd give the same advice to a guy on a site for guys who fetishize cheating on their wives.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Fair enough; I didn't perceive that context in the way it was presented here. I do disagree it isn't social shaming, but it's social shaming presented with a purpose.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

It's cool.

I've also written many articles on that site advising ways for women to get off on their adultery fetish in ways that can minimize hurt/the need to lie (cuckolding, wife led marriage, MMF threesomes, roleplaying, etc...) and articles on how to not get caught if you can't get those ways to work out (since getting caught will hurt your partner more than if you don't get caught).

It's just one article of practical advice among many.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all of which is cool, but presented as a contextless "interesting link" I don't think it gives that impression at all!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

My general feeling is that a woman who is visiting an adultery fetish site is probably going to have an affair at some point, but that there is the risk of getting so caught up in the affair that leaving her husband might temporarily seem like a good idea at the time but be a disaster long term (in the same way that a 40 year old dude might in the heat of the moment think about leaving his wife for his 22 year old mistress only to seriously regret it later.)

I'll agree that rereading it some of the reasons are socially based, but that doesn't make them any less real. A 40 year old woman leaving her husband for her 20 year old personal trainer is going to be socially judged, just as a guy leaving his wife for his 20 year old personal assistant is going to be judged socially.

And if we are going to say "hey, if you can get away with a discreet fling with a hot you dude go for it" - we also sort of have a responsibility to point out what can happen if it's taken beyond the level of fling into something more.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I didn't know I was visiting an adultery fetish site until I clicked on the link andrewducker gave with no other information than the title "30 Reasons Not To Leave Your Husband" and the tags "relationships, women". It wasn't tagged "kink" or "fetish", it was tagged "relationships", and I read it as such. I don't know whether Andrew thinks most of the people reading him have an adultery fetish, or whether it's supposed to be taken as broader advice.

Especially coming two links above "Why do people stay in abusive relationships?", which (I maintain) is a question it answers very well! Social shaming is effective at keeping people in relationships they are thinking twice about; that cuts both ways.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Very true and very interesting. I honestly hadn't considered the social shaming part of it until you mentioned it.

I think he put it up as a contrast to the other story, which is about why female victims stay with abusive partners. My piece is reasons women who are not victims might stay with partners they are not 100 percent satisfied by.

It's an interesting contrast.

[andrewducker]

I thought the subject line was a bit of a giveaway. But I could have been clearer.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I think the fact the site was called "Our Cheating Ways" and advertised AshleyMadison.com were clues.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that link should maybe have been flagged up as having a slight bias of crack.

> You’ll end up cheating on your lover. Most women are not hard wired for monogamy.

Really? Citation needed.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there are any surveys on harassment?

It seems to be quite a common thing on the internet, where a women will talk about frequent harassment out and about, from men. Someone will say "oh, it must be an isolated incident, it couldn't happen several days a week, now?" And you will find a chorus of women asserting that it does happen, and it happens frequently.

I was thinking about how to increase awareness of the issue, and also why on earth some people think its okay to be flirtatious in public to people they don't know. Although I suppose it boils down to the idea that men don't realise that they can be seen as a threat, and that they can be seen as scary. I was thinking as well, its one of those things where if you ask 100 women out, one of them is bound to say yes, its the scattergun approach to initiating sexual contact, and I suppose it doesn't occur to them that their behaviour is threatening, because they were asking/checking if the other person was interested in them, and if sex is a possibility.

If more people were aware of this issue, would it reduce it?

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Harassment isn't flirtation (and flirtation isn't harassment). livredor recently referred to street harassment as "dominance displays", which I agree with. Of course no one is actively thinking, "a woman, hurrah! A chance to assert my social power!" but that is what's going on I would say most of the time.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more that the men were considering their actions to be flirting, not harassment. However I think dominance displays is a really interesting way to look at it.

I was at a conference recently, and one of the presenters is doing research into faces. So far they have established that people can accurately identify personality* from faces. They are currently looking into doing something similar with chimps (being the closest primate to us). And they found something interesting to do with dominance and extroversion. I can't remember what it was specifically, but it looks like humans don't have "dominance" as a trait (where chimps do), but in humans it might look like it relates to extroversion.

I was thinking that harassing someone in the street wouldn't be typical of an introvert (I know I'm generalising), but I can see how it builds into the idea that its a dominance display.

What's the appropriate response to a male displaying dominance if you're a women? I don't want to "just ignore it" but I don't want to get into a confrontation either. It seems to be a no win situation (I'm not saying that it's the woman's responsibility, but I can only change my behaviour, I can't change theirs).


*Using the "Big 5 Personality Traits", Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. They had the participants who were involved in the pictures complete personality questionnaires. Then they had participants rate the personality of the face.

[andrewducker]

The stuff in that post comes across as the kind of thing I've seen intended as flirting. The problem being that the recipient cannot tell whether it's supposed to be flirting or harassment, and they shouldn't have to deal with it randomly on the way to work in any case.

I do agree that a lot of street harassment is just intended to be a display of power - making fun of people because they enjoy making them uncomfortable.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I really don't know what the right response is. Fortunately, I just don't get that hassle, maybe because I don't live in a big city, maybe I'm just neither 'attractive enough' nor 'ugly enough' to attract attention/mockery. I am glad I don't, cos it means I don't have all the horrible fears it generates, which must just be shit to live with.

I did think a little bit about such stuff wandering back to the tube in London a few Friday nights ago because of my broken hand - if someone grabbed it even casually, or I had to deflect a stumbling drunk it would bloody hurt and I couldn't punch anyone (not that I usually think about punching people yo understand - at east not any more!). Which is daft cos even my best attempt at physical violence would be pretty useless due to lack of size and weight.

Do smaller/slightly-built/injured/disabled guys have the same fears?

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

So, how long before LCD glasses (with anti-glare and HUD) are as common as smartphones are now?

[steer.livejournal.com]

Those plushies are brilliant.

[andrewducker]

They are rather. The stats geek of the house rather liked them :->

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

Ian Morris in "Why the West Rules: For Now" says that about 4% of the chromosomes come from mixing with Neanderthals and that's uniform across populations EXCEPT Africans, apparently because the mixing came after populations moved out of Africa. He stays far far far away from any speculation regarding effects. As has everyone else for the past ten years. In fact, it's such a taboo subject that I've gotten curious about when it will be discussed/researched and how.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

30 Reasons Not To Leave Your Husband
While interesting there are a lot of sexist assumptions in the article. This article assumes all women are housewives who don't have their own money. Or sense of self-worth as why would you want to stay married to someone who is no longer your partner? As Virginia Woolf said women need economic independence and room of one's own. That would eliminate a lot of the sexist arguments in that list.

Except: Reasons why people stay in relationships when they really, really shouldn't.

Hmmm..... sounds like these two articles reflect one another rather well.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

That is the best Trigger Warning image i have ever seen. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before



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