hedgebotherer

[hedgebotherer]

I need to rant about a particular argument tactic that drives me up the wall. It's probably got some fancy-pants name designated by the logical fallacy overlords, but I think of it as the ‘Oh, So You're Saying…’ Strawman. 

The OSYS Strawman looks like this: 

Person A: ‘I think being nice is quite nice’

Person B: ‘Oh, so you're saying that nobody should ever express anger no matter how justified it is?’

The phrasing may differ, but the tactic is always the same. I consider it a distinct subspecies of the common-or-garden strawman fallacy because I don't think it's intended to make Person B’s argument easier (I mean, it can be swiftly countered just by going ‘No…?’). There’s no attempt to debate even the bad faith interpretation of the other person's statement, only to imply that by saying one thing Person A is practically saying something else. Its the unholy union between a strawman and a slippery slope. A Slippery Strawman, if you will, except that sounds weirdly sexual so I’d prefer you don't. Person B probably doesn't believe and doesn't expect anybody else to really believe that they've pulled the mask off Person A and revealed they were Old Man Problematic all along. I suspect the intention is to align Person A with an unreasonable take just so Person B seems more reasonable by default. Or maybe it's a way of virtue signalling (the actual kind, not the ‘help, somebody was considerate towards people I don't care about!’ kind) that Person B won't stand for a certain thing, regardless of whether or not that certain thing has entered the conversation.

If you’re worried that you might be using the OSYS Strawman in conversation, ask yourself one simple question:

Is the thing you're suggesting somebody else is saying a reasonable summary of the words they've actually said?

No? Well, there you are, then! Consider responding to the actual words being uttered by the other person instead of summarising your AU fan fiction of the discussion. Even if their argument is the smelliest of shit takes, it's still better to argue with what they've said than to stuff it into an ill-fitting strawsuit and act like that's a counter-argument all by itself. That's not a critique. It's just laziness. If you can't be bothered arguing with somebody’s actual words, don't argue at all. Mock them instead if you want and if they deserve it, but don't pretend you're engaging in debate if you're just going to clog up the discourse with non sequiturs. I feel like at least half of all online discourse involves arguing against things that not only nobody has actually said but also that nobody even really believes anybody is out there saying. It's aggressive peacocking, except half of the peacocks are really just chickens who have no idea what's going on. 

‘Oh, so you're saying you should never disagree with somebody in case you accidentally mischaracterise them? So what you're saying is nobody is allowed exaggerate for the purposes of satire? You're saying that criticism is always virtue signalling? So you think people with blatantly shitty takes should always be given the benefit of the doubt?’

Fuck off, imaginary person I ironically created for strawman purposes, you know full well I'm not saying any of that.

[hedgebotherer]

Then how the haters loved him,

As they shouted out with glee,

"Unholy Drink Cloaca

You'll go down in history!"

my hottest take

[hedgebotherer]

Although I'm slightly impressed that somebody spoke about asexuality as a sexual orientation back then, this seems like a massively fucked up representation. Regardless of the writer's intent, it creates the sort of asexual strawman that non-asexual people love to feel attacked by. It's the same sort of depiction of asexuality that launched a thousand rants about how asexuals are problematic just by existing.

I don't think anybody else's sexuality is 'not natural', I just think it'd be pretty spiffy if people stopped thinking that way about mine.

im reading a novella which was written in the 80s/90s in my native language where the main character is a female sex worker

and she asks her boss, who always has something wise to say about relationships, about how he knows so much about women and men and sex when she's never seen him with anyone before

and he says (my translation):

I was wondering why you hadn't asked me this for all this time. See, even you saw sex as something that's not suitable for me. Which means that somewhere in your head, you couldn't put me and having sex next to each other. The answer is very simple, really: I'm an asexual. You don't understand, do you? So, in all these years of my life, i have never had a sexual relationship. I have never experienced any kind of sex. I've never desired any woman, never been interested in any body. It's a very nice incongruity, a twist of fate, an elegant contradiction that suits our tale, isn't it?

and then goes on a long rant about how sex is the source of a great deal of evil in the world and how it harms many of the people involved in it and how it is not natural and that it has bad consequences to believe that it is natural and then ends his long monologue with:

You struggle to understand me, don't you? But you're right. Asexuality isn't as known as it should be; and furthermore, unfortunately, it's not a subject that can gain enough supporters. We are losers right from the start. I know that we can never be in power. We may be a small and unimportant minority in the world today, but I still believe that one day our numbers will increase, that we will slowly grow and be stronger. This vile state of the world can't go on!

it surprises me again and again that there is ace representation everywhere, just beneath the surface - and that the world knows so little about us despite this

[hedgebotherer]

Work in progress: a mini mudlarking mosaic.

I'm hesitant to grout it, though, because I want to be able to rescue the face in the middle if I ever decided to chip the whole thing apart again.

I might just carefully blorp artists' modelling paste into the gaps.

[hedgebotherer]

Desperately need a haircut, but also desperately socially anxious. Getting completely sloshed before going to the hairdresser, y/n?

I mean, I *could* end up making good style choices, right? How likely is it that I'll end up asking for an inverse mullet or something?

[hedgebotherer]

Hello Tumblr.

This is Frog:

And this is Frog's surprisingly badunkous badonk:

Thank you for your time and I hope this proves helpful for you as you continue with your day.

[hedgebotherer]

Was browsing an antique shop, when suddenly...

[hedgebotherer]

Pickles, their son. Amazingly, not the only Pickles in this graveyard. It's an entire jar of Pickles!

[hedgebotherer]

I know everybody who talks about Frances Hardinge says this, but more people need to be talking about Frances Hardinge.

If you know nothing else about Frances Hardinge, know that everybody who reads her books wants you - yes, you - to start reading them right now. If you've already read them all then read them again. I have a story-pellet lodged in my gullet and the fandom isn't active enough to help me cough it up!

(Unraveller is my favourite, by the way, and it's a fine place to start).

[hedgebotherer]

Fan art request: otherwise perfectly OK looking characters drawn to look ridiculous and slightly off-putting. Artistic skill not required. Enthusiasm recommended, but not mandatory.

I just want to see some of my favourite characters as a bunch of weird little goobers.

[hedgebotherer]

Robert 'Mouseman' Thompson (1876-1955) was a furniture maker from Yorkshire, England, who liked to incorporate a little carved mouse into his designs.

This example is one of the many mice adorning the pews he made for St. Margaret's Church in Hawes, North Yorkshire.

[hedgebotherer]

A nice example of the wood carving in St. Margaret's church, North Yorkshire, England. This church is more famous for its mouse carvings by Robert 'the Mouseman' Thompson, which crawl up the antique pews, but this cute frog was among an assortment of animals on the wall panels. The whole church is definitely a tribute to all creatures, mostly small.

[hedgebotherer]

The boots theory holds water (or lets water in, I guess) for so many things. Clothing. Food. Housing. Health (even in countries with national healthcare, let's face it). Even having a good job that lasts many years can be a privilege not afforded to those who can only get shitty, low-security jobs that demand hard work for wet feet low wages.

happy glorious 25th of may

[hedgebotherer]

First of all, sharing because I love the art (the character design and the little details in the background!) and because I just generally love seeing the lesser-drawn Discworld characters.

But I also want to add to the Glenda appreciation, because one thing I really love about her is that she felt to me like an evolution of some of the ideas expressed through other characters. She was an asterisk of a character. I think that previously the kind of hard-working down-to-earthiness Glenda is made of was always portrayed as a good thing. Which it is, obviously. But with Glenda, Sir Terry explored how that same virtue that empowers characters such as the witches can also hold some people back. Through Glenda, I also see an attempt to criticise the Not Like Other Girls streak that trickles through characters such as Susan Sto Helit and Agnes/Perdita. This isn't a criticism of those characters in terms of the author's writing - there's a reason Sir Terry is the only person I will ever address as Sir. I think it was very much deliberate and not intended to make them Strong Female Characters, but presumably the attitude wasn't something he wanted to address at that time, except in smaller doses (most noticeably with Angua and Cheery and their shared feelings about having to be one of the lads in order to be accepted).

Glenda embodies the traits that make other Discworld characters so likeable, while also shining a light on how it harms people (women and minorities in particular) when they're shackled to those standards. It resonates with the Nutt problem of having to constantly prove one's worth to people who will never really respect it. And to a lesser extent with Pepe, who I think can most accurately be described as queer, who has to feign a more harmless, less slash-your-eyelids persona to be accepted by the public (but at least Pepe knows it's all for show). Glenda's character arc seems to say 'Actually, maybe hard work isn't it's own reward'. Be hard working, but don't keep your head down. Be aggressive when you have to be, be forthright, be frivolous, be fancy, be noticeable for something other than just doing a good job with whatever you're paid to do.

It's weird that a novel that was ostensibly about football ended up being more about toxicity (both internal and external) and the pitfalls of living up to the standards that you didn't really invent for yourself.

Glenda appreciation post

[hedgebotherer]

This is a powerful post.

It's hard to accept that people can be multiple things at once, but they are. We all are. We're myriad. When an evil person seemed nice to you, it probably wasn't even an act. The world wants to divide everybody into 'asshole' or 'not the asshole', which is why that bloody Reddit sub is so popular, but in reality everybody on earth is both the asshole and not the asshole. For some people, that means that they're mostly nice but occasionally get into bad moods or don't use coasters when using other people's coffee tables. For others, it means speaking out in genuine support for minorities one moment and then abusing women the next. Both of those traits can be the 'real' them. Neither trait invalidates the other. The good that a bad person does shouldn't be re-evaluated as a pretense in order to make it not really count, because it doesn't detract from the harm either way.

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[hedgebotherer]

I added just four extra stitches to a knitting pattern to incorporate a design from a chart, but four extra stitches is apparently all it takes to turn a perfectly normal sized beret into a deflated woolly zeppelin.

I'm going to need a bigger head.

[hedgebotherer]

I just finished watching Kaos. I was expecting a fun romp with Jeff Goldblum in it, but what I got was a fun, heavy, twisty, turny, stylish, clever romp with Jeff Goldblum in it .

I highly recommend it to my fellow mythology nerds.

But if you're one of those people who insist on 'correcting' deliberately fictionalised portrayals of mythology in an attempt at making yourself look more clever and sophisticated, then you might want to give it a miss. You'll only end up raising your blood pressure and coming across like you don't understand how storytelling works.