Posts by Megan Wegan
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Not good enough, Eden Park, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Let’s not re-write the thread and declare victory. The complication is actually the hypocrisy where we’ve got a lot of people explicitly demanding the fun police biff out ANYONE that crosses a very subjective and low set line,
From Eden Park’s Conditions of entry
Patrons will be requested to leave the Stadium during an event if they:
Are intoxicated, or appear to be becoming intoxicated
Are verbally or physically abusive…
Behave in a disorderly or offensive manner, or a manner contrary to public orderI’d suggest that those terms were broken. Definitely the second one.
-
Hard News: Not good enough, Eden Park, in reply to Tom Semmens,
I don’t think hate speech should be banned, one groups hate speech is unfortunately another communities commonly expressed opinions.
What about where said speech is directed at a person?
-
Hard News: Not good enough, Eden Park, in reply to Angus Robertson,
The gulf between lack of offense and being in assent is vast & nuanced.
Yes, but it's also not just how management saw it, but how it feels to be that person. When you're being verbally abused, your physical space invaded, and slurs thrown your way, and no one steps up to say "that's not cool"? Yeah, that feels like assent.
-
“If she’s saying that she was isolated and that it shouldn’t be acceptable, it’s not our job – I don’t believe – to try to move the cultural morals of society.”
No, but it is the park's management's job to keep people in the crowd safe, right?
-
In my defence, you do have very nice jugs. And were probably heartily sick of me attempting that joke every time you came back with one.
-
Up Front: Gathered Together, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’ve had a few awkward but kinda awesome conversations in my own church where I’ve had to explain that, not to put too fine a point on it, our leaders are lying and I never wanted to force our parish priest to gay-marry me or anyone else.
The one thing I have tried to do, over and over again, is make the point that I won't, can't be forced to marry anyone. That was, aside from the hateful bigotry, the thing that annoyed me, because it's an out and out lie.
I've told everyone I could that under the current legislation, I can't be compelled to marry anyone, and the legislation won't change that. The piece of paper I get handed by a couple says that I am authorised, but not required, to marry someone. And nothing about that has/will changed. And that why would anyone want to force someone to do that, anyway?
-
As Keir noted, part of the problem for men discussing gender is that it will almost always be a discussion framed by women, and by women who have the benefit of a particular academic background, and will use a particular related vocabulary. (I don’t really know what “performative” means.)
First of all: Performative.
More seriously, here’s the thing. I was trying to have a conversation about masculinity. I explicitly said that there seems to be very little point having that conversation when it’s centred around women, and what they have taken away from men. And I was jumped all over for mentioning privilege. Which, incidentally, I never mentioned here except to resile from my comments on Twitter, or to respond to other people. And given how many expletives I generally populate my posts with, I don’t think I could be described as having an academic persuasion. I understand ideas because I read about them, because it’s important to me to do so, but I don’t generally expect other people to do so.
I have written over and over again about how important I think it is for men to have a place in feminist spaces. Because there’s very little point us having the discussion by ourselves. I’ve been an advocate of men and women talking about gender together. I’ve done that over and over again here. But after this discussion? I don’t really feel like Public Address is a safe space for me to be involved in it. After the way I’ve been spoken to, the tone argumenting, the general dismissing of my argument and experiences, I am stepping back in here incredibly warily. With an actual physical sensation of fear.
For what it’s worth, I’m also not sure that being yelled at by mean feminists is worse than the 2 rape threats I’ve had this week, after writing about men on a blog that gets, on average, less than 300 hits a week.(Though that particular post did get to a much wider audience.)
I do think there are feminist constructs that are useful. Privilege is one of them. Because it helps us to understand intersectionality, and as far as I am concerned, there’s little point having feminism without that. It also helps people to understand how feminism actually applies to them. I write about my own experiences being a woman, because it helps me to recognise how, in the grand scheme of things, my problems aren’t all that big. Which is why I also do a bunch of stuff to do with women in the Pacific.
Which is not to say that any of these concepts, or, in fact the science, is perfect. It all informs how we understand ourselves, our brains, and the world. I don’t understand why people seem to think that everything has to be explained by one theory, or one experiment, or one belief structure.
-
Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Danielle,
PS “Male brain” alert: I am really good at reading maps.
She also yells at her GPS, but I'm not entirely positive that's a gender thing.
-
Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Many people on the spectrum suffer in school environments, but of course nearly all of them don’t kill anyone. Can you understand that I have a more direct interest in wondering what the hell happened to this kid than shouting at him about his privilege?
Of course.
-
Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
I wonder what made those other boys so. “Because: Evil” seems a really rubbish answer to me.
And I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that, in large part, because as you pointed out yesterday, they so often kill themselves. I am really uncomfortable with all the speculation (not especially here) on Adam Lanza’s mental state, motive, personality, etc. We don’t know. We won’t know unless someone releases his medical records. I don’t think it’s evilness. I think it is a combination of any number of factors – and not just “the decline of men”, as that article I linked to up there suggest. Mental health, abuse, the gun lobby, God, Fox News.
The kind of man I thought of reading that article isn’t your boys, from what I know of them. (And there’s a measure of my own privilege in that reading, I’ll grant you.) It’s the boys I grew up with. The stripey shirts, who were led to believe that the world owes them a debt simply by virtue of their maleness, and who are really pissed that people have come along and taken what’s rightfully theirs. The kind of man who can hate a woman because she won’t sleep with him, for example.